I believe that effective management is the highest impact lever your organization can pull, not only to improve your results, but also the well-being of your team. To that end, I focus on developing teams of multipliers who establish and grow a culture of “collective viral intelligence.”

On my team, we’re always learning and always growing. My role as a leader is to facilitate that learning and growth as much as possible. I take a servant leadership approach that’s anchored back to three key pillars…

Establishing trust

The Trust Battery is a concept that originates from an interview with Shopify founder, Tobi Lutke.

The idea is simple… In every relationship in our lives, every single day, we’re either charging the Trust Battery or we’re draining it. There is no standing still. That means it’s on every one of us to charge the Trust Battery every day. 

We are responsible for over-communication. We are responsible for asking tough questions and seeking clarity. We are responsible for hitting our commitments. We are responsible for being reliable. 

When we take on this commitment, we foster a culture of trust. I can trust that you’ll do your job, you can trust that I’ll do mine. 

When we fail to do these things, we drain the Trust Battery. The battery drains slowly, and if we let it drain for too long, it will eventually get to zero. We will lose trust in one another, and once the battery is at zero, it’s impossible to charge back up again.

Aligning around a shared scoreboard

To speak the same language, we have to share the same scoreboard. Fundamentally, Marketing has four broad mandates:

• Reach - We need to be in front of enough people within our ICP to hit our business goals.

• Engagement - Those people need to be aware of our value, engage with our messaging, and have an affinity for our brand.

• Conversion - We need to convert these engaged prospects into happily paying customers.

• Evangelism - Once they’re customers, we need to mobilize them into evangelists who will help us spread our message to others.

Every member of my team is expected to own at least one number related to these mandates. This ownership is essential to driving performance. We don’t like opinions, we like facts, and this scoreboard gives us a set of shared facts to rally around. 

Committing to a role

The first and most important step to being successful on this team is truly committing to your role. Your role will be defined in Annual Planning and Quarterly Position Planning and you should have an abundance of clarity on your primary focuses. If you can commit yourself to this role, you’re on your way to thriving here.

Your Role

A team full of quarterbacks will never win a game.

Every great team is comprised of people committed to executing their specific role to perfection. Our team is no different.

On our team, we’re extremely deliberate about How We Write Job Descriptions. In your role, you should have a clearly defined mission, defined outcomes that you’re responsible for achieving, and competencies you’re expected to continually develop.

If you stay focused on your role’s mission, deliver on your role’s outcomes, and develop your role’s competencies, you are thriving in your role.

Your Team

Great teams don’t just commit to a role, they commit to each other.

Every quarter, after Quarterly Planning, we will do Quarterly Position Planning . This will define the action plan that will hit our goals on the quarter. It will also define how we’ll work together over the course of the quarter to collaborate more effectively.

If you consistently put your team first, support your peers, and develop relationships across the organization, you are thriving on your team.

How to Change Your Role

There may come a time when you wish to change your role. Maybe you’re interested in a promotion! Maybe there’s a new opportunity coming up that you’re excited about! Maybe we need to find a role that’s a better fit for your skills.

If this is ever a consideration on either end, it should be discussed during our Weekly 1:1s. We will rarely change roles mid-quarter, but plan on making changes to align with our Quarterly Position Planning .

What We Do If Your Role is a Bad Fit

Some roles don’t work out. Like it or not, that’s a fact of life. One of the hardest things to determine is how and when to take action when a role isn’t working as intended. On our team, there are three primary lenses we view these situations through to determine potential solutions.

• Will: Do you want to do the job? Does it bring you energy?

• Skill: Are you capable of doing the job? Can you deliver on the mission and outcomes necessary to be successful?

• Clarity: Do you understand what success looks like? Do you know what the job is?

If any of those items are off, we develop a Coaching Plan to work on the item. If any item feels insurmountable, we will determine an Exit Plan that makes sense for both parties.

The other potential reason a role may not work out is strategic misalignment. Sometimes needs shift, strategic focuses change, and roles don’t make sense anymore. Sometimes the skills required to thrive at one point in the business shift from the skills required to thrive in the new point of the business. We try to plan these conversations around our Quarterly Position Planning