The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader by Thomas Barta

Author:Thomas Barta
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2017-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

Contribution to Marketers’ Business Impact and Career Success

Seventy-eight percent of senior marketers in our research saw themselves as effective when it came to collaborating in teams. From a trust-and confidence-building perspective, that’s good news.

But are marketers seen as great trust and confidence builders by others? To better understand this important question, we took a deep dive into our 360-degree data. We compared how marketers are seen by others through nineteen leadership behaviors related to “empowerment of people” and “team building.” We found a number of very interesting things.

Bottom line, marketing leaders are seen as no better or worse trust and confidence builders than other leaders. Let’s look at some of the different dimensions of what we found.

When it comes to minimizing secrecy within the organization, marketers tend to score higher than most other leaders. That’s really good news, as this openness helps their teams build trust and identify issues faster.

At delegating, marketers are doing a pretty good job in the eyes of their direct reports. They involve direct reports in decision making, let people own their work stream, and tolerate the mistakes of people who take initiative.

But marketers’ ability to delegate isn’t so visible outside the marketing department. In fact, senior marketers’ bosses and peers rated them below average at encouraging team members to make their own decisions.

The 360-degree view has also exposed two even larger opportunities for marketers: managing conflict and controlling their ego. (We don’t mean you, of course.)

Senior marketers’ direct reports, bosses, and peers all said marketers were less effective than other leaders at managing conflict in a way that strengthens the team. We know from our workshops that many marketers don’t like conflict and sometimes find it hard to deal with difficult team dynamics.

To be fair, dealing with team conflict isn’t pleasant. Yet good conflict management is essential for building a tribe. And learning conflict management skills can be very rewarding (we’ll show you some techniques later in this chapter).

Direct reports, bosses, and peers also rated marketers below average at putting the interests of the group before their own personal goals. Some marketers have a reputation for inflated egos and selfishness. One marketing leader told us, “As a marketer, you grow up as an expert. You must prove your worth every day. Perhaps our ego is just used to wanting to look good?”

While some of the ego behaviors of marketers are understandable, putting your own interests before those of the group destroys trust. So keep your ego at bay. (Again, we’ll discuss how later in this chapter.)

Building a confident and trusted tribe that takes initiative and owns the answers can be a big success driver for marketers, as Peter Markey, CMO of Britain’s The Post Office, has learned.

Earlier in his career, Peter was a direct marketing manager at utility giant British Gas. Together with his team, Peter’s job was to sell a wide range of services, from gas and electricity to household appliance insurance.

A passionate marketer, Peter was very involved in every aspect of his team’s activities.

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