So You Want to Be a CMO?

Here's what people don't tell you about being a CMO: it's not just a job promotion, it's an entirely different leadership job.

In this episode of The Metamorphosis Moment, Nancie McDonnell Dougherty goes behind the scenes to explore what it really takes for senior marketers to stay credible, steady and effective in today's fast-paced, ever-changing landscape. Alan Gellman, former CMO and now CEO & Founder at Convivo Leadership, shares hard-earned insights on how marketing leaders earn a spot at the table, navigate messy tradeoffs and lead with emotional steadiness in high pressure environments. Listen for ways to build credibility, how to lead through uncertainty and cross-functional tension and practices that help you stay grounded in the CMO seat.

Curious how mission, strategy and proof align inside your organization? At Noetic Consultants, we help leaders connect culture to credibility and brand to business impact. Learn more at noeticconsultants.com.

To learn more about Alan's work, visit Convivo Leadership's website: convivoleadership.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Your first job isn't being the CMO or the head of marketing. Your first job is being a leader of the company.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

And bringing a GM mindset, a general manager mindset to every single action you take.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

This is the Metamorphosis Moment, a podcast from Noetic Consultants. We are researchers, strategists, trainers, and coaches, obsessed with how change actually sticks. On our show, we have candid discussions with leaders who are embracing change, and we work to uncover what they're doing to help others achieve similar success. Just like with our clients, we bring our Noetic secret sauce to each conversation. We dig into the messy middle, finding human behavior and leadership factors that are making a difference, and sharing practical guidance that you can use in the moments that matter most. I'm your host, Nancy McDonald Doherty. Let's fly. Here's what people don't tell you about being a CMO. It can be an incredible grind with more pressure than you would imagine. Yes, you do have complete oversight of all marketing, and that may enable you to do some really cool stuff, but you also have all the pressure to deliver results, and often you have to fight to continue to have a seat at the table with peers that frankly don't have to make that fight. And the list of demands go on. You're expected to deliver right now, and at the same time, you're expected to deliver for the future. You're asked to prove value in systems and workflows that aren't easy to measure. So whether you're a longtime listener or a first-time listener, or maybe you're someone who had this episode shared with you because you're a senior marketer thinking about your path, or you're an aspiring leader trying to understand what it actually takes. This conversation is for you. At Noetic, we work with leaders in this seat every day where the pressure is real and alignment is the difference between success and failure. Today I'm joined by Alan Gellman, who has been a career CMO, notably at eSurance, where he was recognized by Business Insider as one of the 50 most innovative CMOs in the world. Alan is now helping successful people succeed more with his coaching practice at Convivo. In this conversation, we dig into what it means to be a CMO today, how leaders can navigate the trade-offs and the shifting ground, and we offer guidance for keeping emotional steadiness amidst the chaos. Let's get started. Alan, welcome. I am so excited to have you here today. It is exciting to talk to someone who has been in the CMO seat and is now in the position of advising and coaching a lot of people who are in that seat or who are in other, you know, heads of marketing roles. So would really love to delve today and help our listeners understand things like what you see the most senior marketers grappling with these days. And there are many things to grapple with. And I know we have this area in common at Noetic. We do a lot of coaching as well at that senior level. So maybe there's a little bit of therapy in it for you and I.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

I don't mention our clients.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

Yes. But thank you so much for making the time to be here.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

My pleasure. That's good to be with you again.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

Great to be with you too. Yeah, it's been it's been a little bit of time. So let me really start in the place of like, how did you decide to do this work? You had a very successful and and long career in senior roles. You know, you and I crossed over in in Wells Fargo days. I know you had a big stint at eSurance. How did you decide in in this chapter that you wanted to do the work that you're doing now? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

So I fell into it seven, eight years ago when I realized that the thing that had energized me for so long, which was driving growth and innovation, growing companies, building teams. And I loved all that. I was very fortunate to have a career that deeply energized me in so many ways. And then it was slowly not energizing me. In fact, I had this aha moment where I realized I was so stressed out all the time. One of the talks I sometimes do is so you want to be a CMO is the title. And your audience, well, they're probably giggling when I when they hear that. Like, oh yeah, I thought I did. Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Well those who are already CMOs are probably giggling. The ones who are thinking about and aspiring to it are like, tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Exactly. Right. The reason why is it changes when you get to that CMO level. You are at the top, and the pressure is very different. I remember a friend when I first got my first CMO job, he had already been one. He said, Do you realize this is gonna be different? I was like, Yeah, how different is that? It's just bigger job, right? And it's really different. And that I loved that. I didn't mind the pressure, but there came a point when I was feeling it in my heart and my gut. And I was like, I need to shift something. I need to understand what is it that's stressing me out so much because I need to change something. I'm not willing to feel the way I feel.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Yeah. And did that strike you in like a thunderbolt moment? You said you had sort of an aha moment, or did was it sort of whispers that just got you know louder and louder?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Well, uh, we can edit this out if we need to. I call it my aha oh shit moment, actually.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

We're all for cursing here.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah, it was how you would have to be busy. Oh, good, I can just be myself then.

