Welcome to the second article in my ‘Leadership in Marketing Cloud‘ series. I created this series to address a major gap around leadership articles inside the specific context of Marketing Cloud. When I searched through the community and official places, there was nothing really available. With all the voices and content out there, it seems surprising that this important of a topic seems to have slipped through the cracks!
Please reference here for all the articles currently available for this series.
In the last article, we went over a few baseline things like:
- Defining what a leader is
- The different paths within leadership in SFMC
- A quick overview on how these paths matter in the context of Salesforce Marketing Cloud
We learned the definition of a leader as “a person that takes responsibility and accountability for the wellbeing and growth of a group of people.” Then went on to learn about the 2 paths for leadership in SFMC, Technical Leadership (focused on a specific platform, technology) and People Leadership (focused on individuals or groups of people). And finally, we mentioned how much of what I am sharing can be universal but is being tailored specifically to Marketing Cloud. For instance, I reduced the number of paths, personas and more that we will be discussing to align specifically with leadership in SFMC.
With the understanding of the basics around leadership and what a leader is, I now want to venture into the different personas of leaders that we see in Marketing Cloud teams. This article will begin introducing a deeper focus on the Marketing Cloud environment with leadership, but admittedly is still fairly universal as it is covering core topics.
For this article, we will be diving into a few different topics tied into Leadership Persona and how this is relevant to Marketing Cloud.
- Leadership Persona: A comparison of three ‘synonyms’ that have different connotations and how to effectively use them.
- Who should I be? A further look into the Leadership Personas and how to determine what works best for you.
With this in mind, let’s start off discussing the different Leadership Personas available.
Leadership Persona
Throughout this series there will be three different terms in relation to Leadership that I will be providing information on. Each of these may seem similar, but I will be using them for very specific aspects, and they cannot be used interchangeably. Below is a quick overview to help differentiate the three terms:
- Path: Whether you are leading people or a specific technology and/or platform
- Persona: Your leadership persona or focus
- Style: The overall approach and goal of your leadership
To start, I thought we should define exactly what a persona is. The Oxford English Dictionary defines persona as “the aspect of someone’s character that is presented to or perceived by others“. I feel this is a great definition for what we will be discussing. To help hone in a bit more on it though, I wanted to share my subjective definition. To me, a persona is “the projected characteristics used to externally affect an outcome.” Somehow, I think mine might actually be vaguer than the dictionary. To that point, let me dive into what I mean by that.
“Yeah, but how is ‘made up’ comedy like leadership?” Well, in order to make it good, you need to be fast, versatile, adaptive, and decisive.
A persona is like a ‘character’ or ‘part’ that you play, like an actor, to best meet the demand of the situation. As much as everyone automatically groans when they hear this word, leadership is actually kind of like improv. Improv, for those that do not know it (lucky bastards), is improvisational comedy. Essentially, one or more people are up ‘on stage’ and they have to make up a script, storyline, props, etc. on the spot with limited prompts.
“Yeah, but how is ‘made up’ comedy like leadership?” Well, in order to make it good, you need to be fast, versatile, adaptive, and decisive. Leadership is not something that can be easily scripted or taught outside of doing. So, although I have three personas below, these are just focal points and not rigid aspects.
Personas
These personas are focused on People Leadership but can be applied to Technical Leadership inside SFMC with some slight adjustments. As we go through these, do keep in mind that this is not a strict definition, it is more like a focal point with shades of grey around it.
The three personas I will be discussing are: Captain, Manager, and Boss. Each of these are unique in their overall focus, but as displayed in the image below, there is overlap across each that allows them to blend together.
That being said, let’s explore the first Persona.
Captain
A Captain Persona is defined (by me) as “a leader that gathers relevant information inside the group, as well as outside factors from the surrounding environment then makes decisions to lead everyone down best path forward.” This persona gets its name as it is best equated to the captain of a ship. You are the head decision maker, but each decision you make affects the whole ship. Every decision you make needs to have solid reasoning behind every action. If you do not, then you are likely to face a ‘mutiny’ or at least rebellious behavior.
