Hipster Nonsense and Leadership
was recently gifted with a night of talking to fellow marketers. I know that probably sounds ridiculous given that I work in an ad agency. But there’s something freeing about meeting with people who do what you do and have the same passion for the same industry, but who don’t share the same office. Marketing is ridiculous when you think about it. Most of the day I have to silence my inner Liz Lemon so I don’t shout about hipster nonsense. Really, scooters? And endless conversations about emotional language in content? You know you’ve hit peak ad agency when somebody leaves to play music full time. (Which, no beef. Said musician is legitimately good at said agency job and will likely kill it. I’m the daughter of a jazz musician, after all.)
The conversation turned to leadership at this meeting of marketing minds. This was likely the result of a lineage of mentors at the event. My mentor was there as was her mentor. It’s like Inception, but with mentors. My takeaway from that night is that a good boss is someone who cares, and since you know they care, you’ll follow them through any amount of corporate red tape. There’s such a level of trust involved, and because of that trust, you can be weak around them. You can ask questions and run down rabbit holes, and they’ll support you. It’s not about wanting power or needing control. It’s about stepping up and enabling a strong team. As my very patient boyfriend puts it, a good leader makes sure that his team can run without him.
Leadership intrigues me because it’s not something I naturally do. I don’t like stepping on toes and I’m not the first to speak in a room. I once had a former boss ask me that superpower question. You know the one: if you could have any superpower, what would it be? I said that I didn’t want one. Each of them comes with drawbacks, and I’ve seen way too much sci fi to know that superpowers are unnecessary. (You have seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right?) They’re interesting, but there’s always something that goes wrong. My boss said that if I’d answered that way in my interview, he’d never have put me in charge of a team of writers. Clearly my inability to choose a superpower meant that I never wanted to lead. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless you said I was good at calculus, in which case, no.
Managing a team is a responsibility I don’t take lightly. It’s a careful balance of personality, training, and ability to let go. I would never step into a role like that without serious consideration. To me, it’s less about my own ambitions for power and more about my ability to make something that’s already good better. It’s not about taking over and being right because you’re the boss. It’s about effectively creating an ecosystem of people who function together to do fantastic things.
During that event, over beer and beer cheese, I realized how fluid leadership is. It’s not one set of principles, but rather something that moves with the situation. One person’s leader is another person’s nightmare. It’s specific to industry and team, but there are universals. Trust. Compassion. A strong belief in your team and the ability to discover what motivates that team. Me? I’m motivated by La Croix and air conditioning that doesn’t run year round. But hopefully leadership knows that.