SPEAKER_03 5:48

Yes, be yourself, please.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

It was a lightning bolt moment, literally. Just hit me with like a ton of bricks that I'm feeling this way. I'm not willing to feel this way. What is it? Is it the job? Is it the people? Is it the values? Is it the boss? There's a million things it can be. And it really, it wasn't those things quite that way. I realized it was being CMO. Literally in the same breath, it was aha, it's that, oh shit, I can't be a CMO anymore. Because I knew I couldn't solve for the weight and the responsibility that I felt that I knew I couldn't release of being the person whose job it was to grow the company, to build, to have the all the jobs, all of that. And I started exploring. I had three paths. The first one was, oh, I can downgrade, go back to being an SVP.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

I've seen a lot of people do that, and and that can be a good solution. I mean, it can be hard on the ego, it can be hard politically, but I have seen and have coached a few people through doing that. So that's a valid option.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Something valid option, and I thought I might well do it because I was very successful as an SVP and I loved it, and I didn't feel the same weight. I mean, there's obviously there's a lot of pressure, but it's not the same. A second was, oh, I've got a great network, I can go off and build a consulting practice, business consulting, marketing consulting, etc. And then there was this outlier thing called coaching. I was like, can you actually make a go at that? And I found myself running towards. I'm so fortunate I've had two careers now that have filled me up so much, and this one far more than the last, even. Because I get to help leaders lift themselves up. I get to help them lift up their companies, their lives, their families, and have enormous impact on the people around them. I had a client this morning I was talking with, incredible man. What we were working on was that he didn't have enough joy. His joy is so depressed. And he is so much about being in service of the work he does, which is very important work, and the people he impacts on large scale. He he realized that if he could get from neutral to true vitality, true joy, the impact he could have on his world would be that much greater.

SPEAKER_03 8:05

And is and it's impersonal, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

I mean it's it's around. We're one person. Yeah. We bring all of ourselves. We may say, Oh, I'm a different person at work and at home. I don't believe that. We bring different faces, of course. We have different roles, but we're one person inside.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Yeah, I really appreciate what you're saying about that ability to help leaders lift themselves up because truly you can't do it for another person. You can help, you can provide a mirror, you can provide suggestions to a path. You know, ultimately the coachy has to do the work. So I just love the way you're phrasing that. And I will say, like, of your paths. So I I sort of did path two and three. And what I would say about path two of standing up your consultancy, don't do it. No, but I do agree. It's so fulfilling to watch people and and at moments painful, you know, to watch people in in their struggle.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

I know you were a bit tongue in cheek on that second path. Um, don't do it. I'll say I I have a very close friend who recently went from a very senior comms role, was let go, and he has found a path and he is so joyful in that second path. He has built overnight, in a month or two, which is rare, he built a path where he gets to support so many different clients: consulting, advising, and communications, PR, strategy, writing, social media, whatever. And he is so fulfilled in this new world. So it can be a very viable path for men. It can wasn't the right one for me.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

I was very tongue-in-cheek. I think that I have so much I could say on that topic, but I do think that people take to it like a moth to a flame. A lot of people come to me and say, hey, I'm thinking about standing this up. You know, what did you do and what do you think? And and I say, you know, I made every mistake in the book, but but I'm still here 23 years later. So eventually I got some things right. But some people really take to it, and then other people find that for various reasons, you know, it's not it's not for them. But I think regardless, like you learn a lot about yourself. If you try to stand up any kind of business, you you learn so much about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

100%.

SPEAKER_03 10:17

So that brings me to like, what do you think has gotten harder?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Do you think there's anything about being a CMO that top job? So when I say CMO, you know, it may not be your title, but when you're in that most senior marketing position, is there anything that's gotten easier? Do you think?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah, but things change all the time, and they also don't. So I think a little even harder over the last five years or so is even more of a short-term orientation in the business. The must win now, what'd you do for me today, not this week, not this month?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Um, is very perhaps in the last hour. Yeah, sometimes. And that it's real. And it's the job of the CMO, the head of marketing, whatever the role, or the next level down too, to hold that container of yes, I've got to deliver, yes, I've got to perform, whatever that looks like for my role. And if I'm not thinking about next quarter, next year, at least, next two, three years, much preferable, then I'm not actually doing my job well.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

