Mandy Hornaday: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Growth Activated. I'm your host, Mandy Hornaday. And today we are back with our second episode in our summer leadership mini series. And today is about one of those leadership lessons that I keep learning over and over again. And right now it happens to be top of mind for me. So this episode today is just as much for you as it is for me.
Mandy Hornaday: Now I want to start by sharing a metaphor that one of my old CEOs shared with this leadership lesson particularly, and it has always stuck with me. So years ago, probably 10 or more years ago, I was at an all hands leadership conference. We were in person in Boston and the company was about a hundred million at the time and we were growing fast. And our CEO was giving a talk on the stage and she shared that we as a company, as a collective group, were like this fast train that was accelerating and we were heading towards her and she was trying to lay the train tracks as fast as she could to make sure that we were supported with the vision, direction, priorities and support to keep going at the rate we were going. And something about that was just incredibly visual for me and has always stuck with me.
Mandy Hornaday: And such a powerful reminder that as the leader, we should be guiding the way and laying down the tracks in order for our team to be successful. And similarly to this, my dad was also an entrepreneur. He owned a company where he had about 200 employees. And he always shared that one of his biggest jobs as a leader is to enable and empower the team around you to do their best work. And so when I was learning how to be a great leader, um, in the last decade plus, that was something he always shared with me is are you doing the work you need to do to enable your team to be as successful as they can be?
Mandy Hornaday: And every so often I am reminded of this and I feel like right now I am in a season where I am being put to the test on this leadership lesson. I have multiple clients with multiple teams, including one new client that I stepped in as a fractional CMO with a team of over 20 people. I have an intern for Growth Activated, which is incredibly exciting, but it's new and it's another person to direct and provide direction to. And then of course, in my personal life, I'm planning a wedding in November. And while I have a wedding planner that's willing to do the work and I'm grateful to have her, she still needs the vision and the direction from both my fiance and I in terms of what we want the wedding to look like and what we want it to be like. And so in this season, I am surrounded by a ton of people that need my vision, need my direction in order for them to be able to do their jobs well. And I don't know about you, but I've personally noticed that when I have an abnormal amount of stress, I can get really irritated with everything that everyone needs around me. But at the same time, that's what I signed up for and truly that's what I love.
Mandy Hornaday: And so today I want to be able to share some of the areas for me that I am continuously reminded of that are key for laying down the tracks for the teams around me to be successful, as well as a few areas and tips on how we can make your life easier and remove you from being the bottleneck for them being successful. All right, let's dive in.
Mandy Hornaday: So there's four areas that I have identified that consistently over and over as a leader, as a CMO are key areas for me to lay down the tracks with my team. And the first and foremost is to set the vision for the department and or for the team. So not only defining the what we're doing, but the why we're doing it. What are we here to accomplish and what kind of culture are we building while we do it? You know, any team can't run full speed ahead without knowing what the clear destination is and what the guardrails are for getting there. And so number one, set the vision. Does your team have a very clear vision? Are we all on the same bus going to the same location?
Mandy Hornaday: The second area that I have found that's really important for laying down the tracks is sharing business insights. You know, as a marketing leader, as a CMO, we have a seat at the table. We have a seat in the room with the executives who are defining where the business is going. And it's really critical that we share that information with everyone on our team. One of the pieces of feedback I hear from a lot of marketing team members who are sharing feedback on their marketing leaders, they talk about how they don't necessarily know what's going on with the business. They don't know how their particular roles and responsibilities route up to the business goals and the business objectives. And so this is something that's really important. If we're fueling our team with the right business insights and the right vision, they're going to be so much more successful in their roles.
Mandy Hornaday: The third area we need to lay down the tracks as leaders is, and one of my favorite areas, is to prioritize ruthlessly. Our teams can't do everything. And oftentimes in marketing specifically, it feels like we're being asked and responsible for doing everything. And so as leaders, we're responsible for creating clarity around what matters the most right now and what can wait. So just your friendly reminder that if you're struggling to keep up with everything that is taking place on your team, have you taken the time to prioritize the efforts correctly? This is a big one that I honestly come back to over and over again.
