How to Train Your CEO

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome, and if you’re a regular listener, welcome back. Before I present this episode, I’m thrilled to announce the first-ever in-person CMO Super Huddle that we’re hosting in Palo Alto on November 8, 2024. The theme is “Daring Greatness in 2025” and we’re rocking a full slate of inspiring speakers with ample time for networking. Early Bird tickets are on sale now, so grab yours at cmohuddles.com. It’s gonna be flocking amazing! 

You’re about to hear a Bonus Huddle where experts share their insights into the topics of critical importance to our community, CMO Huddles. The expert in this particular Huddle is Susan Gurnik, a leadership coach who joined us to coach our CMOs on how to coach their CEOs. She shares great techniques to build an unstoppable alliance between you and your CEO, how to manage different types of CEOs, and how to navigate fundamental disagreements. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You’ll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. Alright, let’s dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through. Proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here’s your host and Chief Marketing Renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Hello Huddlers! I’m excited to introduce you to Susan Gurnik. Susan is an accomplished executive coach with 15 years of coaching success underpinned by a wealth of credentials and profound business insight. With a knack for bridging the gap between CEOs and their teams, Susan is here to share her invaluable insights on how CMOs can not only gain the respect of their CEOs but also cultivate stronger, more productive working relationships. And we know that is critical. Susan, it’s so great that you’re here. How are you and where are you this fine day?

Susan: I am wonderful, and it is a fine day. I’m in Atlanta, north of Atlanta, in a small suburb. Lots to share with your listeners. So looking forward to today.

Drew: And one of the things that smart brevity talks about, I mentioned that in the pregame, is that we’ve got to get to some value really early on, or they might leave us. And so can you provide, say, three techniques you’d encourage CMOs to use when training, I mean, coaching their CEOs?

Susan: Yes, absolutely. You know, it really starts with listening to the CEO, but also somewhat training the CEO on how to listen to you, and then developing kind of an agreement to the language between you, which is the vision and the priorities, the role of marketing. You know, your common language.

Drew: So we’ve got listening, which seems relatively basic, but it’s not because the active listening, and I’m thinking about me listening to what you said right now. It’s harder than you think, because you’re with your CEO, you’re nervous, perhaps, or particularly if it’s a new relationship. So what does active listening look like in this particular case? I mean, because you’re asking questions and then doing it. So talk a little bit about that dialogue and the process of or where people go wrong on listening.

Susan: So often, when we start a conversation, we have our own agenda, and I know it’s very difficult to kind of let go of being fixed on what you want the end game to be, but that’s quite often the trick to active listening is to really seek to understand first. Saying back to the CEO, “I think this is what I heard,” or “I could assume from what you said, your intention is… Am I understanding that correctly?” To really keep demonstrating that you’re listening, but also asking all of the clarifying questions you need to get that deeper understanding. If you jump right into “this is my agenda, and this is what I want to get to,” then you’re shortchanging all of that, and that will create even more problems down the road.

Drew: I’m just going to highlight, let go of your end game. This is about a process and a build. And it’s funny because two things come to mind. One is we had Matt Abrahams in a career huddle, who wrote “Think Faster, Talk Smarter,” and he talked about how that process of spontaneous communication involves mirroring and listening and saying, “This is what I heard. Is that right?” And so often, particularly when you’re talking to an executive, you might think, I don’t need to repeat it. But so how do you do that? How do you repeat something in a way that says I hear you and I can add value? I’m not just, you know, mirroring you, to use a technique that I learned on a podcast.

Susan: Yeah, I always talk about meta-communication, communicating about what you’re communicating. So if you are saying back to the CEO, “This is what I heard. And I can also, you know, without more information, I could also think your intention is this.” Your intention is that, you know, giving a little bit of where your thought process is going with what you’re hearing, but asking for clarification first. It goes to the transparency we talk a lot about in communication, and it does show that you’re not just using a trick or a tactic. You are giving them information as to why you’re asking or why you’re making sure you understand because you’re telling them what you’re going to do with that information. “I need to understand what your vision is because that drives what I do in marketing to create growth and value for the company.”