So we have to hold it. And I think it's gotten even harder to hold that. What's easier, it's also a little harder, but it's easier, is the data. More data, better distilled, or better tools for distilling. And yes, of course, those two letters are going to come up in this conversation, like every conversation. The AI impact. A and the I. The A and the I. Enormous value. I see it as a far more good than bad. That's a whole nother conversation. And I think it's enormously powerful. And I'm not, I don't have blinders on. I understand all the challenges, but the reality is it makes work easier and often better. If we say, oh, we're just gonna do AI creative, that's a really bad outcome.

unknown 12:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

If we're gonna tap into AI for creative, for building board presentations, et cetera, et cetera, way easier. Yes. Any marketer, I will say, if you're not in it every single day deeply, I don't mean touching it, I don't mean experimenting. I mean using it and failing and succeeding for at least an hour of your day.

unknown 12:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

And you're actually not gonna grow the way you need to grow. Lean into it.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Couldn't agree more. We recently have stood up what we call an AI readiness tool. And the first questions in the survey tool are around exposure and orientation, which is exactly what you're touching on. How much time are you spending? And is it on a daily basis or is it just a little bit of time per week? And you will not score high unless you really are in it meaningfully each day. It's like this muscle that we all have to learn because it just has so much depth to it. And in AI readiness, what it takes some people to do that kind of practicing versus what it takes other people to do is different. And it has to do with our learning differences and it has to do with our motivations and our fear, and you know, all those different things, which is fascinating. But agree, like you probably true for all functions, but so true for marketing, you gotta be in it and you gotta be in it like up to your elbows every day.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Up to your elbows every day. I exactly right. And I'll I'll give two quick examples, one minor and one not minor at all. I used AI, of course, to prepare for this conversation.

SPEAKER_03 13:40

Excellent. As did I.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Right, of course you did. And by the way, I'm being really clear about that because that's not to be embarrassed about. That's a tool that if I'm not using it, shame on me, frankly. Right. You know, I'm I happen to use ChatGPT as my primary. It knows me quite deeply right now. And I I fed your questions, some of the questions we're making up as we go, and some were prepared. And I fed them in and I said, given what you know about me as a marketer and a coach, help me with some of the possible things I might include. And we went back and forth, and then I had enough because then I'm gonna just wing it with you. Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

Right, the human side, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Because you don't know, I'm not actually an avatar.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

And the other example is I'm actually building a Coach Allen AI right now for my clients when I'm working with them and when in between sessions or after we're done working together. I have no idea if it's gonna be successful. And I actually don't care. I care that I'm exploring it and learning it and doing it.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

And that is the best way to be thinking about it. I mean, it's really almost comical sometimes for myself when I'm working on different things. I I tend to feel like really delighted by what I'm able to do or really, really frustrated, depending upon the moment. And the other day, I was going really deep on these two different things. And on one, I was delighted, and the other one I was super frustrated, and I was almost laughing at my own, you know, learning journey and the emotions behind it, because sometimes in my drive for efficiency, you know, and productivity, I'm like, that's not what I wanted. It's all, you know, it's all part of the learning. So whether it's AI related or not, are there other core skills or practices that you want to make sure that senior marketers are really paying attention to right now?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah, and these go for senior marketers and and every C-suite. So, first is deep business literacy. It sounds so obvious, and it's so often not there deeply enough. I'm working with one CMO right now, and she's phenomenal, and she's been working in a that or a related business for a few years, but she doesn't actually know this business deeply enough to get into the depth of the business metrics that go beyond the marketing specific ones. So, business literacy of what really makes this business tick different from other businesses, different from our competitors' business, which are similar. And go deep and hold your job. Your first job isn't being the CMO or the head of marketing, your first job is being a leader of the company.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

And bringing a GM mindset, a general manager mindset to every single action you take. And that you cannot do without deep business literacy. That's one. The second one is executive presence. It's what does it mean to actually have and build the influence? In more junior roles, you can just be a kick-ass performer, just deep in your world and functional space. Once you get even to the VP level, let alone above the VP level, most of the work is about influence across and up. And in the C-suite, it's 80% of the job, which means the concept, which I'm sure you know, Nancy, the first team concept.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

But your first team is not your marketing team. The first time I was working with a CMO on this concept, and he was like, What are you talking about? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

I think oftentimes people don't realize this. So let's pause on this and unpack it a little bit. Oftentimes I have had people coming into coaching or coming into facilitated sessions and they don't know this concept. So tell us what it is.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Think of it as T leadership. There's leading across and there's leading down. T leadership, very similar idea to first team. Your first team is your peer group with your boss. So if you're the CMO, the C-suite is your first team. Your job, your first team, most of your focus should be at that level and saying, what do we need to do together? And how am I influencing you? And how are you influencing me? Your second team is the team you've always thought about being your team. It's your vertical team, your functional team. Both matter, but the more you climb, the more you have to focus on the first team. If you're a director level and you're reporting to a VP of marketing, your first team is there are the other directors and the VP. So it holds at every level, gets way more important as you climb.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