A Captain needs to be passionate and sympathetic to each person, but also needs to be strong and resilient as sometimes the needs of the many come at the cost of the individual. Those are tough decisions and conversations, but they do have to happen from time to time, and it is your responsibility to have them.
A Captain needs to be passionate and sympathetic to each person, but also needs to be strong and resilient as sometimes the needs of the many come at the cost of the individual.
The Captain is focused on people and their wants and needs. They will be the leader that will always take the time to talk through a problem, career growth, new projects, or even just shooting the breeze. A Captain will also help take the ‘grey’ of corporate life and simplify it for the team.
There are negatives though that are associated with a Captain Persona. They tend to be a bit too reliant on democratic decision making and are not able to make decisions quickly or without conference. This leads to the Captain being unable to make the snap decision needed to get the team to a new place, causing missed opportunities. A Captain can also tend to become blinded to the analytical and data-oriented aspects of leadership required for executive decisioning. Although the Captain may have all the personal conversations and recommendations, without quantifiable data proving value, a promotion is less likely to be approved.
Now that we know what a Captain is, let’s see how it works inside of Marketing Cloud.
Examples in Marketing Cloud
How does one be a Captain in Marketing Cloud? A Captain would be very active in the day-to-day activities of the team. Let’s imagine a team of five people: a leader, 2 developers. a designer and an operational specialist. The leader would be the one involved in the strategy and oversight, helping to take the tactical decisions from the three other areas and mold them into a single purpose.
The leader would be having weekly one-on-one meetings with each individual to talk about the current projects, work/life balance, career growth and any other topics each individual wants to discuss. With the deep insight into each individual, they can then personalize the approach to assignment and project allocation. This could then allow Developer 1, who wants to take on some design work, to step in to assist the Designer on Project A so the Designer could concentrate on other tasks. If you were unaware of the desired growth path of Developer 1, you potentially could have used someone else to support the Designer and lost a growth opportunity.
The downside to this plan, which is a negative of the Captain Persona, would be that although Developer 1 has the desire to move forward there, they performed at a slower rate than the Designer does. This delay caused Project A to fall behind. Leading with a mindset focused on team morale and desires can lead to decisions that do not make sense from a quantifiable viewpoint.
A main point I want to make with these examples is that there is no perfect answer, so I will be providing an overview with all the positive points of that persona, but also point out the negatives that comes along with it.
Manager
Think of a Manager as a bureaucrat. Someone that remains disconnected at a personal level from the team and focuses solely on numbers and objective information – spreadsheets, reports, etc. A Manager’s goal is to make the team look and function as good as possible on paper. A Manager tends not to be a ‘people person’, but more of a ‘people herder’.
A Manager’s goal is to make the team look and function as good as possible on paper.
A Manager Persona has many great aspects that drive towards success. Most of the work they do is easily translatable upwards to the business and financial teams as it is stored, shaped and developed explicitly for this purpose. This can help the team to get the additional resources they need or qualify person A for a promotion. They provide a very strong, factual argument for the best path forward and tend to make forward pathing much easier for the team.
The negative though is that in order to create objectivity, they tend to lose the personality of the team and potentially can become disconnected and out of touch. So, although things may make sense on paper, the Manager may miss the subtleties of the team’s desires. Manager leaders also tend to push most decision making to the leadership above them, rather than make a decision themselves. This can cause delays in action and can also further disconnect the decision from the context of the team as it now moves at least 2 steps away.
Examples in Marketing Cloud
A Manager in Marketing Cloud is surprisingly similar to a Captain. The difference is based on approach. The Captain looks for pathing based on discussions and feedback, where the Manager focuses on efficiency and data. As an example, let’s continue using the same five-person team we used before. A Manager would look at how best the projects worked in the past, as well as who has the best skillsets to handle each task.
