Filling Your Creative Cup — with Maya Dukes

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Filling Your Creative Cup

May 28, 2024 Brand Leadership Business Growth Career Growth Design Leadership Leadership Management Strategy

Guest Speaker

Maya Dukes, Managing Director of Global Brand Strategy, Creative & Social Media, Delta Air Lines

Maya is an accomplished leader who has been a cornerstone of the creative strategies of numerous multi-billion-dollar brands, including Macy’s, The Home Depot, and, most recently, Delta Air Lines.

Maya led the expansion of Delta’s in-house agency, WindowSeat, into a thriving, 60+ person in-house agency, as Delta’s first Creative Director. Maya also built a dedicated employee communications creative pillar and has guided the creative vision of new brand partnership campaigns, including Olympics & Team USA, Starbucks, Spotify, Peloton, and more,

Maya also teaches an undergraduate marketing course on creative disruption at Georgia State University. In addition, she is a BECA Playbook Future Leader, a KPMG Future Leaders Mentor to first-year college students, is an alum of Giving Tuesday’s Starling Collective, and served as a board member for ARTportunity Knocks – a nonprofit organization focused on empowering African American youth in the arts.

How to fill your creative cup (for work and beyond)

Adam Morgan chats with Maya Dukes, Managing Director of Global Brand Strategy, Creative & Social Media at Delta Air Lines, for a wanderlust-inducing episode that dives deep into why filing your own “creative cup” is more important than ever before. Together, Adam and Maya discuss ways to help team members find inspiration in unlikely places, how to prioritize the creative pursuits you love the most, and why you should never sell your Beyoncé tickets (no matter how busy things are at the office).

mentioned in this show:

Maya Dukes

Adam Morgan

Creative Leader and RCL Host

The Stoke Group

Digital Marketing and Full-Service Content Agency

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REAL CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

Season: 5

Episode: 4

Episode Title: Filling Your Creative Cup — with Maya Dukes

Guest Title:
Maya Dukes, Managing Director of Global Brand Strategy, Creative & Social Media, Delta Air Lines

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Maya Dukes
Think about how you get out of your comfort zone, out of the things that you know day to day, and you push yourself out, and then you bring some of that goodness back into work.

Adam Morgan
Welcome to Real Creative Leadership, a video podcast produced by the Stoke Group and hosted by me, Adam Morgan. Thanks for joining. We have an exciting show today. It’s a topic that’s been part of my career for a long, long, long time. And I know that many of you know that on this show, we talk about creative leadership and it’s a lot about leadership traits and skills and learning to speak khaki and learning to understand, you know, different aspects of business.

But today we’re going to talk about a topic that is actually closer to more of our creative roots. So it’s something where, you know, oftentimes many people are afraid of getting into leadership positions because they’re afraid of walking away from the day-to-day creative act. And today we’re going to talk a little bit about how you can get back to those roots. So no matter what you’re doing, running big teams, running your own business, whatever it may be, today we’re going to talk about, how do you go back to filling your creative cup? How do you get back to understanding, you know, getting back to that fire that gets you excited. It gets you motivated and it gets you passionate and inspired.

We want to talk more about that and how you can continue to foster that creative spirit, no matter where you are in your creative journey. And today I’m excited to be joined by Maya Dukes. She’s the managing director of global brand creative and social media at Delta Air Lines. And she and I are going to talk about our lived experience of getting back to our creative roots and what keeps us excited and motivated. So welcome to the show, Maya.

Maya Dukes
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Adam Morgan
Oh, you bet. Very excited about this conversation. And as always, what I love to do to start out is just have you tell us a little bit about your role and who you are and where you came from, how you got to Delta. Maybe not, like, your whole LinkedIn profile, but just a little bit of your history, of where you’ve been and where and how you’ve gotten to where you’re at today.

Maya Dukes
Sure. Happy to do that. I have spent most of my career on the brand side focused on retail. So leading creative teams focused on making sure products get out to customers in a way that meets their needs. Started my path at Macy’s Corporate, then kind of did the corporate circuit. Home Depot Corporate — I have done, did most of my time at Home Depot Corporate, building and scaling their creative organization for their home fashion furnishings line, home decorators collection. And then had the tremendous opportunity after I left Home Depot to work in the entertainment — cable and entertainment sectors, industries with Comcast NBC Universal, more retail with Tuesday Morning stores, a fintech with Jack Henry and associates, and then right around 2020, the end of 2020, 2021 Delta came calling and it was an opportunity that felt like the role of a lifetime.