Yeah. I I was in a session with a spirits company, and it was actually all of the leaders across the marketing function. So we had the CMO and then those leaders with you know our guidance, he was unpacking this concept for them because their primary issue was that they were working in silos. They really weren't paying attention to their team one. And so when he talked about his team one, which by the way is not them.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

His C-suite team, you know, you sort of saw some eyebrows go up. And then when he talked about their team one, it was just so eye-opening for them because they were all thinking about their underlings, right? And it was really, really helpful. And it is part of, as you said, the executive presence of taking what you're learning and being able to translate it across to that first peer set.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

And when you get in that space, if you are holding your second team as your main team, you're not letting them grow. You're not actually letting them lead the way they need to lead. If you're doing spot conversations with each leader, and maybe you have a weekly team meeting, but it's not really a team meeting, it's a report out, then you're not creating a first team for your direct. So how do you lift them up? How do you create a leader full team? One of my teams at Wells Fargo, we became such a leaderful team. I was an SVP reporting to an EVP, and the EVP, she did such a great job in this world. She knew who her first team was and that we were her second team. And she made us a great first team with each other by being clear. If she couldn't make it, she's like, you guys, me, you're leading the company, you're leading this area. And she was clear about that.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

It's a line of sight, right? It's just kind of lensing and in a different way.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

And I'll comment on one other thing that is such a core skill that isn't always there: centeredness, emotional steadiness. Because if you're fluttering about, the world's fluttering about. And there's always too much, and there's too much work and too little time and too few people and too few resources. Those are the givens. And if you're freaking out about the givens, find a different job.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

You need to find your steadiness so you can steady everybody else.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Yeah. Let's talk about that. What often is called like emotional regulation. What are you seeing in that space? How are you helping leaders with that? Because it's a tough environment, right? And we all have our tendencies. Some people get amplified, some people withdraw. There's all kinds of unproductive behaviors in that space.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

There are. Most of the source of it is fear. Fear is at the core. We all get dysregulated. That's okay. It's actually part of how our system works. And there's information in getting dysregulated. How do you center yourself? What do you do for yourself first? And some of it is a fake it till you make it. And that does help. So if you can't get all the way to I'm actually feeling steady inside, pretend. The pretending actually helps you get there too.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

People take issue with that, that idea of fake it till you make it. But I agree with you. If you lead with action, right, that takes you where you want to go with your emotional state, it will have the right influence on you. Like your brain and your emotions will catch up with your body.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Yeah, a phrase comes to mind that a top leader once said to me, and she was very much an innovator. She said it's not a see it so you can believe it. It's the opposite. It's believe it so you can see it. I'll reframe that a touch here. Believe it so you can feel it.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

And believe it so you can be it. This is not woo-woo stuff. It may sound like it to some, but this is about leadership. At its very core. If you cannot be centered and connected, you cannot lead well. You just can't.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Yeah. I think it gets underestimated. I think there are people who think if I'm senior enough, I can kind of get away with losing my temper sometimes or withdrawing. And your team is going to be the first one to notice.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

It's never okay to lose your temper. Well, let's just name that. It is okay to withdraw sometimes. Sometimes we need to step back. I'll tell people, and you know, you have so much of this is on Zoom or Teams or whatever these days. I'll say, if you're feeling yourself getting dysregulated, it's okay to suddenly need a bathroom break.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

Where you don't actually go to the bathroom a timeout. Yeah. Give yourself a timeout. Turn off audio, turn off video, you know, you say I'll be right back. And then you just sit there and breathe and reset. And breathing a slow intake and a deep exhale, a slow exhale, even slower than the inhale, is one type of breathing that can literally reset your body in a minute. For those who want a touch of the science, the four count in a pause and an eight count out literally taps into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the settling one in your body. So it accesses that versus pure energizing, a big inhale, a big exhale, and keep going back and forth. If you're like just like almost falling asleep, that'll lift you up.

unknown 23:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

So if you want settling, four in, eight out, which is frankly what most leaders need more than the energizing.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

Agreed. So one of the you know key ways in which leaders get triggered is with dramatic change. And there's a lot of dramatic change that that has been happening. People leaving the team, a re-org that isn't going well, or perhaps you didn't even know about until the last minute. There's many transitions that are happening and seem to be happening at a quicker pace.

unknown 23:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

So emotional regulating is a great bit of advice for people. What else do you advise people who are sitting in disruptions like that for a period of time? We're not talking about a difficult meeting. We're talking about like a difficult maybe run of months.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Yeah. Change is inevitable, obviously. We all go through so much of it. And one thing to name here, there's huge variation in change readiness. Some people are at a high end of, hey, bring on change is good. Yeah, I can get too much even, but mostly I'm good with change. I was always one of those leaders. Disruption was a good thing for me. Innovation was a good thing. So change was good. I had to recognize that I was on the higher end of change readiness. When people have lower change readiness, it's not a bad thing, though people with high change readiness will sometimes think it is.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

