With over 70% of our clients on retainer this year—and some partnerships spanning over a decade—we know firsthand that there’s an art to keeping retained clients and teams happy. And according to our ECD Ryan Michlitsch, team leads who care about their people are an integral part of the process.

In his latest article for Ad Age, Ryan shares his tips for cultivating a collaborative environment that leads to great work and long-term partnership:

• Stay connected with your team. It’s important to define your team’s strengths and weaknesses, but running a successful team takes a leader who cares about the people and their professional development.
• Rotate resources. You’ll need to be adaptable and constantly reevaluate whether your team is staffed and assigned appropriately.
• Get out of your own way. Don’t let egos run meetings or determine what ideas prevail. Ignore the title, trust the people.
• Challenge your own expectations. Passion can be contagious. When you see it in someone, let them run with it and remove obstacles in their way.
• Focus on quality over quantity. Not every brief looks efficient on paper, but if you invest the time now, you’ll enjoy the payoff later.
• Be in tune with your client. Keeping up with trends in their industry, understanding their internal organization and knowing how your clients’ efforts are received in market can help shift perspectives, avoid unnecessary risks and hone better decision-making.
• Be strategic about how you frame your work. Review all the decks, train all the staff on how presentations should be structured, write scripts if needed and run mock presentations so junior team members can build confidence and practice before sharing with the client.
• Keep yourself entertained. Create challenges and internal initiatives that keep growth in mind for you and your team.
• Encourage play. Sometimes creatives just need permission to be…creative! Let people explore and take on new challenges.
• Throw your templates away. Avoid a copy-paste mindset. Although it may look like great ROI on a timesheet, it leads to boredom, burnout and turnover.

In short: Take risks, put in the extra effort, experiment, share your passion and be bold. The way we see it: Everyone wants to do great work. More from Ryan on how to make that happen in Ad Age. Full article here.