In this issue: Answers to last week’s Self-reflection: Does your management give you a break when your results aren’t delivered? Does your team expect you to foster a sense of family at work? How do you manage the emotional needs of your team vs the financial pressure that you are under?

Last week, I told the story of a CMO who was torn between seeing her people as a team who have to deliver financial results, while also recognizing that it was absolutely ok to be vulnerable, human, caring at work. 

I shared my reflection on the topic. My fundamental POV was that family is forever; teams are temporary. Family protects its weak; high-performance teams actually push out their weakest members. 

Work is about being part of a team. Teams aren’t a family.

Please note: I repeat this framework again and again, in every other episode of this newsletter. The idea of using Return on Marketing Career (RoMC) as a framework for career development is explained in great detail in the first newsletter in this series. 

Why? Because this has served me well over the 25 years of my career, and because I find that we are all so distracted today (myself included) that unless we see something multiple times, we forget about it. 

If you’re already familiar with this way of thinking, please skip this section and go straight to the next one.

To recap my original post, my fundamental belief is that marketers who want to Move Up Faster should treat their marketing career just as we would a marketing campaign. 

Instead of Return on Advertising Spend (RoAS) we can measure our success by Return on Marketing Career (RoMC). 

There are four steps to this RoMC process: 

Step 1. Get out of your Comfort Zone as much as possible, even if that scares you because it’s new. 

Step 2. Doing new things will increase your professional skill-set. That’s the only way to learn. 

Step 3. A broader or deeper skill-set will increase your Value to your colleagues, your team, your firm and your clients. 

Step 4. The higher Value you deliver in your role – now that you have a bigger skill-set – the faster you should move up in your career.

Step 1, Get out of your Comfort Zone: What if you never used the word ‘family’ at work? And were clear that you’re building a higher performance team that can achieve anything that it puts its mind to? Would this unapologetic clarity help you? 

Step 2, Develop a New Skill: Learn how to reinforce behaviours that are linked with performance. For example, during team touch bases you should call out and praise those actions of your managers that align with your high expectations. You should give the team goals to reach and celebrate together when those goals are accomplished. The role of every company in capitalism is Value creation. Now this doesn’t mean that you can’t be empathetic, or that you shouldn’t have fun. You can and should enable your team to enjoy their work, develop a sense of camaraderie, and appreciate their teammates. But you must always be absolutely clear that Value creation is always the whole team’s #1 goal. 

Step 3, Create More New Value in your Role: Reward those managers who manage their teams well, and those teams who achieve their goals. A constant trickle of positive reinforcement will remind the team that whenever they create more Value, it leads to positive consequences for them. 

Step 4, Set Yourself Up for a Bigger Future Role or a Promotion: Leaders who move up faster accomplish their goals through their team. Such leaders develop and praise managers. They invest, coach, listen and pay attention to managers who get the job done, so that the leader can be freed up to increasingly focus on strategic and big picture areas of the business.

Step 1, Get out of your Comfort Zone: What if you always made it clear to your junior team members exactly how they can add Value in the area you need them to focus on? 

Step 2, Develop a New Skill: Learn how to share crystal clear expectations with each team member every time there is an opportunity. It’s as easy as A.B.C. = Always Be Clear.  

Step 3, Create More New Value in your Role: Create Value by finding the balance between delivering tough feedback (in private) when someone isn’t doing well, and praising them (in public) when they are. 

Step 4, Set Yourself Up for a Bigger Future Role or a Promotion: Managers who move up faster are first and foremost clear about the goals which their junior team members need not only to achieve, but where they should exceed expectations.

Step 1, Get out of your Comfort Zone: What if you asked your Manager what someone in your role must do to create the most Value, right now?  

Step 2, Develop a New Skill: Learn how to always be clear, about what’s expected of you, in your role. It’s harder than you think.

Step 3, Create More New Value in Your Role: Once you know how to create Value, you need to create it by not just meeting, but by exceeding expectations. 

Step 4, Set Yourself Up for a Bigger Future Role or a Promotion: Talent that moves up faster first must prove themselves consistently reliable at the task at hand, at getting the day-to-day job done with excellence and consistency.

If you’d like to discuss your career journey with me one-to-one, please feel free to email me at [email protected] or message me on LinkedIn.

Thank you for reading.

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