Interview with Caila Stangl, Creative Director

"A lot of self-sabotage has to do with the vulnerability of exposure".

‘Word to the Wise’ is a Client Interview Series. I have had the privilege of working with many extraordinary creative leaders over the years and this is my way of sharing snippets of their experiences. Not just because they are inspiring but because they are relatable.

Caila Stangl is the Creative Director and a Partner at Public Office, a strategic and creative consultancy based in Toronto, Canada. Throughout her career she has worked on global and national brands, including Casper Canada, Sonos, Starbucks Canada, Roots Canada, Hudson's Bay Company, and Pandora and has driven brand identity launches for enterprise-ready organizations such as Properly, Living Beauty and Bella Thorne.

Leading with humility and empathy to inspire impactful work, paired with a keen aesthetic sense and a versatile skill set, Caila seeks to draw the best work out of her team and builds fortified relationships with the clients Public Office serves. With an insatiable curiosity, she's worked across a multitude of industries; retail, social enterprise, hospitality, technology, education and beyond.

Courtesy of Caila Stangl

I’ve witnessed you co-lead a creative agency for a number of years now, what have been your biggest takeaways from this experience so far?

Co-leading goes through ebbs and flows like any relationship. You have to have enough self-awareness and emotional intelligence to navigate the ego and recognize when you’re affecting the relationship in a way that isn’t serving the partnership. It takes dialogue to maintain consistency and boundaries to protect your own integrity.

Establishing a distinctive leadership style is imperative and having the conviction to know what the right approach is for you is key. It can help to maintain balance in a co-lead partnership. Only you can determine for yourself what success looks like when co-leading a team. Especially when you are there to serve the needs of a diverse range of people who all have their own wants, needs and expectations. In a nutshell, if your leadership style is different to your co-leads, it can be complementary, so have the confidence to know there is no wrong or right, it should just be true to you.

What brings you the most joy or meaning in the work you do, and what keeps you motivated even during challenging times?

Watching a team of talented people thrive is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job. I find so much joy in observing the growth of my team and seeing the level of creativity and thought they put into the work, no matter how big or small the task. There’s a great quote from Tina Fey; “In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way”. Dictating is different from leading and it’s rewarding when you see people thrive because they’re granted personal agency.

I find business challenges the biggest blocker to finding motivation. In those moments, I’ll dive deeper into research to enlighten myself on creative pursuits around the world. This gives me that little dopamine boost to kick my brain into high gear and move past the blockage.

Also, motivation for creatives can come in the form of excitement for a new project, or simply tapping into the brains of other people. I find that a good boost of motivation comes from asking a colleague if they have two minutes to talk about a challenge if I’m stuck. And sometimes, talking to someone who isn’t a creative, brings an unexpected perspective that can unlock beautiful outcomes.

How do you handle self-doubt, and what strategies have you developed for pushing through moments of fear?

This one is a tough question. As an empath and creative, I have a tendency to overthink everything and absorb almost every kind of frequency or energy in a room. Then my brain plays tricks on me. Self-doubt is my alter ego and tends to pop up in the most inopportune moments. It’s taken concentrated coaching with you to find ways of coping with my shadow side.

As I get older, I realize a lot of the self-sabotage has to do with the vulnerability of exposure. What I mean by this is, that creative output, even though you’re performing and working towards a goal for clients, can still be very personal. You’re in a position where you’re extracting thoughts from experience and using brain processing that no one else can see and self-doubt has a tendency to try to mislead you.

You have to be incredibly strong when managing client expectations and believe in your work to overcome that creeping inner-voice and recognize that nothing, especially in the vast world of possibility, is perfect. What you present and develop for your client in that moment, is the best outcome or solution based on your own individual expertise or experience. Creativity is not objective. To bring someone along your path of thinking can be scary, especially if it doesn’t yield praise or positive feedback. In those moments, which I would define as “fear of vulnerability”, you have to take a step back and put yourself into the shoes of the party sitting across from you, whether client, partner or team and listen.

A lot of times, people know what they want but may not know how to ask for it or get there. Once you unlock a solution that everyone is happy with, the power of knowing you’ve made that discovery together, resulting in a win and a desired outcome, single-handedly dissolves all fear and is in a way kind of euphoric. When you successfully tune into your empathic nature to truly understand what it is that someone else is asking of you, fear shrinks.

On a personal level, I’m reading a lot of Gabor Maté; a brilliant physician who has a wealth of knowledge about trauma and how it effects the brain. It’s a bit of a buzzword in today’s culture but he goes back to the root of the word to explain that the direct Latin translation is “wound” or “to be wounded”. For me, self-doubt is a byproduct of childhood bullying. Getting to the root cause is imperative to understand myself on a deeper level.

It’s fascinating to hear Gabor’s research on physiology and how modern medical practice still separates healing the mind from the body when the two are so inextricably intertwined. Our immunity system is directly affected by our emotional system, they are one in the same. Women disproportionately develop auto-immune disorders in comparison to men because, from an early age, we’re taught to suppress our voices. People who are extremely sensitive and categorized as “nice people”, who have a tendency to take responsibility for how other people feel and fear disappointing those around them are at the highest risk of disease. I’ve recently been diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder and as a people-pleaser who struggles with mental health, I’m seeing in real-time how much my anxiety, burn-out and sensitivities (the need for belonging and feeling valued) have manifested an untenable level of stress. I need to rewire my programming to heal. Instead of playing the victim, I’m looking at this moment as an opportunity to lean into self-prioritization and self-compassion to overcome my inner saboteur.

