Bossing It: Sarah Crabbe on Leading with ‘The Next Right Thing’
Known for her natural leadership style, award-winning brand building approach and ability to develop work that works for clients across the world, Sarah Crabbe has over 25 years’ experience in providing senior strategic counsel to a large number of global brands.
Never one to shy away from a challenge, Sarah has provided counsel for some of Europe and North America’s leading brands and has led agency teams to Strategy Agency of the Year top three placements in consecutive years.
Prior to leading the team at Agnostic, Sarah has held partnership roles in global and local agencies in Canada, UK and Ireland. Sarah is passionate about delivering creativity in each engagement and believes agencies only do brave work when they have truly brave clients. An Irish native, Sarah has lived all over the world, including New York and Jamaica and currently lives in Toronto with husband Rob and their two children.
LBB> What was your first experience of leadership?
Sarah> In communications and especially in agency, where I’ve spent all my career, you lead almost from your first day. Whether you are pitching a story to a journalist or part of a wider team bringing a concept to market, your success depends on your ability to lead your part, no matter how small. I can remember a time when that terrified me but it quickly became a very empowering thing and as a wonderfully type A person, a very comfortable place for me to grow!
LBB> How did you figure out what kind of leader you wanted to be – or what kind of leader you didn’t want to be?
Sarah> Leaders and their leadership style is really a lucky bag of the good and the great. What works for one person, won’t work for another so when you find a great leader – and I’ve had some exceptional leaders – they can really impact not only your career but help shape how you live and work in this industry.
I’ve taken so many lessons from so many leaders. Ironically, some of the greatest lessons have come from the worst of leadership styles, but a bad leader helps you move on, or set boundaries, or figure out your own leadership style – and fast! There’s no more clarifying thought than knowing who you don’t want to be!
The great leaders teach you, believe in you and challenge you and, in my case, often at times I didn’t think I was good enough, ready enough or had enough talent. But those leaders who showed true belief in me, I see so much of their style in my leadership style. If you can do that for someone – what a gift! And if you spot a leader like that, chase them down!
LBB> What experience or moment gave you your biggest lesson in leadership?
Sarah> Agnostic was born in 2019 and so we weren’t even a year old when the pandemic started. Leading through a time of no playbook, no next step, no clear planning was terrifying and yet, forced me to really focus on leading with ‘the next right thing’.
It was not just leading the agency but leading our clients through the next right thing that was an incredibly challenging and high-pressured time and yet, produced some of the finest leadership moments of my career. Leading during that time required empathy and vulnerability and asking clients and staff to trust me. You have to bet on yourself in those moments and on what you have built and on what you know to be the best decision you can make that day.
Growing a young independent business like Agnostic during these years was really a lesson in balancing compassion with commercial reality. In the years since, it’s been a journey for leaders but I often remind myself to slow down in decision making and rely on instinct as much as insight. It was a skill honed when we had no other choice and one that we don’t want to lose now.
LBB> Did you know you always wanted to take on a leadership role? If so how did you work towards it and if not, when did you start realising that you had it in you?
Sarah> I am not a born leader. I’m an introverted extrovert – the worst type of leader on paper but surprisingly effective in history! I am fascinated by people and so my nosiness to know more about them has led me to be a bit of an assembler of the most wonderful talent collectives!
I’ve, selfishly, tried to surround myself with people who are smarter than me, more creative than me and ultimately good humans. Agnostic has grown from one to 30 people in five years through being very selective about who we hire and, moreso, who leads our teams and clients.
Cultivating leaders is a true testament of a good leader, so over my career I’ve always sought out the leaders who say ‘we’ more than ‘me’, those that see the thinkers and dreamers as being as important as the louder more dominant obvious leaders. The ‘good human’ component has, without a doubt, become so much more valuable as the world becomes more complex, so even if you are only starting out, holding onto that part of you will result in much better leaders of the future.
LBB> When it comes to 'leadership' as a skill, how much do you think is a natural part of personality, how much can be taught and learned?
Sarah> Leadership can absolutely be taught. It’s all about believing in yourself and believing in what you bring to an organisation and matching that with the vision of that same organisation. I’ve always been wary of lessons in leadership so I’m not sure a book can teach you all you need to know, but lived experience and watching other leaders you admire in action is the best classroom - and best of all it’s free! Just go into the office, sit near them, ask them questions, listen and learn.
