6 Essential Traits of Top Marketing Leaders

Managers build strong teams, leaders make them last. You can easily recognize a leader that drives results when you see one. It’s something about them that makes them so extraordinarily great and that is what we are about to explore.

These leaders are culture champions and they all share some common characteristics which you can also inculcate to change the world, like all great marketing leaders do. Here is what-

1. EI Advantage

The best marketing leaders know how to keep their emotions in check. Under all circumstances, setbacks and crisis, they know losing control isn’t the best way to handle this particular situation. They don’t let emotions crowd rationale.

2. Embrace Change

Marketing as a discipline has witnessed a dramatic change in the past decade or so. This makes it extremely necessary for marketing leaders to embrace change, adapt quickly and foster innovation. The openness to change is the approach to high performance marketing.

3. Unique Style

Be the leader you want to be. Leadership is something you can’t imitate. It has to come from you because originality is what makes leadership “leadership”. So, go ahead and do it your way because when you’re original, it’s easy to be on the top of your game and articulate your vision.

4. They empower!

Marketing is transformative and marketing leadership, well, it’s empowering. Marketing leaders are visionaries who help align everyone around one mission. They believe in leading by example. They don’t just talk, they show. They don’t order, they motivate.

5. The Right Mindset

To make challenging business decisions, you need leaders with the right mindset. Marketing comes with its own highs and lows, a leader’s mindset determines if they are going to see hardships as predicaments or opportunities to grow. The right mindset often leads to the right destinations.

6. They negotiate, not manipulate

Negotiations are an important aspect of marketing, business and life in general. We find ourselves hammering out something or the other at all times. The best leaders in the world try to connect at a deeper level and focus on finding common grounds rather than misleading people to their own advantage.

“Leaders live by choice, not by accident.” ― Mark Gorman

Leadership isn’t easy. It’s a discipline you have to constantly work on, something that requires crazy effort every single day. Each time when leaders stumble over an obstacle, they need to make a difficult decision. These hard choices, no matter how small, change the world in one way or another.