And I didn’t even think twice about it. And that’s where my career has taken off. And I was tasked with growing and scaling the creative team, Window Seat, that was already here. And since 2021, we grew to about 70 plus, and just recently my remit has grown again to include brand and social media. So it’s just been this fast and furious climb, but could not have asked for a more fun, exciting, challenging role.

Adam Morgan
Oh, that’s exciting. Well, you had me first at Home Depot. I come from a family of very blue collar and construction. And so I’ve built many, many, many homes. And so I know my way around Home Depot, like no other.

Maya Dukes
Definitely. It was a lovely, lovely experience. Lovely time.

Adam Morgan
Oh, excellent. And then, uh, yeah, what a time to join an airline company during the pandemic, right? I mean, that was like a lot of change. A lot of crazy things are happening. How was that, you know, as far as like, such a different world when you joined it, right?

Maya Dukes
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s just as you probably would imagine — there was a lot of, you know, we weren’t sure how things were going to turn out. I think I was coming in right at the end of the pandemic. Um, and I say “end” because it was like we were in the clear and then the delta variant came right when I signed on. And so there was a lot of ambiguity and not knowing how things were going to turn out. But the thing that kept me positive, kept our teams encouraged, is that our executive leadership knew exactly the things they needed to do to protect the people at Delta, to protect our customers, and to really think about what the future would look like once we pivoted. So yes, it was a time that felt like, “What are you doing joining a travel brand and airline during a pandemic when people can’t fly?” But I had just this sense of reassurance that the organization knew exactly how we were going to get through this phase and how we were going to pivot to come across or come over on the other side, better than we had been previously. And we’ve done just that.

Adam Morgan
Thank you. You know, excellent. Yeah. You’ve done a great job. I mean, Delta is an excellent brand and being the owner of the brand is a big responsibility, but I think I love Delta. It’s definitely my airline of choice.

Maya Dukes
You love to hear it.

Adam Morgan
Yeah. Yeah. Well, beyond just your career or your corporate positions, you’re also a teacher and a mentor, right? That one we talked about earlier.

Maya Dukes
Yeah. So I always say whatever the brand is — so Delta should not take offense to this — but Delta can’t have everything. And you can insert whatever brand you’re working at or whatever industry you’re in. The organization you work for gets a lot out of you and they get a lot out of me. They get a lot out of our team because we have such a passion for our customers and the work is so fun. The industry is so cool. But Delta can’t have everything. And so I have been really deliberate about looking at the things that matter to me most outside of work. And while I mentored — mostly women, younger women within Delta — I’ve really tried to be deliberate and intentional about doing that work outside of Delta. So a couple years back, I started a program called Polished Women Shine and also kind of the spin-off to that is Polished Girls Shine. And really what that organization does is mentors young women who are looking at a path in the creative space or just in corporate in general, and thinking about how to amplify your personal brand and stay true to your personal brand so you can get to the next level. And so it translates really nicely for young girls. And I did a mentorship summer program at a school called Atlanta Charter Heights in an underserved community; and that experience just poured so much back into my cup that I was able to kind of go back to work and feel this sense of purpose that I could kind of share with my team.

I also teach an undergraduate course at Georgia State University, my alma mater, where I’m able to kind of touch and impact and influence our young aspiring marketers. I teach a course called Systematic Creativity, and that course is centered around just really breaking some of the traditional notions of what creativity is and how to innovate without being born this creative genius.

So, like I said, Delta can’t have everything, and those are the things that I prioritize and make sure I have mental space and mental capacity to pursue outside of work.

Adam Morgan
I’m also curious about your path and leadership. I mean, cause you’re running a big team, you know, a good title that many people would be very jealous of, right? So where did you — cause most people when they get into the creative field, they’re not necessarily thinking about leadership and sometimes they roll their eyes and they’re like, “Oh, I just want to do the work,” right? But it’s really, really important. And that’s obviously why we’ve got the show, but I’m curious of your path and when that became an important thing for you and how you learned and grew in that space.

