Why Every Marketing Leader Needs a Certified Professional Coach and what to say to convince your boss to pay for their services.
There’s no denying that the past several years have changed the face of marketing leadership. Whether you’re navigating the shift to remote work, Gen Z entering the workforce, or the rise of AI, change is more of a constant than ever. Your experience, wisdom from your mentor, and the podcast you listened to last night won’t be enough to get you through what’s new tomorrow. Leadership today requires taking the time to tap into all your resources for in-the-moment problem-solving.
Enter: your coach
Hiring a leadership coach with marketing experience brings a trusted colleague, an open-minded guide, and an empathetic sounding board onto your team. Even better, they have to make time for you and aren’t competing for your boss’s attention. While every leader benefits from periods of coaching, marketing leaders face a unique set of challenges that the right coach can help to overcome.
Being a great marketer and a great leader are two different things.
Your creativity and technical skills got you to the leadership level. Still, more often than not, once marketers become managers, they spend less time marketing the business and more time split between general organizational strategies and convincing everyone else that marketing is worthwhile. Skills you likely didn’t work on when you were becoming an expert in your field. Today, there are three prominent leadership issues marketers will be better prepared to face with a coach.
Translating top-down and bottom-up ideas
As a marketing leader, it’s your responsibility to make sure your boss knows what’s happening with your team and your team understands your boss’s expectations – all while staying on top of your career objectives. Meanwhile, it would be best to convince the entire organization that your latest ideas are worth the budget. That’s a lot for one person to manage, especially as every organization has its political dynamics to decipher along the way.
Managing a remote workforce
As the debate about returning to the office rages on, you’re likely managing some variation of employees no longer in your presence every day. Gathering together a team in a room with flip charts and pastries to birth the next great idea is a thing of the past. While Covid unlocked a wave of theories and how-tos for managing a remote team, the trend toward working from anywhere is still evolving. There is no silver bullet. Instead, it’s up to leaders to assemble the processes and policies that work for their teams.
Understanding the next generation
Most leaders today spent their careers reporting to Baby Boomers under clear hierarchies and with strict professional rules. But while a change to the highest rungs of the ladder may still be slow, representation from younger generations, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals are transforming the face of – and expectations for – leadership. That often requires shifting deeply held beliefs about the right way to lead, work that’s both personal and best done in a safe, confidential coaching environment.
A coach can help you identify your needs as a manager, the habits holding you back from thriving in any environment, and strategies to bring your team together in meaningful and productive ways.
Three reasons to help you convince your company to pay for your coach
There’s a solid business case to be made for your company to include marketing leadership coaching in your professional development budget. Try these arguments to convince your boss of the ROI for outsourcing your leadership growth and support.
1. Coaching is customizable
Workshops and conferences are great for marketers growing specific skills, but one size fits all programs are an inefficient use of time and budget for marketing leaders. Every leader has taken a unique path to their role and collected fantastic tools. Not only does a coach provide on-the-job learning, but they also help identify when it’s time to delegate, level up, or lean into your strengths. And through regular sessions, a coach can get to know your business to provide even more targeted support.
2. A coach will help you stay and help you retain your team
According to a recent Gallup study, employee engagement leads to more excellent retention and a more positive impact on the bottom line. A leader requesting a coach indicates a desire to bring their most engaged self to work. And in being coached, that leader learns the skills to coach their team, further amplifying engagement benefits.
3. Coaching takes leadership development pressure off of executives.
This is particularly true for first, and only marketing hires, who are expected to serve as the sole strategist and enforcer of your business’s marketing plan while reporting directly to the CEO. A professional coach provides marketers with a sounding board on their big ideas and support for deciding when to fight or let go. It also means the CEO can take a step back from the day-to-day marketing and the pressure of helping their marketer grow their leadership skills as the business grows.
As a career and leadership coach working primarily with marketing leaders, the benefit my clients most appreciate is working with someone who gets it. As a native marketing speaker, my clients can skip the explanations and get straight to problem-solving.
Whether trying to make the most of your current position or looking to make a change, as you search for a professional coach, make sure you find one who understands your challenges and goals and can support you professionally and personally.
Liza Dube is a Certified Professional Coach and award-winning marketing and communications leader for progressive organizations like Stonyfield and Housing Partnership Network. Now, she empowers socially conscious leaders to create more compassionate ways of doing business, starting with themselves.
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