Yes, yeah. There can be judgment on both ends. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Exactly. There's a whole change style tool that I'll use with clients sometimes. That's four different buckets. And usually, whatever bucket you win, the alternate square, the diagonal one you think is a bad idea and it's not, all four are valuable. So know where you are first, how much readiness you have versus the team, both your first team and your second team. And then to your question, say, what is mine to do here? What is my role? First team mindset, but what is mine to do? If you're a CMO or you're a head of marketing, you're climbing those ranks. Your job is probably first and foremost about growth.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

And if you think about that and say, how can I help guide? What are the growth drivers? What are the possibilities? And then what's going on for me and what's going on for my partners, those who I want to influence, and I'll always say it this way, those who I need to be influenced by.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Right? It's both. It's not just, oh, I have to get them to do stuff. Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

Which oftentimes can be our default. Like, what do I need to get them to do?

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Exactly. You'll get them to do far more when you're doing what they need too. And letting go of your agenda sometimes too. That's a big topic. So understanding what does it mean to build that influence? What's mine to do? What's my fear? What's their fear? And what does the business need is a starting point to say, okay, how do I help lead into the change I see we need. And if I see we're going too fast on something and there's a leader who's ahead of our skis, let me challenge them appropriately and bring courage. And guess what? There's no such thing as courage without fear.

SPEAKER_03 26:26

Absolutely. It's feeling the fear and moving forward anyway. One of the things that I do not hear at all in such a good way in what you're describing is any form of victim mentality. Victim mentality can be such a trap that when change is happening, when it feels like it's happening to you, that you didn't really feel like you had the say that you wanted to have. That is a very popular place as humans in our fear we can go. And when you talk about courage and when you talk about what is my role? What is it for me to do? It really displaces so much of that.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

It's about the agency. Yeah. It's about how am I in control of myself? Because guess what? We are in control of ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

And that's it. We're not in control of anything else.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

I work with clients on a control circle sometimes, and it's just such a simple idea. You draw a circle on a page, inside the circle, just start brainstorming all the things that are in my control. And outside the circle, right? All the things that are out of my control. And once they do it, we come to the core of it, which is in my control, is what I do, what I think, how I feel. And yes, how I feel is in fact in my control.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Yes. Even when you feel like it's not, it is. Even when you feel it's not.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

And outside my control is everybody else's thinking, doing, feeling. And I can influence that and it can influence me. But I get to decide what I'm going to do with any of it. And then how I build those influence skills, how I build those relationships, those connections short-term, long-term. That's how I'm going to be effective as a leader.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

Yeah. And I do want to get a little bit into the competing agendas and letting go of one's agenda in this senior role. So much of what you are doing is influencing. It's not a command and control. I say X and therefore X happens. You touched on the idea of really understanding other people's agendas and at times letting go of your own. Can you say a little bit more about that?

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah. First of all, just because we have a clear point of view doesn't mean we're right.

SPEAKER_03 28:43

Except when it's me.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

I mean Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

Pretty much, you know, pretty much I am, except all the times that I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Exactly. It's so well put, Nancy. And that's the point. And it this depends on our own self-confidence too. Know where you are in the in the spectrum and just own it and hold it and work on whichever side. Some people are really well dialed into the middle. Awesome. I tended to be dialed into the overconfident side. And I work with a ton of clients who are overconfident and a ton of clients who are huge inner critic. Most senior leaders, by the way, have a huge inner critic. Know that about yourself. If you have that imposter syndrome working against you, it is working against you. Name it and notice it and find ways to fill yourself up. Similarly, if you're overconfident, recognize that your work, and I'll I'll name some of my work has been, probably still is, my wife would agree, is humility. I'll tell a quick funny side story. It makes the point I suspect others may relate. I was telling a friend, yeah, my wife says, you know, I'm always certain often right. And they cracked up, but then I told my wife, and she's like, that's not what I said. I said, you're always certain sometimes right.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

Yeah, you're like, funny, that's not exactly how I heard it in my overconfident state.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Therein lies my further development and humility. So know which part of the spectrum you're in and do your work. In that context, if there's competing priorities or competing needs, how certain am I? And how can I open my aperture if I'm in the overconfident side to bring in other voices? Or if I'm in the insecure side, how can I make sure my voice is strong enough in the room? I have too many clients that do 360s. I'm sure you probably do the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. 360 feedback for leadership assessments. So often I'll get the feedback. I wish I heard their voice more clearly and more strongly because they have so many good things to say and they're not expressing them. And then, of course, I get the reverse on the overconfident people. Right. So know where you are in that mix. Open yourself to building on the soft part, the developmental edge, and then recognizing there are competing priorities. So even if your idea is the right one, it might not be the right one right now, or you may need to bring them along differently. And it may just take a lot longer than you wish it would.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

