Every creative team has one: the go-to person. The creative unicorn. The one who keeps the shit from hitting the fan.
They’re the problem solver, the unofficial hub holding all the context. And more often than not, they’re carrying more than their job title suggests.
So what happens if that person needs to step away?
Parental leave. Medical leave. A sabbatical. Even just a real vacation without answering their Slack.
Too often, their absence can quickly expose gaps in documentation, decision-making, and team confidence, especially if no one planned for it. The instinct is often to redistribute their workload. But shifting the burden to the rest of the team is a fast track to burnout.
The better question isn’t how to cover for one person. It’s how to build a creative team that can absorb change without breaking.
That’s where proactive planning comes in.
This is especially top of mind for marketing and creative leaders right now. Budgets are tighter. Timelines are shorter. AI is everywhere. And there’s growing pressure to do more with smaller teams without exhausting the people who make the work good in the first place.
When done well, leave isn’t a disruption. It’s a growth opportunity for emerging leaders, stronger processes, and a more resilient creative team.
Before the Go-To Steps Away: What to Put in Place
Documentation Is Not Optional
Documentation isn't glamorous. It doesn't win awards. But it’s the difference between a team that panics and one that keeps moving.
Style guides, templates, decision notes, workflows, and process playbooks should live in one shared, easily accessible place. It can be a CRM like HubSpot or Monday, Google Drive, a platform like Notion or Trello, or any other shared folder structure of your choice.
The specific tool matters far less than the outcome: anyone on the team should be able to find what they need without tracking down a single person.
If your creative team hasn’t taken the time to do this yet, now is the moment. And yes, we know, this is often the first thing to get pushed aside when deadlines loom and the next deliverable needs to ship.
Documentation doesn’t feel urgent in the moment. But when it’s consistently deprioritized, the cost shows up later, especially when a key team member steps away, planned or not.
Schedule a walkthrough. Host a working session. Walk the team through what exists, how it’s used, and why certain decisions were made. The goal isn’t perfect documentation — it’s shared understanding.
The Risk of “Only One Person Knows”
This is more than an operational issue.
Teams that relies on one or two people who “know everything” are fragile. When information, history, and decision-making live in a single head, everyone else is forced into reactive mode, waiting for instructions instead of contributing confidently.
Bottom line here: Rockstar employees are an asset. Gatekeepers are a risk.
A healthy creative team shares context early and often. That means sharing regular moments where people explain not just what they’re doing, but why. It means making priorities, standards, and tradeoffs visible so others can step in thoughtfully when someone is out, not blindly or hesitantly.
This isn’t about mistrust or control. It’s about autonomy. When the team understands the bigger picture, they’re empowered to make decisions instead of escalating everything upward or freezing until the go-to returns.
What It Looks Like When PTO Actually Works
Imagine: Your lead designer takes two weeks of PTO.
Because the team has shared style guides, documented workflows, and notes on past decisions, a mid-level designer can confidently handle a last-minute request. They reference the brand system, review prior examples, and flag one open question in Slack instead of escalating the entire project.
In a team check-in, someone says, “She usually prioritizes consistency over experimentation for this client, so let’s stick to the core system.”
The work moves forward.
No panic. No late nights. No waiting for someone who’s supposed to be offline.
That’s what shared context buys you.
And systems only work if people know what’s coming. Once the groundwork is laid, here comes the next step: alerting and preparing the team before someone steps away.
How to Prep the Team Before a Key Performer Takes Leave
Not every absence is planned. Emergencies happen. But when leave is planned, the worst thing a leader or key performer can do is spring it on the team at the last minute.
From a two-week, sun-kissed vacation in Italy or a shorter family break, advance notice gives the rest of the team time to prepare. It allows them to wrap up their own work, anticipate shared responsibilities, and avoid unnecessary stress or scrambling.
Here's how to do it well.
Step 1: Get Clear on Ownership
Before communicating coverage to the team, managers and creative leaders should audit the responsibilities of the person taking leave.
- What does this person formally own?
- What have they gradually absorbed over time without it being explicitly assigned?
This step often surfaces invisible work that would otherwise fall through the cracks once the person is gone.
Step 2: Communicate Explicitly
Preparation should be proactive, not implied. Clearly outline:
- What’s already been handled and needs no further attention.
- What’s still in progress and who’s covering it.
- What can wait
Clarity here reduces unnecessary check-ins and prevents work from being duplicated or avoided altogether.
Step 3: Handle the Small (but Critical) Details
Small signals reinforce that the leave is real and respected. The team member who will be out should ideally:
- Set an out-of-office message that routes inquiries to the right contacts.
- Block the calendar so meetings aren’t “accidentally” scheduled.
- Cancel or reschedule commitments ahead of time.
These details protect the person on leave and give the team confidence that there’s a plan.
Step 4: Put Leadership Guardrails in Place
This is when leaders slow down and make workflows explicit:
- Document workflows, decisions, and key contacts so projects don’t stall because no one knows where to go for answers.
- Identify natural deputies or shared ownership models. Coverage doesn’t have to mean one person takes everything; spread it intentionally.
- Clarify escalation paths. Decide ahead of time what truly needs leadership input and what the team can handle independently, so everything doesn’t bottleneck.
The key takeaway: preparation reduces anxiety. It prevents last-minute scrambling, protects the person on leave, and gives the rest of the team confidence that they’re set up to succeed.