Maya Dukes
Yeah, that’s, you know, I was one of the ones who rolled, I rolled my eyes about creative leadership, probably right out of school I was like, “You know what? I’ve focused on this portfolio. I have these amazing design skills. You know, I can draw. I know that this is my jam, and I kind of defied my parents to pursue this jam.” And so I was like, “I, you know, I don’t want to be in someone’s stuffy office and just pointing their finger at, you know, at teams and telling them what to do.” And so I was like, “I’m going to bunk this job. You know, hunker down.” And then I got my first role at the Atlanta chamber of commerce.

But Macy’s was kind of my first role where I was in this retail space where I saw merchants and buyers. And I understood there was an analytics component and people were talking about the results of their work and the results of the creative and how those results impacted and influenced the organization to meet their goals and exceed their goals and revenue and ROI and all those things.

And I was like, “Hold up — what are all these acronyms and how can I talk about my work in the way that maybe this buyer or merchant is talking about their work?” I really started to want to understand how to show my value, not just through what I could do, but what I could deliver for the organization. And I think that’s where I started attaching myself and kind of infiltrating my marketing peers and saying, sort of making friends with the marketing crew where I could say, “Okay, they said this acronym or this terminology. I don’t know what it means, but please tell me and tell me how to start to see myself in my work through that lens so I can get more work, so I can sit at more tables, so I can move up the ladder.” And very quickly, I mean, I’m telling you like within, when I got to Home Depot, I started to use some of what I was learning at Macy’s to tell those stories and to move up the ladder.

And Home Depot was a place where if you had passion for the brand, if you had passion for people and you kind of saw a vision of where you could take a product or an expansion, or expand something, you could find a spot in that organization. So I moved around quite a lot that landed me into my role at home decorators collection, where we had a very tiny team that expanded and grew, was able to grow and build a studio. There I was able to grow and build the dot com presence for dot com and really do some things that I wouldn’t have been able to do had I not started to think about leadership and how to kind of stretch the creative design aspect in the pieces that I was really focused on when I came into the industry — how to start setting my sights on stretching that career and building a path that could help other creatives come in and do the work that that I loved and be able to tell their story the way that I learned how to tell mine.

Adam Morgan
Oh, that’s awesome. I love that. I mean, if you stop and think about it, what we love as creatives is just to see things in new ways and just, you know, pick things up and look at it and discover. And so why wouldn’t we want to learn more about marketing speak and ROI and all those other crazy things that actually help our careers grow too. So that’s awesome. But now let’s dig into it. Let’s just talk about filling our creative cups because it doesn’t come easy and it’s something that sometimes we can easily forget and it becomes a problem, but let’s talk about you. How do you fill your creative cup? What are the things that inspire you and keep you going?

Maya Dukes
Yeah, I think we touched a little bit about just the things that I protect and make sure I have the space. And when I say space, I mean time and mental capacity to do those things. So teaching, for one, is something that I just get so much energy in life from. I call myself a youth appropriator. So yes, youth appropriation. It’s the only appropriation that’s not going to get you in trouble. And for us older creatives, it’s so good to have these younger people and people who are tapped into the culture and know what’s happening around you. And so I think teaching and mentorship allows me to kind of hear, see, feel, kind of immerse myself in all the things that are happening through the lens of a demographic that just to me is just so much smarter and just knows what they want and what they don’t want, and they’re not going to take any ish from anyone. And so I love that.

And so I find myself just really trying to make sure I have the time, space, and capacity to surround myself with things that are going to help me see things, see people and experiences, and work and creative through a different lens, right? And teaching mentorship is where I get that fuel to be able to do that. And honestly, it translates, right? So it’s not just that it’s filling my cup, but it’s also filling my cup and making me a sharper, better marketer. When you have that downtime, when you have that focus, that’s not just the work you’re doing. And if you so happen to have a focus that — and I think for creatives, the focus, anytime you focus on anything, it kind of feeds back into your work — but for me surrounding myself by these younger creatives and talent, marketing talent, helps me kind of think about a demographic that we are really interested in at Delta, which is Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Right? And so all of those things kind of ladder back to my work. But it helps support in the things that matter most to me as well.

Adam Morgan
Oh, yeah. What about other creative people — you know, what are ways that they fill their creative vessels?