LBB> What are the aspects of leadership that you find most personally challenging? And how do you work through them?
Sarah> As the industry and the world becomes more complex, a leader’s lived experience is not going to be relatable to all employees. So for me, it’s become vital to educate myself and the leaders in our business on diversity in all its forms and realise that we have a responsibility to build businesses that are reflective not only of the world we live in, but one that can withstand healthy debate, different views and constant change in terms of how we meet employees where they are in their worlds.
We have become a very employee-led organisation at Agnostic and we will remain so. Our people have a voice I want to hear and as a result I am constantly redefining my leadership style to reflect the needs of our team.
I listen more than I talk but when I do talk, I want the team and our clients to know what I say was worth their time.
LBB> Have you ever felt like you've failed whilst in charge? How did you address the issue and what did you learn from it?
Sarah> All the time! We only grow through failure and it’s so important to acknowledge that leaders make mistakes but it’s what we do to rectify our behaviour or change course that matters. There’s a vulnerability that is required to get better at anything and leadership is no different.
LBB> In terms of leadership and openness, what’s your approach there? Do you think it’s important to be as transparent as possible in the service of being authentic? Or is there a value in being careful and considered?
Sarah> I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive - I think you need to be both. All decisions require careful consideration within a business, but that doesn’t mean creating a quagmire of decisions by committee and slow progress.
If there is clarity about the direction for the business, the team will know how decisions will be made before I make them. If there is a lack of understanding about who we are and what we represent, then the authenticity of not only the decision but the decision maker comes into question.
LBB> As you developed your leadership skills did you have a mentor, if so who were/are they and what have you learned? And on the flip side, do you mentor any aspiring leaders and how do you approach that relationship?
Sarah> I’m lucky that I’ve had lots of people to learn from in my career, across many agencies both global and local. Working in Europe and then North America, you see the difference in leadership styles and so that’s been invaluable to me honing my leadership style.
My first bosses were John Saunders at Fleishman Hillard and Rhona Blake at FH Dublin and I learnt so much from both of them. In fact, I think I was probably the worst junior account executive they ever had but they persevered!! As did I! My obsession with TNTs, Tiny Noticeable Things within the business – you know those little details you think don’t matter, but they really, really do – is a direct reflection of my time in FH Dublin and still rings true today.
Working with Bruce MacLellan as our chair has also been hugely important in establishing Agnostic as the business we are today. His belief in my leadership and his encouragement and support in the big and small risks in the business has been hugely impactful on our growth.
LBB> In continually changing market circumstances, how do you cope with the responsibility of leading a team through difficult waters?
Sarah> Do the next right thing. For the business and for the people. It sounds simple and it can be but it can also be incredibly difficult to stay true to. For me, knowing that I am trying to consistently do the next right thing by our clients, our team, our business and myself has been the truest north star in the great times and the choppier waters.
LBB> As a leader, what are some of the ways in which you’ve prioritised diversity and inclusion within your workforce?
Sarah> The communications industry has always been home to brilliant thinkers, challengers, and disrupters. We celebrate those different thinkers among us.
However, in 2020 as the world started to ask bigger questions of us all around diversity I felt strongly that as a collective, had we done enough to encourage those challengers, disrupters, and brilliant thinkers who may not look like the industry at large? Had we done enough to encourage and seek out diversity? Had we been open and transparent about the lack of individuals from racialised groups in our ranks?
The uncomfortable truth is while 52 percent of residents in Toronto alone – home to many agencies – identify as a racialised group, diversity and representation in the communications field is nowhere near 50 percent. We felt it was more than time to address that statistic.
So, I called the coordinator at Humber College in Toronto and asked how do we make a difference? The result: Agnostic partnered with Humber College to launch The Impression Campaign, a scholarship fund focused on both recruitment and retention of racialised students in the public relations program and industry.
This campaign was not about Agnostic it was about changing diversity in the industry and so we asked our competitors to join us to make this change a reality. The Impression Campaign has raised over $150,000CAD in scholarship grants and we are getting ready to launch the next iteration.
Our EDI work is only beginning but it’s something we have to work at every day to make a reality.
LBB> How important is your company culture to the success of your business? And how have you managed to keep it alive with increases in remote and hybrid working patterns?
Sarah> Our culture is our success. Simple as that. No great culture, no great work. No great work, no great clients. No great clients, no great business. No great business, no great talent….. you see where I’m going! Our culture is the very fabric of our team.
