LEAD WELL
A practical workshop for managers and team leaders in creative industries, focused on leading with clarity, care and sustainable boundaries.
Build the confidence and skills to support your team’s mental health without carrying it all yourself.
LEAD WELL is a live, interactive workshop designed specifically for managers and team leaders working in creative industries.
It recognises that leadership in creative work is uniquely complex. Teams are often emotionally invested, deadline-driven, identity-linked and operating in insecure or high-pressure environments.
This session equips leaders with practical tools to reduce psychosocial risk, respond to stress early, and model sustainable leadership in fast-moving creative contexts.
Why LEAD WELL?
Creative work can be deeply fulfilling. It can also be emotionally demanding, high pressure and structurally precarious.
Support Act’s national data shows that 53.5% of people working in music and the arts report high or very high psychological distress. That reality shapes your team, whether it is spoken about or not.
Managers may not control budgets, contracts or industry instability. But they do influence:
- Clarity of priorities
- Realism of timelines
- Communication patterns
- What behaviour is rewarded or ignored
- Whether support is normalised
Small, consistent leadership choices compound over time.
LEAD WELL focuses on where you have real leverage.
What the session covers
In 60 minutes, we cover:
- Why mental health risk is elevated in creative work, and what that means for leaders
- The key psychosocial hazards managers influence, including job design, workload, communication and culture
- Where managers have real leverage, even when they do not control budgets or deadlines
- How to recognise early signs of stress and distress in team members
- Practical leadership behaviours that reduce risk, including clear priorities, predictable communication and early check-ins
- How to support staff without overstepping into counselling or carrying it all
- Available supports for managers, including the dedicated Support Act Managers Support Line
Participants leave with clearer boundaries, stronger confidence and practical leadership actions they can apply immediately.
Who is it for?
LEAD WELL is designed for:
- Team leaders
- Line managers
- Department heads
- Production managers
- Artist managers
- Creative directors
- Supervisors in music, screen, visual arts and performing arts
It is suitable for both emerging and experienced leaders.
How it works
Duration: 60 minutes
Format: Online or in person
Delivery: Interactive, practical.
LEAD WELL can be delivered as a tailored in-house workshop for organisations or as part of a broader wellbeing and psychosocial safety program.
Clinically speaking...
Clinically speaking, these sessions support managers and team leaders supervising workers who are experiencing, or are at risk of, psychological distress. Given elevated rates of anxiety, depression and burnout across the creative industries, leadership behaviour is a critical supportive factor.
LEAD WELL equips leaders to identify emerging distress, reduce psychosocial risk factors within their control, intervene early and connect staff to appropriate support services.
By strengthening managerial capability, the program contributes to the support and alleviation of mental ill health in high-risk work environments.
Get in touch to discuss how we can support your creative team.
The serious stuff
Support Act is a registered Public Benevolent Institution (PBI).
This means our primary purpose is to relieve distress, hardship and suffering, and to support people who are experiencing, or are at risk of, significant vulnerability.
Our PBI status reflects our commitment to delivering programs that provide genuine public benefit, are responsibly governed, and remain focused on supporting those who need help most across the music and creative industries.
Our programs are proudly supported by Creative Workplaces
