In This Dame and Age | Leadership Styles Event Recap
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”
The Setup Women in Marketing series highlights the thoughts and advice of prominent marketing brand and agency leaders. The contributors’ powerful stories and advice led to our all-women networking group: In This Dame and Age, where we host virtual discussions and connect women marketing leaders with one another.
The latest event about exploring and leveraging different Leadership Styles was attended by agency leaders and brand representatives from companies such as Invesco, The Honey Baked Ham Company, Great Clips, Slutty Vegan, and more.
Leadership Quotes
We started the conversation by sharing some leadership quotes that resonate with us:
“I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.” Brené Brown
“Do something every day that frightens you.” Eleanor Roosevelt
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” Theodore Roosevelt
Madeline Evans, the Marketing Manager at Setup and host of the event, added to Roosevelt’s quote that a piece of important advice she received at the beginning of her career is that “You can’t compare your chapter one to someone’s chapter 11,” and this advice is applicable in every aspect of life, in every step of your career journey.
Then we gave a shout out to some recent CMO Spotlight interviews from some amazing women marketing leaders that highlighted some great leadership advice.
“Never underestimate the value of relationships, especially when you need to get difficult things done. Prioritize the people-side of things always and often.” Laura Trotter | Equifax | CMO Spotlight
“I think the best leaders are those who surround themselves with the brightest and the best.” Abbey Lee | RE/MAX | CMO Spotlight
“I always like to be learning, so I like to learn from people who are my peers in my organization. I can learn from people at every level.” Emily Pachuta | Invesco | CMO Spotlight
“Nobody is perfect, and we all learn and grow by making mistakes and acknowledging them.” Lisa Tan | Reverie | CMO Spotlight
Leadership Styles
No matter where you are on your company’s org chart, everyone has acted as a leader at some point in their life. There are multiple styles of leadership, and understanding which ones you fall into or lean on are important to creating an effective team.
What are the different leadership styles? Well, we don’t have a precise answer since there are actually so many! This is a great visual from indeed of the different types of styles you can find in an organization. Here are the ones we talked about at the event:
Coach/Democratic Leader Approach:
Motivational and supportive energy.
The whole team shares their perspective, so there are a lot of ideas in a free-flowing environment!
Given the number of ideas, processes may move a little slower.
Autocratic Leader Approach:
The leader relies on their own perspective and opinion to call the shots so the vision is consistent.
Works well with an inexperienced, smaller team.
Can be useful when under tight timelines.
Transformational Leader Approach:
Prioritizes innovation and untapped potential from the team to achieve goals.
Encouraging independence from the team is vital in this style.
Laissez-faire Leader Approach:
This hands-off approach is all about delegation and setting clear expectations to leave the team to problem-solve on their own.
Works effectively with a highly skilled and motivated team.
Trust is imperative for this style to work.
Procedural/Bureaucratic Leader Approach:
This leader prioritizes task completion, to do lists, a detail oriented approach, and clear rules and boundaries.
Discipline is encouraged.
Effective in highly regulated industries or departments (finance, healthcare, government).
Servant Leader Approach:
Leads with a people-first mindset and prioritizing morale.
Believes when people are personally and professionally fulfilled, they’re more effective/productive.
Steps up to fill gaps when their team needs them.
Despite the labels, the group discussed how different scenarios call for different approaches. It’s all about how you communicate your expectations and motivations behind your actions. Sometimes an autocratic approach is key to achieving goals or when meeting a tight deadline.
Key Takeaways from the Discussion
Assess the situation and meet the moment with the right style.
This is applicable in personal and professional settings. Hire Profile’s Founder and President Nancy Gamble, who shared how she has adapted to a “feeler” husband, also shared that in times of indecision where someone needs to take charge, autocratic leadership is important, but she preferred democratic approach to hear other people’s voices.
“Part of being a good leader is knowing what style to use based on which team,” shared Sarah Christiansen, SVP of Client Experience at Nebo Agency. “New team members versus manager interaction is different, and it’s important to give people the opportunity to step up and take ownership.”
Communication is key.
“All leadership styles are neutral. What makes them a positive or negative experience depends on the communication and level of comfortability with that communication,” shared Chi Johnson, Brand and Communications Manager at Intellum. “Any type of communication needs a level of self awareness.” Fostering a culture of open communication within a team is important for any leadership style to resonate.
The power of authenticity.
Suzanne Morris, President of Look Listen Studios, shared how a leader’s communication changes depending on the environment - a larger versus smaller team has very different processes. Sometimes in larger corporate environments, email is normalized for updates, but in smaller environments, things need to be a little more personal. “In order for people to understand and respect you, you need a level of transparency that comes from your heart and not from your talking points,” she shared. “People can tell when you’re not being honest and their loyalty will start to wane…”
Lisa Arsenault, COO of Look Listen, chimed in that, “Vulnerability is important, but authenticity is much more. They’re related, but if you’re being vulnerable, it has to come from an authentic place. If misused, it can be used as a tool to control people. If you communicate authentically and are authentic, that is the most powerful thing for your team.”
Resources to Understand Your Team
Knowing what type of leader you are and what personality traits you default to is important. Now how do those tendencies fit in with your team? The group listed what tools they utilize to help further understand the preferences, personalities, and motivators of their team members.
A User Manual - Acadia participants Kasey Kiser, Sr. Consultant | Strategy & Insights, and Tabitha Burkhalter, Sales Ops Coordinator, shared how Acadia uses this process as a tool to onboard new members to understand how their team prefers feedback and what makes them tick.
Questions to Ask Yourself
If this post started to make you think about your own leadership style and your effect on people…consider asking yourself the following questions. It’s important as a leader to be self-reflective. To be sure that you’re filling your own cup before pouring into others, setting boundaries, and not taking other people’s response to you personally. The more you understand about yourself and your team, the more work you can accomplish.
What makes you a stronger leader?
When you first stepped into a new role, what were some concerns you had/pressures that you were worried about?
Share a time when being vulnerable with your team or with your leader resulted in something positive? How does vulnerability make you a stronger leader?
What can you do when you don’t align with your leader? What about when you don’t align with the team you’re managing?
As a leader, how do you set expectations with your team?
The beauty of hosting these events is getting a chance to peek into the different mindsets and priorities of marketing leaders. The most fascinating outcome of this event is how much everyone CARES to do better and be better. Authenticity was the main takeaway for this event - if you come from an authentic place as a leader, it is trusted by the team and consistent with your own beliefs/wants.
I love that Setup hosts marketing events, especially some that are specifically for women. All the Setup team members I've interacted with seem like great people as well.
Laura Casanova | Strive Health
Want to attend our next event? RSVP to our virtual #MarketingMixer on November 10th here.
Our latest virtual Women’s event was themed “Marketing for Good - Turning Passions into Action,” where marketing leaders discussed the internal and external benefits of cause-driven marketing. Attendees included Setup Agency partners as well as members from established Brands at Cox, FIS, FedEx, Great Clips, Kimberly-Clark, The Home Depot, and more.