And Carrie On

I recently presented a presentation at the CASE Annual Conference on Marketing and Branding on 15 things I wish I had known as a new CMO. At a dinner with colleagues one evening, one of the dinner hosts mentioned the presentation was great. She encouraged me to write about some of the topics I discussed. I know that writing about all 15 things at one time may be a little overwhelming, so I figured a great place to start is with four mistakes.

My Four Mistakes:

Here are four mistakes that I think leaders can make. And just to be clear, many of these are from my own personal experience.

I feel like as higher education leaders, we often talk about the great things we are doing, and we don’t share the missteps. That creates a moment that rising leaders can’t see a full picture of growth. It also creates a moment where a fear of messing up feels unsurmountable. To help avoid that, I’m being candid here on mistakes that I’ve made, what I’ve learned in the process, and how to avoid these pitfalls.

Taking on Monkeys

When people would come with problems or questions, I would offer to take the thing they needed. It could have been putting together a media plan, following up on something, or developing a schedule. Regardless, I took it on, and that meant I spent most of the day chasing others’ monkeys instead of doing my own work. Then, every evening, I had to spend hours doing my own tasks. It wasn’t sustainable, but even worse, it didn’t teach my team the skills they needed. As I leader, I had to get better at giving those back and working with them to support them handing the they needed help with instead of just doing it for them.

Thinking You Must Have the Best Ideas

As a leader, you want to help and to solve problems. Because of that, sometimes we feel an immense sense of pressure to have the best of ideas. However, we don’t always. I distinctly remember a project where someone else had an incredible idea. I stepped aside to let them run point, and I served in a support role for this project. Coming home that night, I told my husband I felt like I had failed as a leader because I didn’t have the best idea and the right answer for the project. He disagreed, quite strongly. He countered that the fact I was willing to step aside and let someone else own the moment made me a better leader. It empowered my team and created a culture where collaboration around what was best was the determining factor, not who came up with the idea.

P.S. Here’s the video that came out of that project

Shying Away from Budget

I just was spending because it was planned, but I wasn’t keeping up with plan versus actual spend. That meant anything that popped up was not factored in. Some numbers started not adding up, and I did some digging. By the time I got my head around the budget, I was five figures over budget as a brand new leader. Not the message you want to send about your competence. Thankfully, I was able to tighten up and made up the overage, but it put me in a reactive mode for the rest of the year. I learned from this the value of remaining hands-on with the budget to make sure it can be a proactive and strategic tool.

Not Learning Your Leader

Every leader is different, and so it’s critically important to learn how a leader works, what is important to them, and what things they want to be very engaged in. I was working on my first key project after taking a new job, and I didn’t take into account how the leader wanted to be involved in the project. As a result, I gave her a final draft instead of engaging her in an iterative process of crafting something together. That mistake meant that everything I gave her had to be redone and the relationship took a hit as well. The good news is this can be overcome. I learned how she wanted to be involved, and I was able to build a strong process that worked for her and made the relationship a good one. While it made for a bumpy few months, I learned a lesson on this one that I’ll keep with me.

Closing Thoughts

These are just a few of the mistakes I’ve made as a leader, that I think new leaders are more prone to encounter. My hope in today’s post is these mistakes provide a realistic look at leadership. Despite having missteps, we can still achieve great things.