Leadership adviser and executive coach Suzy Malhotra has launched Above the Line, a nine-month leadership development programme for senior leaders and managers including heads of department, client services directors, account directors and senior producers across creative, events, experiential and exhibition agencies.
The launch comes as the agency sector navigates significant change. Acquisitions, employee ownership, succession and changing founder roles are shifting where responsibility sits within businesses, increasing the need for leadership capacity beyond the MD or founder alone.
Malhotra says the challenge is that talented people are often promoted quickly because they’re exceptional at delivery but the skills that make someone brilliant at the work aren’t necessarily the skills the business needs once they’re leading it.
She explained: “They’re suddenly expected to make commercial decisions, hold standards, delegate, develop others and handle difficult conversations and almost nobody sits them down and teaches them how. So decisions that should stop with them keep finding their way back to the MD.”
Above the Line runs over nine months, with participants developing, applying and refining their leadership against real situations inside their own agencies.
The focus is deliberately industry-specific: commercial judgement, accountability, standards, difficult conversations and leading under pressure rather than generic management theory.
Many participants are sponsored by their agency. Malhotra frames this as a retention and capacity investment rather than a personal-development perk: fewer escalations reaching the MD, stronger accountability within teams, better commercial decision-making and a leadership layer capable of carrying more of the business without growth continuing to depend on the founder’s personal capacity.
She added: “The strongest businesses aren’t built around exceptional founders. They’re built around leadership teams capable of carrying the vision forward. That’s what building the leaders behind your vision means to me. Not more management. Better leadership, distributed more strongly across the business.”
The first Above the Line cohort begins in October 2026 and is limited to 12 participants.