Drew: You talked about at the beginning that it was not just being a good listener of the CEO. And so now we’re at this building stage where we ask a question, they provide an answer, you kind of repeat their answer so that you can continue along that line of thought. But you also talked about training the CEO to know how to listen to you, and I don’t know where to start with that. So talk about that because, I mean, I think that’s the crux of it, right? If you can get this two-way thing where you’ve trained each other and are always in this common place, life is wonderful. But you know, some of these folks have such egos that it’s almost impossible to train or tame them.

Susan: Well, you’re kind of training them by example to a certain degree. You know, that is how we learn. We learn quite more by observing than we do by being hit over the head with here’s the textbook. So you are kind of creating a cadence to the conversation. You’re demonstrating how this works, and then you also can cue them. “What is it you need to hear from me? What is it that we’ve had in past conversations that upon reflection, you didn’t completely understand? You know, I just told you five minutes about this new initiative. What did you get from that? Did I give you the level of detail you need?” You know, so you’re kind of also giving certain cues in the conversation, reminding them to do the same back to you as you’ve done to them when you’ve done active listening with them. It really shapes the conversation.

Drew: And it really takes a lot of discipline. Is this something that you can practice other than doing it in real-time? I mean, how do you get better at this, other than doing it with a CEO and hoping it works?

Susan: Well, a little bit of Zen and meditation never hurts. But it is not how we’re brought up. It is just not how we’re brought up, right? We’re not brought up to say what our intentions are. We’re, you know, when we’re angry, we’re not brought up to saying, “I’m angry.” We’re supposed to throw things and slam doors and etc. So you know, sharing what your intentions are, why you’re asking a question and expecting the same from them, does take some effort, but depending on which relationship the CEO is, you could even go further into that. You can say, “I find I get more out of our conversations together when I have these touch points about our conversation. Is it okay if halfway through the hour I stop and see, are we really getting to where we want to get in this hour?” It’s kind of like setting up boundaries. It’s also asking permission, and then both of you start to help each other and remind each other. So if one person has a bad day, you can still, “Oh, wow, I just rushed into this meeting. I kind of forgot how we do these, you know, I’m going to step back a second here,” and then you could take however many years that you’ve lived on this planet, and, you know, kind of reset yourself.

Drew: The scenario that you… you mentioned bad day, and I’m just thinking of the CMO walking into the CEO’s office. They have a million things of stress on their mind, and it’s palpable, you can see it. So they may not be in the room with you. They may be worrying about a banker, you know, a presentation they have to the board. And how important is it to say, “It looks like you’re stressed. How can I help you?” Or something like that, to acknowledge the obvious?

Susan: You would be shocked how much somebody’s stress level, or, you know, rushing into things will just come down three notches. You know, we tend to kind of match the person we’re having the conversation with. So if you say, “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you just ran up the stairs, but it seems like you’re stressed today.” You know, you’re asking to confirm, you know, what you’re assuming. And then if they say, “Yeah, I am stressed.” “Do you need to process that first before we talk? Or is this still a good time? Or do we need to reschedule?” I mean, you want their full attention. It’s in your best interest too, so take the time to make sure you have their full attention before you initiate the real business of the meeting.

Drew: I’m wondering if some of this is in the old days you’d be walking into an office and they’d be sitting at their big desk, and you’d be sitting in the chair below them, and so forth. A lot of these conversations are now happening over Zoom. And so it’s a little bit harder to necessarily see that. But if they’ve got 10 open windows on their computer, and you see their eyes shifting, as we all do, right? It’s like, “Oh, I gotta close this window right now.” But again, I’m just trying to get to how does a CMO politely make sure that they have the attention at the moment that they need to progress a conversation.

Susan: You can’t change dynamics with another person immediately. So if you don’t have that relationship to all of a sudden blurt out, “Oh, you look hurried. Do you need more time?” It might not be received very well, but that is also where you can turn the tables by talking about yourself. You could even say, “Gosh, I’m feeling a little stressed today, but I’m very prepared for this meeting. Can we take one minute to just touch base with each other on how life’s going before we get started?” You know? So maybe you’re really doing it because you see they need it, but if you show some vulnerability in yourself first, it’s going to help them open up. And again, you’re coaching them because you’re training them how to coach you and everyone else.