Say for Project C, you have a ton of execution and QA expected for quite a few email campaigns, let’s say it is Black Friday. So it is way more than your single Ops person can handle. Developer 2 came from an operations background and was promoted into a developer position from that role. From that we know this person can not only accomplish these tasks but is extremely skilled in them.
The Manager would then assign Developer 2 to do Project C, along with Ops, to ensure the campaigns get out. This would be done despite the fact that Developer 2 absolutely hates the idea of doing this type of work. Developer 2 feels that this type of work is no longer something they should have to do and wants to be seen only as a developer. They feel being aligned to Ops work will lower their reputation as a developer and they are heavily burnt out on that type of work – making this assignment have even more of a negative impact.
The positive side to this is that the project work got completed at the highest quality and well before deadlines, making all executives involved extremely happy and making the team look awesome. The downside though is that Developer 2, most likely others as well, now has much lower morale and feels they are not fully advocated for nor heard.
Boss
Boss tends to be a taboo word in leadership now-a-days. Along with this word comes a significantly bad connotation and, although understandable, the persona doesn’t deserve it. A Boss is someone that relies mostly on their own intuition and experience to make decisions and set pathing. They tend to come off as imperious or demanding and can at times ‘be a bit much’. I would say a Boss is similar to a head chef in a top restaurant. They know exactly what they want and how they want it, you are just there to do it.
The positive aspects of a Boss are that they allow for quick decisioning and leadership during times of trouble when there is not time to really digest, let alone research the issue. A good Boss will have a plan and stick to it to ensure that the team will still have direction and goals despite tumultuous times. A Boss can also be a great personification of the skills and talents you need in order to be successful (if the leader is actually good at what they do).
With a Boss at the helm, you also will have an unmatched singular focus on projects and goals. This focus will reduce risks related to human error and also streamline work tasks, making it easier for shared responsibilities, onboarding and training.
They know exactly what they want and how they want it, you are just there to do it.
Now, the prominent negative aspect. As many of you have likely seen based on the above, no one else has a voice or any freedom. They are dictated to and expected to perform in a very defined way. This removes many aspects that would provide job satisfaction. It instills the feeling of being ‘just a cog in the machine‘ or a ‘replaceable asset‘, which can severely hurt not only job satisfaction but morale as well as potentially create a toxic environment. Essentially, taking a pure Boss Persona for too long can turn your team into a ticking time bomb that will blow up in your face eventually.
A Boss also tends to limit innovation or creative solutioning, which can cause your team to become out-of-date and potentially utilizing inefficient processes or procedures. Without creative solutioning, you also can lose the outside viewpoint that may help catch flaws, dependencies, and other similar issues that could save you tons of time and effort in the future.
Examples in Marketing Cloud
I never thought I would say this in a non-ironic way, but here it goes. What makes a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Boss? Let’s use the same team as the other two examples. The Boss would likely have daily stand-up meetings with the whole team where he will pass out the assignments for the day and track current progress on previous tasks. This meeting would replace one-on-one meetings, as it is more efficient for this type of work. The Boss would be the sole source for all tactical and strategic decision making as well as communication of these aspects to executive leadership.
The Boss Persona will set up an environment that allows for a streamlined execution with the agility to shift constantly. The Boss would be able to shift his resources to do the tasks that need to be done, regardless of skill, desire or capability. This allows for projects to be completed and to be completed fast.
In the case of the Black Friday example above, the Boss persona would demand that Designer would work on Ops, regardless of not having any experience or desire to do so. This is the plan the Boss had, based on the information they gathered and performance requirements, so this is the path they chose to execute.
The positive aspect of this is that there is a uniform message, plan and execution for the whole team, acting as a single entity. This can remove many risks that come along with a more democratic leadership persona. This can create a streamlined, high quality and highly efficient output with a strong, singular focus which creates a fast, highly effective solution with fairly low risk on average.
Now that we have seen the three Personas, the positives and negatives of each, we ask the question…
Who should I be?