Maya Dukes
Yeah. So one of the things we talk about a lot on our team is this notion of “outside in” and with creative, sometimes you get locked in, especially if you work on the brand side. In the industry, you’re kind of Googling things to kind of get ideas and inspiration. And so what I’ve asked the team to do is go outside in the world there. If there’s one thing that we can leverage — and I talk about this notion of, you know, innovate with what you have — if there’s one thing you can leverage, if there’s one thing we have at Delta that’s travel, right? So I’m like, why are you Googling? What this experience is in this destination, like, go to that experience and really experience the destination while taking time off, while unplugging, while not thinking about work or the next project, but really go on your trips. Kind of take things in, unwind, and then come back fresher, more rejuvenated, and then with a better and different perspective.

So those lenses that I talk about, how do you see the world through other people’s points of view? You have to sometimes go to those places and experience it. So this outside in travel is huge here at Delta, making sure people are able to go and see the world and then take some time off. And then also, you know, making sure that continuing education is — or learning and development is something that we really stress on my team and within the Delta marketing culture. And it’s not just learning about something that’s going to directly impact Delta. It’s learning something that’s going to fill your personal cup. And I think that’s so important to make sure that you’re pushing people to learn more about, you know, the latest in Adobe products. Of course we want to know and be better practitioners. We want to understand, you know, what production techniques are out there, but maybe you want to learn more about knitting. I want you to be able to do that because that is, you know, within the yarn and the fabrics and the textures and all those things and the craftsmanship, there could be an unlock that you can bring back to us. And maybe there’s no unlock. Maybe it’s just, “It’s gonna calm my nerves so when I come to work, I’ll have this sense of calm,” and that’s enough for us. So we really push that, yeah. Continuing education, learning and development in addition to travel and that notion of outside in.

Adam Morgan
Oh, there are so many comments that I want to just jump in on all of those things you said. So I’ll try and break it apart into little bits, but first of all, I love the idea of travel. There was a good study that was, like, something about Islam. If you’ve left the country and visited another country, your level of empathy or your chance of truly understanding other people and cultures and having respect where I’m — like goes, like super high. Like it’s super important to do something like that.

But as far as like, you know, even just filling your cup, like, there’s one thing of, like, “All right, I’m crazy busy. I need to do something that’s just different so that I, you know, get a break and just kind of recharge for me.” Like, the core thing of creativity, it’s not just filling your cup, but it’s also filling the well. Like when you’re coming up with ideas or concepts throughout my whole career, it’s like the more stuff that you can fill into your head, the more new connections you can make. Right? And so going out and experiencing, like — I like your words “outside in” — going and experiencing the outside also makes you a better creative. It’s not just helping chill you out. It makes you a better creative.

So I know this one guy who, he actually even would write those things off. Like, if he’d go to a movie or if he’d go to a cultural event, he’d save those receipts and write it off because he’s like, “This is my business of being a creative and understanding pop culture and making campaigns and ideas around it, then that it’s absolutely a part of it.” And so he would write all those things off on his taxes. And so I totally love that. I’m like, yes, yes, we should be doing that. We should be going outside because we are students of humanity and culture and emotions and moments. And so getting out there, I think it’s so critical for our jobs and for our mental health. So it’s, it’s like a two in one.

Maya Dukes
Absolutely. I, you know, for your friend who would write those things off, I think he’s brilliant because I remember just a few months ago when Beyonce’s Renaissance tour was just heating it up. And I got, we got our tickets very early. And my girlfriends and I got our tickets super early. Every time she comes to Atlanta, I’ve seen her every single time. And it was during a moment that was really — the concert happened during a moment that there was a lot of shifts and turns and changes within Delta. And just our work was heating up, right? It was one of those busy moments, seasons where you’re just like, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much to do.”

And I was like, “Maybe I can just sell my ticket.” And I was heading out the night of the concert. I walked out and I think I had like, maybe 45 minutes to get home, get showered, get dressed and go to the concert. And I was like, I think, “You know what? I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it.” And I saw a coworker and I was like, “Do you know anybody who would want Beyonce tickets?”