Drew: And I wonder, it’s funny. I would love to be able to ask the folks in the audience right now, but how, if they’ve actually thought about that coaching your CEO is about how you interact with them, and that’s what this is coming down to. The questions, how you start a meeting? And because I’m thinking, I’ve seen this happen in various presentations over the years to a CEO, where the person who’s in charge of the meeting will say, “I know you’re really busy,” which feels like to me, you’re just setting yourself up for failure, and you want to acknowledge it. So we’re saying, we’re acknowledging that you yourself are feeling a little stressed, as a way of getting them to sort of chime in on that. So maybe, we’ve already covered that. 

Susan: You know, in your example, saying “I know you’re really busy” is making a presumption. To say, “It seems to me you’re really busy,” or “I could perceive that this might be a bad day. Is that true or not true?” helps people bring down their guard a little bit and starts to open that up.

Drew: Okay, so staying with the big picture for a second. I know you’ve worked with a lot of CEOs, and I’m imagining you would have a top three complaints that CEOs often have about their direct reports, maybe not CMOs specifically, but in a general level, like the CEO would talk to them and said, “God, I wish they would just blank.”

Susan: It’s interesting in that I have worked with CEOs over time and CMOs, but I also reached out to some CEO, CMOs. I also read some studies, and it all came back. You know, some of the top things that CEOs complain about is, you know, is this person focused on what my vision is and driving that vision forward? Is this person focused on what is good for the company and everyone in the company, or are they self-serving? And is this person willing to collaborate with me, or do they just want to convince me their way is right? You know, I always say, if the only thing you have in your hand is a hammer, you see everything as a nail. If you just want to hit the nail, it’s setting that aside knowing you have a lot of other tools in the toolbox and you can get business done while attending to the relationship. You know, those three complaints have all to do with the relationship more than, does this person know their stuff when it comes to whatever they’re a subject matter expert on.

Drew: Are they focused on my vision? In other words, are they on the team? Are they following where I think we should be going, focused on what’s good for the company, versus self-serving, and then focused on collaborating versus just doing it again their own way? So what’s interesting to me, let’s start with focused on the vision is, that great CMOs often help CEOs shape the vision, right? Because they help to redefine the values and the vision and the mission, and they’re often brought in at transformative moments. So that’s an interesting one, and it’s an opportunity. But how would a CMO make sure that… I mean, it seems obvious, but I’m gonna ask it anyway, because how do they get to the CEO’s vision? Because not every CEO has a clear vision.

Susan: And you know, that’s where you’re demonstrating you’re collaborating. For me to execute your vision, I need to understand your vision. This is what I’ve heard so far. These are the things I don’t quite understand. You may be helping the CEO see some blind spots they have about their vision. Or if the CEO says, “Well, you know, those are issues I’m still toying with, you know, Option A, B or C,” you know. “Well, I would love to process that with you. You know, be a sounding board. Give you some of my thoughts on strategy, you know, let’s come together and see if we could create something.” You’re kind of hitting, you know, a couple different things that the CEO wants at the same time. And what I love about that is, you know, you don’t want to be siloed into just doing marketing and being seen as a cost center. You really want to be part of the bigger picture. So you are part of the strategy and, you know, the budgeting and this and that, because it sets you up for success, sets the company up for success, sets the CEO up for success. It gives you a seat at the table. And only 10% of CEOs have marketing background or experience. So you need to help them see that you are looking enterprise-wide, and not just, you know, the latest AI or whatever it is that you’re grappling with, your message might get lost that you’re still looking company-wide.

Drew: There’s a lot to unpack there, and I want to start with first a number of folks in our community work with first-time CEOs who are often a lot younger than they are. They might be brilliant engineers who had a product idea, they helped develop it, they also are insecure. But won’t you know that it comes out in a “I’m the smartest person in the room. Just do what I say.” That’s one way it comes out, or two, it comes out as they’re micromanaging because they simply don’t know better. So I think coaching a first-time CEO could be different than coaching an experienced CEO. So let’s focus on that for a second, and we’ve got here is this startup CEO who’s brilliant, no doubt about it, and maybe IQ-wise, the smartest person in the room. But that doesn’t mean they’re a great leader. Doesn’t mean they know how to run an organization and scale it for the long term.