In all honesty…. you should be all of them! You just utilize them at different times and at varying degrees. A great leader is one that recognizes what the team needs most at that time and adjusts their approach to that context. I think anyone that sticks to just one of these approaches may be somewhat successful but will run into times when they are out of their element and will fail and potentially fail hard.
Your personality, the team’s needs and the general context of your team are what should determine your focus, not any standards. This goes along with the arguments around ‘Best Practice“. Just because something is usually a good idea, does not mean it is ALWAYS a good idea. For instance, if you are a naturally talented Boss Persona, that should be your focus as a lynchpin persona. A leader needs to be all of these personas, but also needs to know their strengths and play to those.
A great leader is one that recognizes what the team needs most at that time and adjusts their approach to that context
I would equate this to shoes. Everyone has a super comfy pair of shoes that they wear every day they possibly can. Those are your go-to shoes. The one you feel the most comfortable in and are the most versatile. That is your main Leadership Persona, your lynchpin persona. From there, you have fancy shoes that you wear for a night out and flip flops that you wear for the summer weather. These are the secondary Personas that you would wear to fit the situation.
The shoes are not specific personas themselves, more of a tier of comfort and strength. For instance, in my case, I would say that the comfy shoes represent the Captain Persona, the formal shoes represent Boss Persona and the flip flops represent the Manager Persona.
I chose this alignment because I feel the strongest connection with the Captain Persona- which is why it is my comfy pair of shoes. I am not a fan of formal shoes as they are terribly uncomfortable and usually annoying to get on/off. So, I say these are the ‘Boss’ Persona to me. I chose that because although I can wear them, when necessary, I feel uncomfortable doing it and try to avoid it as much as possible. Without them though, anytime I went to a formal event I would be out of place and likely not be able to accomplish what I wanted to.
Therefore, the Manager Persona is the flip flops. I love the beach and the freedom you get from flip flops. While they are more versatile than the fancy shoes, they are limited by the environment. This is like the Manager Persona for me. Although I am comfortable in the more analytical style of leadership, it only makes sense at certain times. Otherwise, it would not fully meet the need and potentially lead me to feel uncomfortable and at times even self-conscious.
I would equate this to shoes. Everyone has those super comfy pair of shoes that they wear every day they possibly can. Those are your main shoes. The one you feel the most comfortable in and are the most versatile. That is your main Leadership Persona, your lynchpin persona.
This breakdown is just to show an example from my point of view. I would in no way expect you to emulate my above description or alignment. I instead would ask you to take those 3 Personas and the 3 shoe types and match them in the way you feel the strongest with. With that being said, much like Slytherins in Harry Potter, the bad connotations around Boss does not mean it is bad to have Boss be your comfy shoes. That is a strong and valid leadership strength to have! Just because I am weaker in that persona and do not prefer it, does not mean it is worse than others! Each leader is a unique mix of all of these.
Conclusion
We learned about the relevant Leadership Personas and their meanings inside Salesforce Marketing Cloud, how best to use these Personas and which persona would work best for you. Each persona has a uniqueness to it, but each also has a ton of overlap. We should be viewing these personas as shades of grey with a differing focal point, not as individual ideas.
After defining each persona, there was a small exploration into how that persona fits into Marketing Cloud. This provided some examples of Marketing Cloud situations to help explain what each persona was and how they would act, as well as the positives and negatives of the actions. From there, we then dug into which persona you should be, where we used a shoe analogy to help discover which persona you are more comfortable with to help find your best persona mix.
With this information, we will begin exploring beyond just the external facets of leadership and start digging into more internal facets. Over the next few articles, we will dig into an overview on relevant Leadership Styles, what I feel is the definition of good leadership in Marketing Cloud, best utilization of delegation, and assuming positive intent.
Look forward to seeing you in the next article! If you wish to look at any of the other articles in this series, please go here to view all available articles in my Leadership in Marketing Cloud series.