Why Leading Others Starts With Knowing Yourself

What do you believe makes a great leader? Influential? Strategic? Supportive? Inspirational... yes, yes and YES!

But I believe that in order to do the above, be able to set the vision and lead the commercial agenda in our organisations, marketers first need to understand their own personal vision for themselves and their lives as a whole - and have the personal understanding and clarity for what they want to achieve for their business, brands and people in their care.

This is a key principle of my Whole Marketer approach... in order to start the ripple effect of becoming and creating a team of whole marketers, you first need to start with you…

Your first leadership question… Who Am I?

The reason I start with ‘who am I’ is because I really believe we can only help others to the extent in which we know ourselves.

If we don’t know what drives us, what our goals are, our values, what are strengths are and how do we play to our strengths… if we don’t have that understanding in ourselves, it’s going to be really difficult for us to help others do the same and get the best out of those in our care.

Getting clarity

So now we’ve established the importance of personal understanding for leaders, how do you get started?

Begin by giving yourself the time and headspace to explore… so you can get to a place where you create leadership goals and a style that feels authentic to you.

Values and purpose

I’d recommend one of your first steps is to gain clarity on your values and your purpose:

·??????Values are the energy and motivation behind your goals. They are the things that you deem to be of high importance and that give meaning to your life… not what you do but why you do them. They are activities, behaviours, beliefs and qualities that matter to you and make your soul come to life. Examples of values include: community, transparency, adventure, learning, security, integrity.

·??????Purpose is the ‘why’ we get out of bed every morning. It goes beyond the surface level and is more than just making money and paying the bills. It’s what we bring to the world – perhaps even why we were put on this earth.

When you’re aware of your values and purpose, you can then use these as anchors for making decisions and creating meaningful goals, inside and outside of work. Developing a leadership style based on this personal understanding can only lead to greater authenticity and fulfilment in your role… and as Oprah Winfrey says:

‘Do what you love and you will more than succeed, you will soar’

How your personal understanding affects your team

By doing the work to gain clarity on your own personal understanding, you will also be able to support those in your care on their development process, so you can help them work towards motivating and fulfilling careers.

The other benefit for leaders is that sharing your values and purpose as a team can improve communication and understanding of each other e.g. if someone has annoyed or upset you, speaking from your values can allow you to give them better feedback (“When you said x, it made me feel y because I value z”).

Asking for help

This process takes time and you may benefit from guidance from leaders who have been there and can offer advice and mentorship.

But sometimes we don’t have anyone in a more senior leadership position that we can look to or ask questions. Or we may have arrived in leadership positions with only the experience of those that have led and managed us before, so we copy (or avoid!) their leadership style.

This is where a coach can be very useful. A safe space, away from your day-to-day stresses to have time and guidance to explore these questions and to find a leadership style that feels authentic (and ultimately fulfilling) to you.

Coaching + Training with The Whole Marketer Leadership Masterclass

To support marketing leaders and aspiring leaders, I’ve created a new 2-day masterclass course in partnership with Chartered Institute of Marketing, to guide you through this process.

The Whole Marketer leadership masterclass is a hybrid of coaching and training course to develop your personal understanding as well as practical tools and frameworks to lead and manage workstreams day to day.

For more information, dates and how to book see https://www.cim.co.uk/training/list-courses/the-whole-marketer-leadership-masterclass/