Growth Has an Image Problem. It’s Time to Fix It.

By Elisha Pearce, Chief Growth Officer, Iris London

For an industry obsessed with creativity, we’re surprisingly narrow-minded about growth. The very word often triggers a set of assumptions. It’s commercial, sales-adjacent and numbers-heavy. Less creative than strategy and less glamorous than creative, it’s often seen as something done by a select group who have ‘growth’ in their job title, rather than something that runs through an entire agency.

The reality is, in agencies that are really good at growth, none of this is particularly true.

In fact, some of the most effective growth operators I’ve worked with wouldn’t describe themselves as growth people at all. They’re strategists who have an instinct for spotting opportunities others miss, account leaders who know how to build trust and create momentum, or creatives who can see a client’s challenge from a different angle. They all share the ability to connect people, ideas and opportunities in ways that create value.

Yet the perception persists that growth is largely about selling, and it’s doing the industry, and particularly women within it, a disservice. I often get asked about how I work in sales and growth while still feeling like myself. I always answer in the same way: nobody is expecting you to become a market-stall trader. It was never about being pushy, and honestly, it isn’t really about being salesy at all.

But, when growth is framed as being about self-promotion, relentless networking or having the loudest voice in the room, it can feel inaccessible to those who don’t see themselves reflected in that stereotype. This means many talented people never consider growth as a potential career path, despite already demonstrating many of the qualities that would make someone successful at it.

With this in mind, it’s important to tell career stories that aren’t linear. My path started in client leadership. When I became MD of the Consumer Collective, at Iris. I got frustrated with what was coming through the pipeline, so I started bringing in clients of my own. After our new business lead left. My CEO couldn’t find who she wanted externally and turned to me and said, “I think it’s you.” It caught me completely off guard. It wasn’t a path I’d planned, but it turned out to be my natural habitat. Since then, I’ve reset the pipeline, taken the agency through a rebrand, and rebooted what growth means at Iris London.

What’s especially disheartening is that the qualities often associated with great growth leadership are increasingly the qualities agencies need more of across the board:

• Empathy: The ability to understand what motivates people.
• Curiosity: The confidence to challenge thinking constructively.
• Collaboration: The emotional intelligence to work together and build lasting relationships
• Commercial awareness: The instinct to recognise where value can be created and the persistence to make it happen.

None of these are sales skills, they’re people and creative skills. The days when new business was driven by a small, isolated team are increasingly behind us. Clients expect agencies to understand complex business challenges, shifting consumer behaviours and rapidly evolving cultural contexts. No single discipline has all the answers.

That means the strongest growth outcomes often come from bringing together different perspectives and areas of expertise. Strategy identifies where the opportunity lies. Creative shapes how that opportunity comes to life. Account teams understand the realities of the client relationship. Specialists add depth, challenge assumptions and bring fresh thinking. Effective growth is created by collective effort; it’s a team sport.

At its best, it is less about winning business and more about building belief; belief in an idea, a partnership and what’s possible when people solve problems together. It’s why diversity matters so much to growth.

The industry often talks about diversity through the lens of representation, and rightly so. But there is also a very practical business dimension to it. Different experiences lead to different perspectives; different perspectives challenge conventional thinking and better thinking almost always leads to better solutions for clients.

Limiting the range of voices contributing to growth conversations is a commercial disadvantage. Agencies that draw from a broader mix of backgrounds, personalities and disciplines are simply more likely to spot opportunities that others overlook.

Agencies must ensure that growth is seen as something everyone can contribute to, rather than something owned by a small group of specialists.

That requires a change in mindset. We need to stop treating growth as a department and start seeing it as a capability or would skillset be better. One that can be developed regardless of role, seniority or discipline. Most people who excel in agency life are already practising elements of it every day by listening closely to clients, identifying unmet needs, connecting ideas and building relationships.

By allowing growth to be so narrowly defined we have discouraged people who could bring enormous value to the discipline and the industry. It’s time to redefine it as the art of creating opportunities through understanding people. Not selling more, but building better. Not the responsibility of a few, but the contribution of many.

And if we can do that, we may discover that some of the industry’s most talented growth leaders have been sitting in plain sight all along. Particularly the women who never thought growth had a place for them in the first place.