And everyone knows, like, I’m like Beyonce obsessed. And she said to me, like on the way out, she was like, “One, you need to go just because you work so hard and you deserve it. And two, this is like — this is research. Like, there’s so many experiential components you’re going to see at that concert. You’re going to understand marketing and how to get someone to kind of follow your brand.”Just how people were dressed. You know, you saw everyone was wearing the silver and like, they were all just kind of, you know, just in the moment. They were immersed in showing up, not just to see the concert, but actually to be a part of the concert. And she was like, “Why wouldn’t you go for that reason alone? Just to say, you could bring some things back, new ideas.” And I was like, “You know what? I talk about this all the time, this notion of outside in, and here I am about to just throw my ticket and go to sleep probably, or get back on my laptop if I’m really being honest.” And it was just one of those moments where I was like, “You know what? I can fill my cup, not think about work and then also get these kind of peripheral or by osmosis ideas how I could bring some things back.” So it was just one of those moments where I was like, okay, this makes sense, I’m going, and I went.

Adam Morgan
Well, I’m glad you did. And that’s another part of our message is, like, burnout is a choice. If we as creatives aren’t filling that cup, then we’re gonna get burned out. And then you’re worthless, you know?

Maya Dukes
That’s such a good point. No one was saying I couldn’t go. I was on my way home. No one was like, “Maya, I really need you to get back online and finish up the thing.” No one was saying that; it was me making a choice that I didn’t have time to fill my cup, that Delta could have everything. And someone just quickly reminded me, like, not only can they not have everything, but you’re going to have this filled well by experiencing this moment. So you need to go. No, it’s a choice.

Adam Morgan
Well, that’s awesome. Well, another thing that I want to go back to is your conversation about teaching the students and bringing up that new kind of fresh, vibrant life from a younger generation, and why I think that’s so important, like, at least to me. Like, on our show, we’ve talked a lot about quiet creatives versus, you know, extroverts and how you get your energy and whatever else it is. But I just want to point out that this is an important thing as far as, like, also the conversation around diversity, because we all, you know, and fill our cups in such different ways, you know, regardless of, of gender or race or any of those things.

Like, it’s like, someone may be into true crime, someone else may be into a different part of pop culture. You know, I’m into nerdy board games or outdoor recreation and, you know, adrenaline rush sports. Like we’re all into different things. And so the more we’re out there experiencing those and then bringing it all back to our teams. I think that’s such a big level of fostering, not just creativity, but diversity, which is really.

Maya Dukes
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We talk a lot about, well, one, Delta is not just a talker. We live those values every day. The initiatives and programs that we go after are important. But then it’s just a way of life at Delta. We walk the walk, right? So when we think about diversity, even within my team, we think about pipelines. We think about how we can get, you know, give access to people who are considering this career but have never seen themselves leading or even being a part or having or being part of the conversation within the creative space or creative leadership space, mostly.

So that said, we take it a step further and we start to think about cognitive diversity. And I teach in our class, we talk about why brainstorming is so overrated in my class. And we talk about this at work to where you get in a room and there are so many people who absorb information and questions with ideas differently and we create space for that. So it’s not that, you know, you’re in a brainstorm session and there’s always someone who’s the loudest or who can think on their feet faster, but that empathy and that understanding comes in when we start to say — oh, you know what? Well, we have this person who doesn’t speak up in those conversations. It’s not that she’s social loafing. It’s that she’s thinking, that she’s processing, that she’s putting all the pieces together so she can go home, fill her cup, maybe knit and think about the conversation that we started to have in that brainstorm session. She’s going to come back with a brilliant idea and we’re going to say, “Oh my gosh, where did that come from?” Well, it came from her cognitive process that she has to go through that might be different than my cognitive process, that might be different than yours.

And so really, it’s about trying to help people feel good about what they can deliver, regardless of how they deliver it. And I think that’s really important when we start to talk about diversity and inclusion and equity. It’s giving all people the space to tell creative stories through their lens, through their experience and through the way that they process those things that they see, feel, experience. And I think that is a piece that gets a little lost in. And sometimes when we start those conversations about equity and inclusion, it gets lost in some of those conversations.

Adam Morgan
So as you bring up all of this, these different aspects of your team, that’s the next big question. Somebody be asking like, “All right, so how do you encourage others on your team?” Like, we’re bad enough that we’re, you know, as leaders sometimes skipping the Beyonce concerts and we shouldn’t — you know, it’s like trying to take care of ourselves, but how do we take care of the others and encourage them to, you know, fill the well?