Susan: They rarely are, and believe me, they’re just as insecure as everybody else.

Drew: So let’s talk about the nuances that CMOs need to think about with that first-time CEO, and how they help them along without being, I don’t know, pedantic or there’s a better word that, where they’re sort of diminishing the CEO’s expertise.

Susan: Yeah, that goes to talking a lot about showing that you respect what they do bring to the table, showing that. You want to be part of balancing out what they’re good at, what they’re not good at. “I’m impressed because you have these great, you know, technical products you developed. How can I most help you? I’m very good at looking at, you know, where the potholes are, making sure we have metrics. You know, how can we work together on that?” Quite often, when a person either micromanages because they don’t know better, or, you know, lays down the law, it’s covering up insecurities. So if you’re transparent and you’re willing to show some vulnerability, trying to get down that guard is what you’re looking for, and to be patient that it may not happen overnight. I think some statistic was 60, 70% of CEOs, especially founders, are ADHD, which is a whole other dynamic that you know, you throw in there, you know. So they may, if they’re highly technical or ADHD, they may not have super high emotional intelligence, and that’s okay, but that’s where you demonstrating that you want to work together on the communication kind of goes a long way of bringing them along.

Drew: Thank you for bringing up the ADD. I was about to bring up the “look a squirrel” syndrome that we see a lot and I hear a lot about, and this is particularly problematic for CMOs when the CEO calls and said, “Hey, I just read this thing, or I just saw this thing, or I heard about a company doing this. Why aren’t we doing that exactly?” And then, and they have to go back to the plan, and they have to explain, remember, we have these projects, and these are our priorities, and we agreed on those. And again, you get to this sort of dude/dudette, stick with the program. But it’s hard, so offer some encouragement here on dealing with the ADHD-suffering CEO.

Susan: You know, the ADHD personality usually, not always, but usually, is all about possibilities. They love possibilities. They love the options. And for them, it’s almost like a steam valve. You kind of have to let them get some of it out. And sometimes the way to answer that question is to not answer but ask a question. You know, “Is that something you want to add to our list next week? Let’s brainstorm for 10 minutes on what that would look like, and then I’ll bring back to you how it does or doesn’t fit in everything else we’ve talked about.” You have to give them a little bit of that, like I said, release valve, or they won’t… They’re just bottled up and they don’t know what to do with all those ideas. So it’s kind of gently bringing them back to, “I hear you. I’m not discounting it, but it’s my job to figure out how that slots into the bigger picture, or the program we’ve set up. So I’m going to go there eventually.”

Drew: You know, it’s interesting, I was thinking the companies that, particularly the smaller ones that have, say, an EOS, you know, an Entrepreneur’s Operating System, or they use OKRs, or something, in some ways, should be saved from that because they’ve agreed. We’ve had a planning session. Ironically, they’re not, and it doesn’t seem to help as much as it should. Because, didn’t we all agree that these were our most important rocks? That’s not, you know, words that necessarily a CMO can say to a CEO who just spent the weekend swimming and thinking. And again, there’s no doubt that these individuals are thinking about the business 24 hours a day. That’s what young CMOs do.

Susan: Their short-term memory is kind of crappy, so they want to get it out and tell somebody because they are afraid they’ll forget it, you know. So that’s kind of that. So if you’re the keeper of the ideas, that may be one way to kind of develop a relationship with them. So they feel like they let off the steam. They could feel they could add that idea to the 20 ideas on the side, in case you have to pivot. They don’t feel like they’re shut down. But at the end of the day, it also doesn’t—you don’t feel like you’re always in reactionary mode and can’t set your focus.