What experiences shaped you the most growing up, and how do they impact your decisions today?

I always knew I wanted to pursue a career in creativity. It changed as a kid - Interior Designer, Graphic Designer, Painter, Musician (hah). My experience of taking a hiatus from University and moving to California exposed me to a different world that was the complete opposite of my little bubble of existence in Toronto. Breaking free from the comforts of home was one of the best decisions I made. I met the wildest people and some of the most eccentric minds. I slept on couches and travelled the coast in a beat-up van. Not knowing what would come next and flowing through every day illuminated creativity for me in a different way. Life was transient and hard but still full of beauty and the realization that if you take risks, extraordinary things can happen. I don’t think I would have had the same sense of adaptability that I have today or would have developed the yearning to start an agency if I hadn’t explored that path.

I know it’s important to you to lead others with empathy and to create a healthy work culture. What advice do you have for other creative leaders trying to do the same?

Leading through empathy means listening, and keeping your energy open and judgement-free. I most definitely don’t have all of the answers but it is my duty to listen and guide my team towards practical, evolved and aspiring solutions. The less you listen, the less you give creative folks room to explore and a chance to work through the fundamentals of a challenge. It truly takes patience and the ability to ask the right questions to boost others and build their confidence to get to a point where they have autonomy in their own creative comprehension and problem-solving.

What tools do you use the most to manage and lead yourself?

I’m going to be completely honest here. There are literally no tools that can de-clutter the mind of someone who has endless curiosity about so many things in the world. I love design and brand, sure. But I also love neuro-science, cosmology, technology, artificial intelligence, pop culture and trends, biology, relationships, psychology… The list is endless and just short of being interested in car mechanics, although I do love classic cars. For crying out loud, I’m learning from Reddit all about composting toilets (TMI, apologies in advance but this is an important topic when thinking about a sustainable world and container gardening!).

In short, my browser tabs are a peek into the clutter that is my brain. I’ve taken some time to think about this and realize that too much input can be unhealthy. I’m trying to commit to reducing the amount of topics and content I consume, including social. Once a week, I’ve started to go through my browser tabs and close anything that I haven’t read or touched and bookmark for later. Whether I get to it, is a whole different can of worms.

I’ve always felt confident leading myself but have had to learn to let go in regards to managing every little aspect of a project. Everyone on our team is so highly capable, that I have to remind myself to let others lead at what they do best. I rely on our strong producer team to guide the process. Every creative, even leadership, triumphs from solid and organized producers and account directors who fire up the engine and keep us marching towards the sky. They keep all projects on a healthy trajectory.

What do you think is the most important leadership attribute in today’s world?

Active listening coupled with an open mind and curiosity. Without these qualities, you risk overshadowing your team and leading with ego and bravado. This is the antithesis of how to get to creative excellence. Inspiration can come from anywhere and my team is ten steps ahead of me in youth culture and technical skills, so I recognize that they have so much to teach leadership just as much as leadership needs to guide them on how to be productive and high-contributing counterparts of any project.

I see myself as more of a conductor, picking up on the subtle frequencies and notes within the composition of a song. When you hear someone is struggling with a section, you don’t lose sight of the whole production or the other players but you hone in on that individual's contribution, listen to what they are struggling with and help them to refine the notes to build on a harmonious and impactful creative outcome.

If you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?

At the end of the day, find what fuels you. And that might change decade over decade but hey, that’s ok. Just don’t lose sight of who you are. Have conviction and believe that what you do is important.

Is there a podcast, substack or book you’ve recently enjoyed that you’d recommend?

Oh man, remember the section about browser tabs? This is another category where I follow about 100+ podcasts. There’s a statistic that something like 80% of true crime listeners are women. I am one of those women. A TRUE CRIME JUNKIE. I’m trying to take a break from it though and have been listening to This is Love with Phoebe Judge. Not only do I love her voice and narration style but the stories are all so undeniably charming. It gives me hope for love and humanity.

Finally, I follow Ana Andjelic who writes The Sociology of Business. She’s the Global Chief Brand Officer at Esprit and is an incredibly insightful brand builder. She looks at brands through the lens of business which is similar to our approach at Public Office. I love her perspective on brand-building with a deep and rich connection to culture. She always writes with a unique perspective on topics that are filled with abstraction.

And finally, when you reflect on your coaching experience, what has been your biggest takeaway?

The process is not linear. You don’t wake up one day with all of this compiled confidence and say “I’m an impenetrable fortress of solitude”. You will experience as many days of battling your shadow side as you will embracing your light. You have taught me to always stick to my convictions and to embrace messy moments in a productive way.

Your coaching style has truly allowed me to explore all parts of myself and has given me a deep understanding of what makes me uniquely “me” as a creative and as a human. You’ve helped me to see my superpower. It’s been a journey of self-discovery that I think every creative, given the opportunity, should experience for themselves. When we do the work together, you give energy to the process, space to explore my brain and the tools to navigate the balance of work and life in all of its complexity.