Maya Dukes
Yeah, we operationalize it. So I know a lot of organizations — yeah, we put metrics behind it. We have a road map that we — it’s almost like our creative Bible — where we put all of the initiatives and projects that obviously the organization wants us focused on. And then we put our learning and development goals on that road map; we put our growth and inspiration goals on that road map; we put a lot of our task forces on that road map. And we have inspiration, we have emerging technology. We have a lot of focus areas, awards and recognition is also a task force.

But those task forces aren’t side hustles. It’s not like, “Hey, when you have time, join the awards committee!” No, we have metrics that align to some of the overarching goals within our organization that we can go back at review time and say, “Hey, did you really prioritize learning and development for your team?” And I’m looking at the leaders when I ask that question. “Hey, did you really prioritize creating a, you know, a career development plan for your team, which would include wellbeing, your wellness week. Did you take it, you know, did you encourage your team to take it? Are you modeling the behaviors that you’re asking your team to do?” And then we’re holding you accountable for that because that’s a huge component of our results. The fact that our creative team also supports employee communications in terms of the creative that we develop for employee comms, we have internal facing creative and external facing creative. And I think it helps us to be more aware of how we take care of our people, because as we’re developing campaigns about wellness and wellbeing for the organization, we’re taking some of those learnings and turning to our team and saying, “Hey, you developed a —”

Well, we did this really cool campaign called “Hello, From a Better You.” And I was like, “Okay, this is great creative, but are you doing some of the things that we highlighted in the strategy to make sure you’re taking care of yourself?” So it’s not just talking about it, but it’s actually putting it, operationalizing it, putting on, putting it on your end of year performance reviews and making sure you’re talking about it all the time, and you’re modeling that behavior.

Adam Morgan
That’s so great. I know we talked about operationalizing it, but you gave more nuggets this time that I hadn’t heard. And so it’s like —

Maya Dukes
Yeah.

Adam Morgan
— grab my notebook and write down a couple of them. I’m going to get them later from the recording here. But that is so fantastic too.

I like the committees. Like, if we really, truly believe in something, let’s make that not just a priority, but follow up on it with, with different committees and leadership on it. I love that. Well, it’s funny you bring up knitting because something that we’ve done — I’m just going to share a couple, you know, notes from my experience in leading teams and how to get them to stay inspired.

One of them is, I do a creative workshop — and I’ve done this before — and I was at Adobe and an agency before that, where it’s like, every week or every other week, we just have a Friday morning meeting. And the only purpose of it is inspiration. And we take turns; we’ll assign someone to talk about whatever, a book that they’ve read, or we bring in a guest speaker and literally a woman on our team, not too long ago — she loves quilting — and like you talk about knitting, but she did a whole section on quilting and patterns and all these different things that, you know, that come from that whole world. And she was just at a conference, like, a week ago. So I love weaving some of those personal side hustles, or at least passions into it as well. And then we have a Slack channel that’s only dedicated to, you know, brand and creative in real life, which I think is awesome. Cause people will always share their little things that they’re doing, whether they’re traveling or learning or something, you know, trick or treating with the kids. But that kind of a thing is just something that’s not part of work, but it totally helps humanize things and learn more about the team. And I need to post more often. I do a very poor job of doing that, but I love the channel and I love that the team embraces it.

Maya Dukes
Yeah, that, I mean — when you think about how people come alive, when they talk about something that matters to them, whether it’s a project they worked on at work or something they work on at home, like, that’s the energy. Like, if you could bottle up that energy and that momentum and just like, as people come to work, like, here’s your excitement.

That sounds very bad, but like, if you think about it, it would be natural. You see, it wouldn’t be drugs or it wouldn’t be pharmaceuticals. It would be just the adrenaline and the lift and the goodness you feel when you have something that you’re proud of and you can dedicate the time and the space and energy towards that. How many more amazing ideas or concepts could we develop if people felt that good when they came to work?

Adam Morgan
All right. I know we’re getting near the end here. I just have a couple more questions for you. First, you know, what is it that you love most about being a creative leader? What charges you about the leadership aspect for you personally?

Maya Dukes
Oh, there’s so many things, but I always come back to the people. I have never worked at an organization where I didn’t fall in love with my team — with the ideas that they constantly come up with, they surprised me every single time. The team just came back from South by Southwest and we had just this tremendous showing when we got the brief; we were so excited to develop work on behalf of the brand, but to put this new spin on this brand that’s been around for 99 years and how to kind of push them forward into this new era of connection is what we called it.