Drew: Right. God, there’s so many different places that I want to go with this because there’s the texting CEO who says, “Hey, I just saw this,” you know, in that second, and is expecting a response in that second. So, you know, they are forcing ADHD on their direct reports. The short-term memory thing is just a nightmare. And every once in a while, these folks do have brilliant ideas, but what happens is, if they’re throwing them at you all the time, you just start to go, “Oh God, here’s another one.” It’s very hard to see the good stuff from the bad stuff. Sounds like you’re saying, listen, don’t agree or acknowledge. Develop it a little bit if you can, to see where it might go, keeping an open mind, and then find a place for it on a list, maybe not today, but some time to do more on it. I guess that’s what I took away.

Susan: It’s about being transparent. I love your ideas. I need you to share your ideas with me. Do I have your permission to figure out how to put that in the bigger picture? And when we look at those ideas, I’ll be the keeper of your ideas, which secretly they think is wonderful. But, you know, let’s go back to the common language and boundaries. Let’s work on some ways where you can get those ideas out. They’re captured, they’re not forgotten. But I could also help us stay on the path.

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I think about a CEO and somewhere I saw the best definition of what a leader is supposed to do is set the vision, hire the team to execute the vision, and allocate resources. Full stop. If they do all those things right, set the vision. Here’s where we want to go. Here, team, you’re the team that’s responsible for getting there. And then allocate resources. Do we put more money in sales or marketing or whatever, and obviously work with the CFO to do it? That may or may not be where they’re spending their time, even though that is really the definition of what great leaders do. So is there any hope for a CMO? First of all, they’re going to practice that. They set the vision for the team. They hire their team, and they allocate resources as best they get. How do they, if possible, help the CEO be an actual leader of a company?

Susan: In looking at the examples of where they micromanage or they’re getting into details, and that’s where sometimes you have to ask, what are you getting to here? “Tell me what this discussion is really about. What are you really concerned about? Are you concerned about different people on my team? Are you concerned about—you read some article and you think, you know, the economy is going south? What is really going on here that you’re driven to check into this or check into that?” And they probably don’t know. They’re not going to know at first, but by introducing that question, you’re kind of making them slow down and be a little more thoughtful about the purpose behind their actions.

Drew: So we have a question from the audience about the notion of, because we’ve spent a lot of time on the startup CEO, you know, thinking of a worldwide corporate, you know, Fortune 1000 CEO who, in theory, should be a pretty darn good leader by the time they got there. This isn’t their first rodeo. They’ve worked with good leaders, hopefully. In terms of the CMO training that CEO, what differences do you see in the plan?

Susan: Realizing that maybe there isn’t that many differences, and also realizing that some of their bad habits might have worked in other companies they were in other parts of their career, and if it worked for them in the past, they think it’s going to work for them with this company or this situation. So you know, that’s where you could say, “I see that you really like to XYZ. Has that worked for you in the past, or is there a certain reason why you feel that works for you? You know, let’s talk about this.” And then, you know, you’re kind of helping them reframe some of their experience and where they’re coming from. And again, just you’re trying to help them take their blinders off.

Drew: Right. Where you’re coming from, and all of these questions are always reframed, not from a threatening standpoint. It’s an understanding and helpful. You are there to help execute the vision of the CEO, and that feels like a really healthy framework. And somehow or other, finding some respect for that CEO sort of probably needs to be in there, even if you’re not sure you should. You kind of convince yourself you do; otherwise, they’re gonna feel your sort of lack of love.

Susan: Right. Well, and we’re all human, right? When I was reading the research, the first thing I was thinking about was, how can these CMOs get their message across? You know? So I was getting bought into attachment to the outcome as well. So you’re not going to be perfect every day, but if you kind of keep reminding yourself of some of these principles, or put a note on your laptop or whatever it takes to keep getting you centered back to developing new habits. It’s not easy to develop new habits.

Drew: It isn’t, that is for certain, as I think about my Calm app that has been sitting by my unused for several weeks, but I am recommitting this weekend. Question for you about ego. And it’s funny, you know, Jim Collins’ research talked about the great, the five-star CEO was sort of like the invisible hand who wasn’t taking credit, it was giving credit to everyone underneath him. And then you have the more famous, sort of big ego CEOs who were also, ultimately… even a Jack Welch is not looking as good today as he was when he was getting all the press. Because, I mean, certainly things, he didn’t necessarily leave GE where he should have, or at least some analysts in hindsight are looking at it. So I’m imagining the CEO who is the invisible hand. You’re managing them a lot differently than the out front, big-ego CEO.