That can be a reality. I'll give you an example of competing priorities. When I was at Wells Fargo in the debt space and lending, I was building a debt consolidation tool online that we hadn't done. We were in a place where each credit business was managed separately, and each one would go after Nancy and say, hey, get this credit card to consolidate your debt. Hey, get this mortgage to consolidate your debt. Hey, get this personal line to consolidate your debt. We are seven different companies to Nancy. And he's like, let's build a tool to actually serve Nancy. How about that for a concept? Well, guess what? There's trade-offs. Each business had their numbers to meet. Right. I was the leader of this project. I was not the decision maker. I had to bring along all my peers. They became another first team because they were across the organization. And we made these trade-offs. And at one point, our um subprime business, she had a really strong view on how we needed to manage the offerings. I couldn't have disagreed more. It made no sense to me. I didn't think it was in service of the customer, but from her perspective, it made all the sense in the world. And it certainly made sense for her business. So I let go and I said, okay, let's do a pilot together. I was clear on my perspective, but I don't know that I'm right. Let's do a two-week pilot. Put it out there your way and let's review the data. And we put it out there her way. And it went the way I thought it would. And in this case, I happened to be right. And we switched.

SPEAKER_03 32:30

As you are sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

As I am sometimes, as we now know. Thank you for that reinforcement, Nancy.

SPEAKER_02 32:38

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

And that woman remains a great contact now. She so deeply appreciated my willingness to do it her way. And she, to her great credit, saw the same data I saw and read it the same way I read it, and we changed it. And we got a much better product and a deeper relationship.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

I love that story. So many things about it. And in particular, the idea that you went to a pilot where you were able to take a bite-sized way to test it out. And that you couldn't have disagreed more, but you went that path anyway.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

In service of the relationship in the long term.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

In service of the relationship and in service to the fact that neither one of you really knew if you were right. You know, you felt that you were, there was no clean answer. In so much of the work that we do in our consulting business, we work on alignment. And alignment, as you said, it takes longer almost all the time than when you think it should take. The number one thing is people feeling heard, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:40

It takes longer and you save a ton of time, isn't that funny?

SPEAKER_03 33:43

Right, exactly. That kind of slow start. You got to get people early on. I have one client who loves to say it this way if you don't involve people in those what if conversations early on, you're gonna have a lot of unwanted how come conversations later. How come we didn't talk about this? How come you didn't look at it this way? How come you didn't try it this way? And you're in a world of hurt. But so many of the things that we're working on, the truth is, I don't totally know. You don't totally know.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Of course not. And there's no one right answer. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

So is there something from your previous chapters when you were in that CMO seat that still guides you when it comes to either the pressureful moments or the alignment moments that you feel like, man, I learned that lesson and I pull that through in almost everything I do in my coaching.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

You think about what are the hard moments in our careers? What are the things that get in the way, the relationships, the conflicts? Conflict is not a dirty word, actually. Healthy tension, healthy conflict is critical, but I'll park that for the moment. It's just something I'm passionate about. I'm thinking of an example that comes to mind right now where I was pretty new CMO at eShurance. We had a whole bunch of really great sponsorships. We had a phenomenal sponsorship team. We had a CEO who was really passionate about certain areas and was quite involved. He built the company more than anybody else did. And I couldn't have disagreed more with what I saw as not a sponsorship strategy at all, but a series of events that we did. And we spent a lot of money. And I was like, wow, we're doing this over here and that over there. For example, we were painful to myself personally, but we were sponsoring the Golden State Warriors, whom I'm a huge fan of. We pulled us out of it, and it took some time, is a part of the point of this. But I saw a landscape where we could be doing so much more with our money. And theoretically, honestly, I could have played the CMO card and be like, yep, this is what we need to do, this is where we're going, but that would not have gone well. Our CEO was a big believer in that one, and we were a big tennis sponsorship, which I also happen to loved personally, but I didn't think it was the best YouTube. Um and what we wound up doing it, and it took about a year, and this is a pretty fast moving company. So this was really slow on this one. A part of it was getting out of contracts and redoing things. We went through a deep, long process that I involved every member of the executive team, the CFO, the operations, sales, every function. All my team won, as well as my boss, with interviews. What do we think is important? What are we trying to solve for? We stepped way back. And then now let's have our phenomenal agency work with us to say now, based on this, where we want to go and how we want to get there. So it was a pullback and a strategic process, but it was also a deeply influenced management process. And at the end of the day, we pulled out of all of those and more and did in my the biggest contract I ever worked on, substantial eight-figure contract with Major League Baseball. And we did it with baseball in a way that baseball had never done things like how we leveraged their data and how we turned it into a digital space from a very old school sport that was in service of e-shorts. We had great results, but it was a very long, slow process. And I tell that story because it was transformative from the standpoint of the business and my leadership. What did it mean to bring people on board, including some who you could objectively say shouldn't be part of the decision? But you can't objectively say that if you really believe in the first team. Because the CFO mattered and the head of sales mattered, and these people really believing in our strategy mattered, along with the CEO, of course. And everyone came around and then the pressure was on to deliver, and luckily we did. But it's how do you step back and say, what is yours to do? And it's not just have the big ideas, it's not just have the strategic thinking, of course, it's those things. Of course, it's knowing what the growth drivers are going to be. Of course, it's knowing what the consumer actually needs and how you're gonna deliver it for them. So all the classic things a marketer would say about this is what's my job are true. And stepping back to build influence and letting go when it's time to let go sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Yeah, and the letting go and knowing how and when. So, so let's talk about conflict because inherently there is conflict in those, in those moments, particularly when you're talking about the nature of the beast of, you know, people get very attached to teams and events and and such. So we're certified in disc and where you sit in those working style assessments really shines a light on how you feel about conflict. And you have people across that whole spectrum, but a lot of people do feel very strongly to avoid anything that feels like conflict and what can feel like conflict isn't even anywhere near what conflict feels like. And then there's people all the way over here who kind of want to get in there.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