Case Study: Creative Director Takes a Vacay
Let's take a look at a hypothetical example of what a well-prepared, transparent email from a creative lead taking leave might look like.
Subject: Upcoming Out of Office + Project Coverage Details
"Hey team,
I wanted to give you a heads-up that I’ll be out of the office for seven days, starting Monday, on a family vacation. As much as I love working with you all, I’m planning to truly disconnect and be fully present during that time.
To make sure things continue to run smoothly, I’ve done the following ahead of my time away:
- Blocked my calendar and canceled or rescheduled all internal meetings.
- Set an out-of-office message directing external partners to the appropriate contacts.
- Connected directly with our key collaborators so they know who to reach out to while I’m gone.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what you might see come up and who’s covering what:
- Campaign X (Client: X Company): Bob will be the point person here. Mr. X may reach out with questions around final graphic placement and type hierarchy, and everything you need is documented in the shared campaign folder in Salesforce, including final comps and rationale.
- Brand Refresh Explorations: These are paused until I’m back. No action needed unless something urgent comes up, in which case Sarah is looped in.
- Internal Review Requests: Please route these to Jen. She has full context and decision authority while I’m out.
Anything that doesn’t truly need attention can wait until I’m back, and if something unexpected comes up, you all know how to find each other and make the call, and find the shared process guides in Salesforce as well as Slack.
Thank you in advance for having things covered. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and collaboration that make stepping away possible.
See you soon,
Dave"
Now let’s say Jen, who often steps in to handle overflow mockups and collaborate with clients, is eyeing her next internal move. She wants more responsibility and a chance to sharpen her leadership skills.
Dave’s time away becomes an opportunity: a real-world test of ownership, decision-making, and visibility. It’s a chance for Jen to show she’s ready for the Associate Creative Director role she plans to discuss in her upcoming review.
How Team Members Can Reframe a Leave as a Leadership Opportunity
When a key creative leader takes time off, it’s easy for the team to slip into survival mode. The instinct becomes: How do we keep things moving until they’re back? But when leave is planned and communicated well, that mindset sells everyone short.
Leave shouldn’t feel like an emergency. It should feel like a stress test the team is prepared to pass.
In Dave’s case, the clarity of his communication doesn’t just protect his PTO, but it also creates space for the team to step into new roles with confidence. Instead of everything funneling back to him, ownership is distributed, decisions are trusted, and the team operates with intention.
From Coverage to Capability
This is where leave becomes a leadership opportunity, especially for managers and creative directors.
Time away offers a rare, low-risk window to observe how the team functions without the usual safety net. Not in a “gotcha” way, but in a genuinely revealing one.
Who steps up when there’s ambiguity? Who seeks clarity and applies it? Who is comfortable making decisions. And who still waits to be told what to do?
Take Jen, for example (yes, we’re still rolling from the hypothetical). She’s often the go-to for overflow mockups and client collaboration, and she’s made it clear she wants more responsibility. Dave’s absence gives her a real-world chance to practice ownership, manage incoming requests, and exercise judgment with full visibility. Not hypothetically, but in motion.
This isn’t about assigning extra work or quietly testing people. It’s about creating space for growth and paying attention to how individuals respond when given trust.
What Leaders Should Be Looking For
When a leader steps away, it’s an opportunity to observe:
- Who naturally takes initiative when responsibility is shared.
- Who communicates clearly and keeps others aligned.
- Who asks thoughtful questions versus defaulting to escalation.
- Who treats temporary ownership as a chance to learn and not just cover tasks.
These insights are invaluable. They reveal strengths, gaps, and readiness in ways no performance review ever could.
And yes, doing all of the above requires letting go, which is undeniably hard for many creative professionals who tend to hold onto their projects with a death grip. But please bear in mind that doing this in excess doesn’t do anyone any good.
Letting Go Is Part of Leading
Instead of clinging to every decision or checking in “just to make sure,” time off is the moment to delegate with intention and give the team real space to operate. Not as a stress test. Not as emergency coverage. But as a natural extension of how healthy creative teams grow.
Micromanaging from afar undercuts the entire point. Delegation, paired with trust and preparation, signals confidence, and that confidence creates room for people to step up, stretch into new responsibilities, and make decisions without waiting for permission.
Somewhere along the way, leaders started proudly announcing, “I’ll be out, but reachable.” When did that become a badge of honor? Taking time off should mean exactly that … time off. Not quietly monitoring Slack from a beach chair or answering emails between family dinners. While deadlines do happen and flexibility is sometimes necessary, constant availability shouldn’t be the expectation, especially from creative leaders who set the tone for everyone else.
When time off is treated as a normal rhythm instead of a siren call, something shifts. The question stops being “How do we survive while they’re gone?” and becomes “What’s possible when responsibility is shared?” The team adapts. People take ownership. Processes get exercised. Leadership potential surfaces in real time.
Handled well, leave benefits everyone. The person taking time off can truly disconnect. The team builds confidence by doing meaningful work (not just keeping the lights on). And leaders return with clearer insight into where their team is strong, where it needs support, and who’s ready for what’s next.
And when the team isn’t fully there yet, temporary or project-based creative support can bridge the gap without burning people out or committing to long-term headcount. The right person can step in, keep quality high, and give teams the space to operate while they build toward something more resilient. At Artisan Talent, we help leaders bring in experienced freelance and project-based creatives who move quickly, protect the team, and keep the work moving without long-term commitments.