Susan: You know, sometimes you really have to start with stroking that ego just a little bit. From my practice with my own clients, sometimes nobody’s ever told them they’re good at what they’re good at, and just acknowledging that and saying that sometimes can bring them down a notch. It may feel like you’re being insincere or something, but we all want to be heard. We all want to be understood, and starting out with what you think they do really well. You’re also saying what you think maybe they don’t do so well in a slight way. Usually, the big ego is a protection device. So you’re trying to be more transparent and vulnerable yourself to encourage them to do the same with energy to energy.

Drew: So one of the questions from the group is, I mean, marketers are expected to build a, if you will, a marketing machine, often that generates demand and drives what’s called pipeline. That’s sort of the number one mandate, if you will. You know, I don’t care what you do, just make sure the pipeline is full. And there’s an irony here because a lot of that is short-term work, right? Versus the longer-term heavy lifting of brand strategy, vision, those kinds of things. The question, I guess, is, don’t we need to build a marketing machine that can have a plan and also be able to be spontaneous and be prepared for whatever the CEO throws at us?

Susan: Yeah, a good CMO does know how to pivot. But beyond that, it kind of again, unfortunately, or fortunately, goes back to asking a lot of questions. “Okay, I understand we need to build that pipeline, but what do we do with that pipeline? Or what if the way we’re building the pipeline changes? These are some of the ways, the risk to just focus singularly on that. You know, you hired me to do what I’m best at, but I also want to understand you, and let’s work together to make that even bigger, as far as what marketing could do.” There is an educational component to it, without a doubt, but you just have to keep at it. And I know it’s tiring and exhausting, and it goes back to taking care of yourself and all those things too.

Drew: So there are moments in every CMO-CEO relationship where there’s a fundamental disagreement, like the CEO says, “No, I want you to spend 100% of your energy on new customer acquisition,” when, in fact, right now, the best opportunity you believe is with current customers and expansion. It’s a fundamental disagreement. It happens all the time. It’s a big strategic decision. How can a CMO navigate it when this is so fundamental? It’s not a small thing. It’s absolutely the biggest decision that the company could probably make at that moment.

Susan: Sometimes you may be talking about the same thing, but you’ve got a different language. It’s like, “Okay, if that’s your focus, then tell me what that looks like. Tell me how that works. Tell me why you think that’s the priority. Can we have a discussion about this? Let me lay out for you what it looks like this path versus that path. These are all the ancillary things that have to go into both of them that I’m working on.” Like I said, CEOs don’t have a lot of marketing backgrounds, so that also means they may be using terminology wrong, and so asking them, “What you’ve done in past jobs, or where we’ve been last year, what does that look like to you?” and challenging them to go a little deeper, without them feeling like they have to do your job for you. But again, it goes back to “I’m not sure I understand because this is what I think’s missing there. Can you help me understand?” You’re trying to reframe their perspective of things. Not only want you on my perspective, but I sure don’t understand that perspective either. How do we come together?

Drew: Yeah, this so reminds me, for those of you who were with the Chris Voss negotiating session, it’s a similar process where you get to this juncture where you know in a hostage negotiation, they ask for something. And the answer that the negotiator says is, “How am I supposed to do that?” Now, the tone is different, probably your low DJ voice, so “How am I supposed to do that?” Anyway, it’s a very similar thing. You are not asking them actually to write your marketing plan, but you are asking them to express where how this thing is going to play out. And I also heard the common language, which is so important. It’s funny. We talk a lot about sales and marketing having common language and actually defining what’s a lead and what’s an opportunity and what’s that but we’ve never talked about it with the CEO, but we need to, and that’s a really important insight. So I appreciate that.

Susan: You know, I remember early days of coaching. There’s like long lists you can find of good coaching questions, and I used to look at those and read those before meetings, just to help me keep in the frame of mind of how to reframe the conversation, how to switch the way we’re communicating.