How do you coach on it? And how do you talk to people, particularly if they're on the far end of the of the spectrums? Because it can be really, really hard when you have someone who's all in and you have someone who all they want to do is escape the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

It's such a powerful question and territory. So you're talking about disk. I use that. I also use the Enneagram heavily. Even those who are not conflict averse don't usually say I like conflict, but they'll say, I don't mind it, I'm okay with it. It's it matters. Right. They're right about the it matters, but that's one dimension. That's the well, how are we individually built? The second dimension is how do you navigate conflict and what type of conflict? There's five different conflict approaches, all of which are meaningful and valuable. I won't go through all of them, but is the compete you named already. So that's the I win you lose version of conflict. Right? My way or the highway, go do what I tell you to do.

SPEAKER_03 39:48

You have to win. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Yeah, and someone listening to this, and some especially someone conflict averse might say, that's a stupid idea. It should never happen. That's really bad, right? Win-lose. No, if you're a general on the field in battle, you better have command and control. You're doing it my way, go, no conversation. And there are times in our business lives where compete is actually the right choice. So that's one. Collaborate. Most people would say, well, yeah, that's a good thing to do. Well, collaborate when it's something important to multiple parties and to a business outcome, and it takes work, you better collaborate. Now it's about finesse, it's sorting through possibilities, it's expanding how big the pie is. How do you get creative about what's possible? What do you need? What do I need? Why do we need that? How do we rethink this? Collaboration takes a lot more time and it's really valuable when it really matters. Bigger strategic questions. But it's not the right choice when we just need to make a decision and move people.

SPEAKER_03 40:45

Right. When it's overcomplicating and or when there isn't time for that, there's a risk of not moving more quickly, too.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

Yeah. Compromise is another sounds good. What's compromise? Well, it's actually I kind of lose and you kind of lose.

SPEAKER_03 41:00

I have a friend who says it this way I want a black car and my wife wants a white car, and we get a silver car and nobody's happy.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Right. Right. Yeah. It's well put. It's well put. Compromise is a good choice sometimes. Listen to us, hey, it's not a huge decision. Fine, I can live with silver, you can live with silver, but it's often not the right choice. And then another example is withdrawal, which a compete person would say, No, I'm never doing that. But if it just doesn't matter so much for me and it does seem to matter to you, hey, go ahead. Let's do it your way. I'm removing myself. I'm not agreeing with you.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

Right. Or for if it's just overly heated and it's not constructive, right? It's kind of that taking a beat to let like emotion calm down. It also can be a healthy or unhealthy tactic that I'm showing how much I care to discourse on it. But I think more than anything, just if things are heated.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Well, you're right. The withdrawal can be good both for it just doesn't matter to me go, or it could be I need to step away and let's come back and talk some more later. The conflict space is such a rich one. And if you understand that your style is different from the style of the person or people you're working with, and the situation can also dictate which which conflict model is appropriate. Pull both of those and then recognize if you lean into it too much, when do I need to pull back? If I'm conflict averse, where do I need to actually make sure my voice is heard? Because we may go down a bad direction if I withdraw.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

