Why leadership in marketing is more than Prince Charming

Good leadership is one of the key components behind every marketing company’s success. It’s nothing to do with hierarchy or telling other people what to do. Instead, good leadership is about providing support, being a role model, communicating and caring. And in the marketing industry, where we help to communicate our clients’ expertise and establish them as thought leaders, we need to understand the importance of leadership ourselves.

I don’t need a hero

But ‘leader’ is often synonymous with ‘hero’. And this is where the idea of a good leader can go askew.  

What do you think of when you read the word ‘hero’? Is it Prince Charming? Is it a beefed-up Greek man? Is it the person who rescues you from spiders in the office?  

It’s probably not your boss or business partner.  

Leaders and heroes are two different roles. Heroes are typically seen as rescuers: ‘My hero,’ the leading lady sighs, fainting into Buff McDuff’s bulging biceps. They’re lifeboat volunteers and soldiers and medics and everyone putting their life on the line for others. Going about our normal lives, we may not need a hero every single day. But for a successful day-to-day business operation, we all need a leader to look to.  

Someone to:

Offer advice – whether in- or outside the office

Motivate – because an engaged team is a successful one

Praise – for effort as well as achievement

Influence – for the better

Inspire – their best qualities in others

Empathise – because a genuine ‘How are you?’ can change someone’s life

Guidance and growth

Heroes often stop bad things happening. But leaders also help good things grow – and at Transform, we place a lot of emphasis on growth. Growing our business, our clients’ businesses, our team’s skills – the list could go on. A leader is integral to this process of growth. Not just dictating its pattern and objectives but listening to the input of the rest of the team and encouraging individual and communal development.  

Positive guidance and growth go hand-in-hand. Because the latter won’t happen without the former, and the former will help to inspire the latter.

One of my favourite examples of good guidance inspiring growth is Transform’s founder and managing director, Veronica Hannon. She was recently named as one of The Business Exchange Swindon and Wiltshire’s 22 most inspiring women of 2022, and working with her every day means that I, and the rest of our team, understand why. Ronnie has always put her people first, and this care for the team was only intensified by the pandemic. She guides both the team and our clients, and we have seen both go from strength to strength. From Transform’s own perspective, she’s moved us into new offices, overseen the doubling of our team headcount, won awards for clients, as well as ourselves, acted as a car crash recovery service, been a motivational speaker – take a look at any of our achievements and Ronnie will have been behind them.  

A good leader builds an even greater team. It’s as simple as that.  

Do you want to be a thought leader?

At its heart, marketing is telling stories. We love helping our clients communicate their business’s stories and expertise. Solidifying their reputations as thought leaders: people and businesses at the forefront of their respective industries. And that’s why understanding the components of good leadership is so necessary. Not only to help our team perform at their best, but also to understand what our clients need to place themselves at the vanguard of their fields.  

If you would like the South’s best small PR consultancy (that’s us!) to help tell your story, feel free to get in touch.