Marketing Leadership Lessons Learned During the Pandemic

CMOs and Leadership Agility – Engaging Teams

My CMO clients remind me every day that COVID has pushed their leadership agility to its limits. And their best people are at risk of leaving in droves.

I understand why. A recent ADP Research Institute study reports that only 14 percent of the 26,000 people surveyed are “highly engaged” at work.  We can quickly recognize a highly engaged person when they approach the job with vigor, enthusiasm, and dedication.

As a CMO coach and peer group leader, I am committed to helping my clients and members address this historic trend with greater ease and agility.

LinkedIn Livestream – The Mindful Marketer – Engaging Teams

In this episode, I share the screen with Don McGuire, the CMO of Qualcomm. For Don, mental wellness and sustaining healthy teams are personal. In fact, he joined us during Qualcomm’s first Mental Health Day! CEO Cristiano Amon declared this particular Friday a holiday, and he was one of the very few people in the office.

Don and I discuss how to creatively and proactively engage teams in today’s hybrid settings, building customer communities in the digital world, and more.

Click here for the Livestream replay.

Key points covered in this episode:

✔️ Prioritizing employees’ mental health and team engagement. Business results are essential, especially at a publicly-traded company like Qualcomm. But workers’ productivity will rely heavily on creating positive engagement as well. This begins by addressing their mental health and concerns with feeling isolated.

✔️ Marketing leadership is about creating forward, positive motion and bringing people along with you on that journey. Many people call themselves managers, but the word manager has undermined leadership for a very long time. Managing something implies that you’re mostly focused on executing against your marketing goals. Leading creates a spark and sustains a movement. It either pushes or pulls your vision in a specific direction.

✔️  If you truly understand what drives results in your company, you can  be a better marketer. Working ON the business versus working IN the business is a philosophical shift people need to make to make the leap from “marketing fulfillment center” to “growth leader.”

✔️  It’s about being conscious, sensitive, and getting feedback. Just making sure that we are as inclusive as possible with our teams worldwide, creating the connection, and sharing stories about how things are going will create a huge lift in overall engagement. During our Marketing Growth Leaders peer gatherings, we honor an early “check-in” ritual

Click here for the Livestream replay.

How do you creatively and proactively engage teams in today’s settings? Drop me a note and share your own tips.

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