And I was just blown away by the creativity, the care, the excitement that they had doing that project and then seeing them there enjoying the work in real time. So again, filling their cups by actually being a part of the experience that they developed. And so I’ve never worked for an organization yet that I didn’t just love my team and didn’t feel this immense sense of admiration for the work they do and how they can come back every single time with a bigger, better idea is amazing to me.

So I would say that’s the piece. And then, you know, leading — I, we started the conversation off by talking about this role of like, you know, I’m not gonna be able to get in the work, but that’s where, you know, again, carving time to do things on the side, you know. I am constantly creating wedding invitations for my family or, you know, some kind of visual, I’m going to do my daughter’s graduation invites and just — sure, that I still have the opportunity to get in the work and create for myself has helped me to be really good about the leadership piece. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I love this path and I love being able to kind of influence people’s careers.

Adam Morgan
Oh, that’s awesome. Well, I think that by modeling that good behavior of, like, you’ve got to have this balance, you’ve got to have the inspired, you got to keep doing things that are exciting and fun, I think it helps the team realize that it’s not just all business. It’s not just all, you know, put on a suit and be serious, right? Like, you can be playful and fun and human and connected. I also love that you talked about how you love your team.

Like, there was — I read in one book, I’m not going to mention it. And then I had an earlier leader who was, like, had this philosophy that they needed to have a barrier between them and the team, because if there wa, like hard times or whatever, if they had to fire one, like. you couldn’t be too close. And so. I totally disagree with that. I think leadership where you love them. I — this world is so fast and we have such a short time on this rock that I’m like, “I want to be friends.” I want to be close — maybe not family — but, you know, close and good friends and really care and love them and have them feel that and know that. And I think that’s special and important.

Maya Dukes
Yeah. How can you be with someone most of your time every day for years and not, yeah, not care about someone’s well being? And if you have to make tough decisions, you can still care for someone and do it in a way that honors their dignity and helps them land in a good place. And I just don’t know how, as humans, you go through life not being able to care about somebody and be proud of it. I — even on social media, sometimes like I’m on LinkedIn and I’m like, someone posts something. I’m like, love, love, love! And I was like, “Maybe I love everything.” And I’m just like, “I feel like I rather like than hate everything.”

So I’m going to continue to do what I feel in my heart. And it’ll take me, I don’t know where, wherever it takes me, fine, but, I feel really, strongly, and passionately about caring deeply for the people that you’re with most of your life. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Adam Morgan
I totally agree. All right, any last minute advice? How can we be better at staying inspired or prioritizing, you know, creative fulfillment?

Maya Dukes
Just remember, “insert your job’s name” can’t have everything. So for me, Delta can’t have everything. So go find what your thing is so that they’re not getting all of it from you outside in. So think about how you get out of your comfort zone, out of the things that you know, day-to-day, and you push yourself out. And then you bring some of that goodness back into work. And then just realizing that, you know, back to your point about filling your cup, that taking time for yourself also fills your well. I’m going to write that down. You talk about going back and listening to the recording. I love that phrase and I’m going to say it more because “fill your cup” just feels a little bit more, you know, and I think that’s good. It’s self serving. But then also realizing that some of that pours back into your work is a really great thing to kind of attach yourself to. So fill your cup and then also while you’re doing that, you’re filling your well. So those are my three things.

Adam Morgan
Wow. That was such a great summary. Thank you. What a delightful conversation. How to stay inspired, how to be happy. You know, we’ve talked about it all here of filling your cups and your wells and helping your team and operationalizing. I think that was another big, important part for me that I took away from this conversation is like, make it real. Don’t just think about it, but like, make it a part of your [00:38:45] plan. So, love that.

Well, thank you, Maya. Thank you so much for being on the show with us today. We really, really appreciate your insight.

Maya Dukes
Thank you for having me.

Adam Morgan
All right. Well, thanks everyone for joining. We’ll catch you next time on the next episode. So until then, good luck getting out in the world and getting inspired. We hope you have a good time. We’ll see you. As always, you can find me at adamwmorgan.com. And finally, this show is produced by The Stoke Group, a full service digital agency that specializes in content, marketing, video, and interactive experiences. So if you’re looking for a partner for strategy or content or anything else, visit thestokegroup.com. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next time.