Drew: Good coaching questions. Okay, I know I’m going to be on ChatGPT right when we hang up. But seriously, I think that this is how you train yourself to be—if we’re going to train our CEOs to be better CEOs, we’re going to have to be better coaches. And like it or not, it’s just the way it is. And probably the process of training yourself to be a better coach will make you a better leader all the way around because you’re doing it, you do it with your direct reports, and you practice that, and you teach them how to do it, and then suddenly you’re a culture of well-coached individuals. Can you share a story? Oh, I know, first, so the CEO, for the most part, particularly a PE-backed, VC-backed, are focused on short-term revenue growth. They’re not necessarily thinking, “I’m going to build a great, you know, the next Apple or Google.” They’re thinking, “I’m going to get this company from 50 million to 100 million, and then they’re going to flip it,” so they’re just looking at short-term growth. And I’m just curious when that is the obvious gorilla in the room that we cannot ignore. But marketing is rarely a direct line. It’s rarely spend dollars and get output. So there’s a journey that the customers go on, there’s a journey that marketers go on. How do you help a CEO get to the point where they’ll say, “Hey, I respect the value you’re bringing to the organization, beyond driving leads into pipeline”?

Susan: I think part of it is asking yourself, “Am I okay with being in a company where short-term growth is a priority? Can I work in this environment? Can I do this?” Because sometimes that is the environment. And that doesn’t mean that you’re not continuing to stay focused on the long term, but if you’re not comfortable with where you are, then that’s something to explore too, or else you’re always, like I said, walking around with that hammer.

Drew: Thank you for saying that. And so basically what I heard was, that’s reality, accept it or leave it. And if you accept it, you sort of, in some ways, have to accept the challenge of short-term growth, and you got to do everything you can. Now, part of my question was not just focused on marketing and marketing metrics. Part of my question was, you started by saying you want to be more than the CMO. You want to have a seat at the table. You want to be perceived as a leader, and so we talk about this notion of CMO plus. And do you have thoughts on, the CMO gets hired to drive growth, right? Just like sales are hired to drive growth, and they’re often from the CEO perspective, measured on the same bar. What does it take in your mind to get the CEO to start thinking about you as someone who is more than, “just the marketing person”?

Susan: Again, it goes back to that language of using the language of the CEO. So maybe it’s not growth they talk about. Maybe it’s penetration, or it’s awareness, or however they like to use it, and show that you’re right there with them on that journey, and that you can handle, you know, instead of the CEO saying, “Oh, okay, let’s have a person in charge of the digital part of marketing, and the person in charge of this kind of marketing,” and also, your job’s getting fragmented, and you’re not set up for success anymore. So heading that off of, you know, “I want to expand my team to have somebody do this and somebody do that,” and showing that you’re not in a silo of what you’re looking at, but you’re keeping their best interest and the company’s interest at heart, no matter what the short-term focus is versus the long-term focus. This is what you’re paying me to do. This is what I’m doing.

Drew: So can you share a story about a CEO who came to appreciate a direct report who subtly coached them?

Susan: Yes, actually I can. And it was kind of weird because it was a conversation I just had yesterday. But it’s a CEO that I’ve worked with off and on since like 2018, founder of the company doing it 25 years. But it was his first job out of college, the only thing he knows, and he hired someone as a consultant to help them as they expand and to look at more marketing channels. That person had such depth of experience in a bunch of other companies in the same industry that they did have a lot of ideas to bring to the table, but they never stopped saying, “I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t started this company, you know, we wouldn’t be working if you hadn’t achieved what you’ve gotten done to this point.” It was a level of respect which he actually had replaced somebody who didn’t have that level of respect, quite frankly. And so he came in as a consultant. Eventually, he was taking over, you know, as a fractional over everything marketing, eventually started taking on more of a CEO role. And when the founder decided he wanted to exit himself from the CEO role, you know, he tapped this person to be the interim to help him in the search. And, you know, eventually this interim CEO is now the CEO, so he came in as a consultant, and you know, two years later he’s the CEO. As you know, they’ve tripled their growth in the last five years, I think.