Mandy Hornaday: And one of the fourth areas that I really try and focus on and challenge myself to provide is whether I've defined success and decision-making criteria. So this is great if you're trying to set a bar for quality and autonomy within your team. Have you taken the time to teach your team what great looks like in your eyes? When should they loop you in when a decision needs to be made, when can they move forward without you? So give your team some clear decision-making guardrails so they aren't stuck waiting on your approval and they can move forward with confidence knowing that your definition of success is closely aligned to their definition of success.
Mandy Hornaday: And with all of these, I would just encourage you to remember to provide the context behind all of it. Don't just provide the what to the team. What are the goals? What's going on in the business? What the priorities are? What your decision-making criteria is, right? But really provide the why. Why are those the goals? Why is this happening in the business? Why are these the priorities? Why is that your decision-making criteria? The more you can provide the context behind what you're doing, the stronger their culture will be in order for your team to feel enabled and empowered to act in alignment with what your vision is.
Mandy Hornaday: So before we move on to the next section, I would just encourage you to pause and think about whether you've provided this type of direction and have laid the tracks in these four areas for your team. And I know they may feel obvious, but honestly, a lot of the marketing individual contributors I speak to constantly give this type of feedback about their leaders when I step into an organization and that they didn't have clarity on these areas and therefore they didn't know how to make the biggest impact in their role, which doesn't feel great for them and certainly doesn't feel great for the leaders around them.
Mandy Hornaday: Okay, now let's go into some tips for how to avoid being the bottleneck in the instances where we as leaders are incredibly busy and we want our team to feel empowered and successful. Here are five tips that I am constantly challenging myself to lean back on in order to not be a bottleneck on any of the teams that I serve.
Mandy Hornaday: The first tip I'm going to share might actually be one of my favorite tips because it is the easiest to implement and it is something that can be so powerful for you as the leader. And that's encouraging peer reviews. This is huge for me. If I know that my team is waiting on me to approve something, I'm always encouraging them to get feedback from their peers so that they can get it a little closer to the finish line before it's in my inbox to review. Now this does a couple things. One, if it's a peer or a leader reviewing it that you trust, maybe they can be the final decision maker and you don't have to review it and therefore it's taken off your plate. That's always a great thing to think about. But the second thing to think about and why these can be so powerful is that it's a great upskilling and leadership opportunity for the person who is getting to do the peer reviews. Whether you're having one content writer peer edit another content writer, or frankly, you're having someone outside of the content team peer edit the piece of content or the campaign. It's a great experience to get additional perspectives for everybody and a really great cross training and leadership opportunity for the people on your team. So empower your team, encourage peer reviews, and take some of that final feedback pressure off of your own plate.
Mandy Hornaday: Okay, tip number two, something I'm doing all the time honestly, is audit your meetings. Now I'm being very specific to say audit your meetings, not necessarily take meetings off or add meetings on, because frankly, depending on what type of leader you are or what type of season you're in, both of those may be good options. So think about the team that needs your support on an ongoing basis. How are you supporting them? Are you someone who likes working sessions and live training sessions? If so, maybe those one-on-one meetings and check-ins are really powerful. And that's your dedicated time to enable and empower the team members on your team who report to you. Maybe that's your preference. Or if you personally hate meetings or you're in a season where you have too many meetings on your calendar, where you actually can't do the work to enable and empower your team, then really be stringent about what meetings are on your calendar and what can be taken off. What can be handled in another means of communication, whether it's through Slack or through email, or frankly, which meetings can be combined. If you have a couple direct reports, can you do a daily standup where everybody's getting what they need every single morning and therefore you're not having to do separate one-on-ones with everybody on the team? Lots of ways to come at this, but I would just encourage you to think about what's going to work best for you and your work style, as well as where you're at in this season.