I love that. And two thoughts before we move on from conflict. One is that oftentimes we only use one or two of these things, even back, you know, from when we were a kid, like what was useful, right? What worked well for us? And so we only have like one or two in our toolbox and expanding our knowledge of all of the different types that are out there for us. Same thing with influencing models, same idea. One of the influencing models is coercion, and like that sounds terrible. And you would think, no, no, no, you should never use. There are some moments where coercion could be the right way to go in certain high-stakes environments. But typically, people are only using one or two conflict models, one or two influencer models when there's an expansive list and it can just really help you be much more effective and avail yourself of different ways of thinking, particularly if you feel stuck. So I I really appreciate you unpacking that.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

And your point, I want to go back. Your disc point is so important that let people know you know yourself and know your peers and your directs and your boss, to understand different styles, different hardware, is to then be able to bring empathy and curiosity to possibility.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

So well said. So, you know, to make it dramatic, if you have an outer circle D, which is someone who really thrives on very intense discourse, i.e., they like conflict. And then you have someone who's a hardcore S who's at the other end of the spectrum. Who their first automatic thought is, I just want to get out of this conversation. If you know that about each other, you can go a little bit more gently toward the middle and it can make all the difference.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

And you lead across and down so much better. If you can say, Who am I in this conversation? How do I tend to show up? Who is Nancy? And how can I best work with her in this moment to give her what she needs so that we can have the dialogue that I'm hoping to have? If I can show up and recognize there are two people, we're in a relationship constantly every day. I'm here, she's here, we're here together. And if I can hold that first and then we can look at the work, we can be so much more.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

Yes. Amen. I could just talk to you all day. You're such a pleasure. This is this is a tough one. If there's someone out there right now, maybe they are in the CMO seat or head of marketing seat, maybe they're a click down, maybe they're aspiring up, wherever they're sitting and they're feeling stuck. What's one thing that they can do today to regain that agency, as you've called it?

SPEAKER_00 45:04

The starting point is to know and believe you've got it and say, I only lose agency if I let myself lose agency. It's the control circle conversation we had before is a start and the centering conversation we had before. And then say, how do I tap my wisdom here? A mnemonic I created that I find helpful in the six core types of wisdom. And the mnemonic is gain, empathy, and curiosity. And gain, the four letters, stand for generosity, which you could also say be in service, activation, innovation, and navigation with empathy and curiosity. So those six, think about where you are that you do have agency, you do have control. And now which of those do I want to tap into first here? What is it that we need to solve? Are we looking to solve innovation? Or is there a North Star that we need to be thinking about? Or just got to get going here, people? It's an activation. Or just broadly the generosity of how can we be in service? How can we be in service? Each of these tap into finding that agency to say, how do I get unstuck? What's mine to do? The words I say a lot, what's my intention? The other word I haven't used somehow today, which I use constantly. What is your intention? What do you want to do here? And how do you want to show up to do it?

SPEAKER_03 46:23

I love that. And especially that job number one is like really believing in yourself and your ability to navigate and then choosing that path. Okay. So this podcast is the metamorphosis moment. Everybody knows how the butterfly gets made. And so much of that is letting go of the limiting beliefs, right? That's that's kind of our shedding. As a leader, is there a limiting belief that you had, you know, back in time that you have shed and makes you a stronger leader?

SPEAKER_00 46:54

This one comes up easily for me. I felt I had to have the answers. In fact, like minor detour with three basic human needs are dignity, safety, and belonging. And I felt safety in having the answers. I felt dignity in having the answers. I felt that that was my job. And when I realized my job is actually much more to have the questions and to have the answers, and to be in the questions and of course figure out perspective. Sure. But letting go of that opened up so much to me, including coaching, where most of what we do is ask questions. So to find that freedom, that it mine wasn't to have the answers. Mine was to help us navigate, innovate, whatever through questions, through the brilliance of everybody I got to work with.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

I really imagine that you're not the only person out there that that is a limiting belief for. So I really, really appreciate you sharing that. And I just appreciate this conversation in general, Alan. Just so delightful to be with you and so much, you know, great wisdom and guidance. I particularly really appreciate where we started the top of this call, where you spoke very honestly about no longer wanting to be a CML.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:14

I just think it's really important. And I think there are people out there who feel that and it may feel like an inconvenient truth. And the truth is, is that, you know, life is long and you really do want to be able to live your best life. And so if you're someone who feels like the seat you're sitting in is not the seat for you, be courageous and ask yourself those those questions. So I I thank you for all your coaching wisdom. I really appreciate how you just candidly name the pressures, all the frameworks that you shared. Thank you so much for spending time with us.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

Thanks for having me. I truly enjoyed the conversation, Nancy.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

Thanks for listening to the Metamorphosis Moment, a podcast from Noetic Consultants. If this episode made you think about what's next for your team or about a challenge you're currently facing, we'd love to hear from you. We often help leaders think through complex issues to realize the change they seek. Until next time, trust the transformation and make it stick.