Drew: Amazing. So yeah, I mean, it’s a common story. It’ss funny because there are a lot of CEOs who are really good at starting companies, and then they sort of stop being really good. And there’s a rare exception to that. But for the most part, the ones that recognize it sort of recognize they’re serial entrepreneurs. They start it, they get it, they move it on, they hire a team, and they move out. Not everyone is that enlightened.

Susan: Well, he wasn’t ready to exit that role because the person that was there before didn’t have that respect for what he had achieved so far, and it was really finding the right person that he felt wasn’t going to tear down the brand he had built that helped them be able to collaborate and move it forward.

Drew: So we have a number of CMOs in our community who are looking to either want to switch roles or they’re in transition already. What questions should they ask their prospective CEOs to help them understand the mindset and working style so that they’re not in this, you know, kind of a hopeless situation where you just, there’s not going to be any connection between CEO and CMO?

Susan: I would say it kind of starts with understanding your own strengths. Sometimes our strengths are so innate to us, we just don’t really realize we have them. So it’s being able to communicate. This is what I have offered. This is what I could bring to the table. You love ideas. I’m great at processes and procedures or whatever that may be. So you’re showing that CEO how you’re going to fill holes. You know, so much is changing technology, environment, business that, yeah, titles are going to morph, things are going to morph. But how can you take what you’re really good at and everything you’ve done so far and help them as things morph forward? CEO can’t hire you if they don’t understand what you can do.

Drew: Yeah, it’s funny as I think about this sort of analogy. The future of the thing is, while the CEO, in effect, hires position players, in truth, it’s not clear divisions, right? It’s not a first base and a third base. And you’re, you know, you stay away in your territory. There’s a much more fluid leadership model. So understanding what you’re good at, what the CEO is good at, what areas that you can cover together, and what weaknesses you fill, seems like a really important part of this. Alright, well, we’re getting close to the end of this thing. I have a number of things that I have sort of jotted down. Just, again, work on your listening skills and your ability to ask well-framed questions and respond to what the CEO is telling you, and probe a little bit, and you sort of mirror it and probe to advance the conversation, don’t just assume because they’ve said it once you heard what it was they were saying, or you understood it. It feels like you need to read the room and you need to understand what’s happening. And if they’re stressed out, call it out. Don’t ignore it, because it’s gonna hurt you. Set up a meeting another day. Another thing is, even if you’re working for an ADHD CEO who’s throwing ideas at you, you know, at midnight, as painful as that is, pause, take a breath. Don’t assume the idea is bad, and then figure out a way to process all these ideas and work with the CEO to do that so that it’s not constantly look it’s a squirrel, and you got to go chase that squirrel too. So alright, that was a lot, but help us here, Susan, and wrap up with two do’s and one don’t when it comes to coaching one’s boss.

Susan: The do is to use those coaching tactics, those coaching skills. The other do is to help them see what you’re doing so they can learn the coaching skills themselves. You know, when I work with clients, I always say, “I’m helping you develop your inner coach, and I’m going to go away.” You’re kind of trying to do the same thing. And, you know, the don’t would be put that hammer aside, you know, let go of your focus on the end game because what the two of you come to together may actually be very different than what you thought it was going to be, and it may be even better, but if you’re not open to that, that won’t surface.

Drew: Yeah, I love that. Just don’t be so fixated on what you thought you went into that room to sell that you wanted to achieve because you very likely to have misalignment. Okay. Well, Susan, thank you. So how can listeners engage with you and or recommend you to their CEOs who may need a coach?

Susan: The best way is through LinkedIn, the contact info on there is my direct email, direct phone. So no problems getting to me. I wanted to offer something I use as a kickstart in relationships and kind of resetting your communication. So happy to offer that to your listeners at a discount, for anybody who’s here today, and you know, also just happy to have my schedule apps on there. Happy to have you just grab a 15-minute spot and, you know, pick my brain on something, and we’ll go from there.

Drew: I appreciate that, and appreciate you. And the fact that we actually met through Duke alumni, which I love is awesome. So yep, hashtag Forever Duke. Thank you for that.

If you’re a B2B CMO and you want to hear more conversations like this one, find out if you qualify to join our community of sharing, caring, and daring CMOs at CMOhuddles.com.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that’s me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I’m your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!