Mandy Hornaday: Okay, tip number three, promoting cross-training and independent learning. So we kind of hit this in tip number one with peer reviews, but I'd really think about how can you make a concerted effort to make sure multiple people on your team are cross-trained for other areas? It really empowers them to be a feedback partner, it also empowers them to learn and it also relieves pressure off of you should there be unplanned turnover or attrition, right? And in terms of independent learning, there's so many certifications and courses and YouTube channels out there. I mean, training is available everywhere these days. And I think if you find trainers who are aligned to the same methodology that you believe in, empower your team and encourage your team to learn from those types of people and from those coaches. It really can remove a lot of burden off of you to have to own the training for your team, even at the leadership level.
Mandy Hornaday: Okay. Tip number four is really around empowering your team and asking for help when you need it. So I'm a huge believer in delegation. I am probably the opposite of a micromanager, or I try to be the opposite of a micromanager. I believe that delegating isn't a weakness, it's leadership. And so think about the areas for delegations and frankly, it can be hard for someone who's type A and likes control. I mean, I'm certainly one of those people, but it's such a great exercise to audit your day or audit your week and look at the team around you and think who could take some of this on. Even if they can only do it to 70 or 80% as well as I can do it. It's a great learning opportunity for them. They're likely going to be excited about it if they're driven and ambitious for growth. And at the end of the day, it's lightening your load so that you can make sure that you're staying at the visionary level. And if you're thinking about this, think about giving accountability for an entire channel or entire campaign. Give ownership over certain outcomes, not just the tasks within it. And that'll really empower your team to be thinking more strategically about those items, knowing that they own it and they are accountable for the results at the end of the day.
Mandy Hornaday: And the fifth tip here is to create systems. So documentation, templates, briefs around the types of things that are reoccurring all the time. And so I'm going to be honest, this is an area for me that I could continue to work on. And frankly, ChatGPT could be a really great help for this, but if you think about it in terms of if you're answering the same question more than twice, it's probably time to put a system in place. And so while it can be a pain to think about sitting down and documenting your decision-making process or documenting the steps to get something done, it will save you so much time in the long run to have standard operating procedures or campaign briefs or your strategy templates or things like that. And so that's a lesson that I'm consistently learning over and over again and need to personally do a better job of taking the time on the front end to save me a ton of time on the back end.
Mandy Hornaday: Okay, great. So to recap some ways that you could avoid being the bottleneck on your team if you, like me, oftentimes are. One, encourage peer reviews. Two, audit your meetings, either add some on for accountability for yourself or remove them so that you have the space and time to think and do your actual work. Number three, promote cross-training and independent learning, create a culture of growth and ongoing learning and continuous learning, and direct your team on where to find leaders and trainers that have similar methodologies as you. Number four, empower your team and ask for help when you need it. And number five, create systems, whether it's documentation, templates, or briefs, in order to provide your team ongoing consistent direction so that you don't have to constantly be coaching the same things over and over again.
Mandy Hornaday: And the final thing I'll wrap up and share here is that with all of these, don't strive for perfection. Let your people learn and frankly even fail in their own ways. Make them feel empowered and enabled to be successful, but don't feel like you have to approve every little thing that goes out the door. I know that that's something leaders can really struggle with. I've struggled with it in my own past because a lot of times it feels like the team is a direct representation of who you are as a leader. Right? Does anyone else feel that? But what I've learned is that it's healthy for people to be able to have the autonomy and to learn and grow on their own and learn from their own mistakes. So figure out what the right balance is for you, but don't feel like you have to strive for perfection in terms of everything your team is able to do.
Mandy Hornaday: All right, friends, I hope this was a helpful leadership mini series. It's something that I'm consistently reminding myself of and really I'm going to go back in myself and review these tips and tricks and make sure that the new teams that I'm leading and have just stepped into that I am making sure they feel enabled, empowered and successful myself. As always, if there's anything I can do for you specifically, please don't hesitate to reach out to me at mandy@growthactivated.com. I'll catch you next time.
Mandy Hornaday: Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Growth Activated. I hope this conversation sparked new ideas, challenged your thinking and gave you practical tools to help elevate your impact as a marketing leader. If it did, I would love for you to pass it along to a friend or a colleague in B2B marketing. The more we grow together, the more we raise the bar for what marketing leadership can look like. And as always, in the meantime, keep activating growth for yourself and your company. See you next time.
