While being a female leader in marketing does come with its fair share of challenges, it can be a fulfilling career full of excitement and endless opportunities. A leader must have the technical skills and knowledge required for their position, and female leaders have many additional strengths to bring this role. Women typically score higher than their male counterparts in the soft skills and emotional intelligence that are so valuable to leadership, bringing strengths in conflict management, flexibility, teamwork and more to the table.1Read a little bit more about the advantages of having women in leadership positions here.
As a female-founded agency, Augustine has a particularly high number of females in leadership positions, who are encouraged daily to take on new challenges and are supported across every facet of their careers. The result of such a culture is incredible work delivered to clients and personally rewarding careers for each of our Visioneers. So take it from us – heed this Visioneer advice on your journey towards marketing leadership.
Find a Mentor: First things first, find a mentor. This person should be someone you admire or aspire to be like, whether you are inspired by their level of industry experience, their work ethic and attitude or their ideas and creative problem-solving. This person should be a good listener, someone who can give constructive feedback (we all need to hear it!) and support you in finding your voice and success. Befriend them, seek their opinion and share your work or ideas. Finding a mentor is the beginning of your budding marketing leadership role, as they can help support you along your journey. In fact, 67% of women rate having a mentor as extremely important to their career growth.2
Fail Fast: Women, more so than men, see failure as a sign that they lack ability3 versus a circumstantial error, which can hold them back professionally. A leadership career in marketing is all about taking chances, and throughout your journey, you’ll make countless mistakes — so it’s incredibly important to fail fast and not take it too personally. Mistakes develop the critical learning and resilience you need to become a true leader. It never gets easier to make a mistake, but you will get through it faster, and come out stronger every time. Sometimes, the best ideas come from mistakes. Never forget that the invention of the pretzel was the result of a happy accident. Maybe what you perceive as your biggest mistake is simply one step in your journey to creating your own pretzel.
Stay Curious: Albert Einstein once said, “I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.” There is possibly nothing more important to a career as a leader in marketing than the ability to come up with creative solutions, which are, in essence, a byproduct of curiosity. Following your curiosity, a train of thought or an inquiry is the difference between an average employee and a future leader. Read the articles, follow agencies whose work you admire, attend the lunch-and-learns, ask questions and keep an open mind. Thinking outside the box could be the key to your next project’s success.
…and Stay Inspired:
The key to staying driven to learn new things and persist through failure comes from staying inspired. Inspiration can come from many places. It may come to you from some of the above suggestions, but sometimes the best way to get inspired is to make room in your life for simply being. Prioritize your inner life, unrelated to work. Give yourself downtime! Make time for family, binge-watch your guilty pleasure show, cook the recipes you have saved on Instagram, listen to music – in short, pursue your passions. Several Visioneers have a knack for putting their best ideas together when their mind is really wandering, like in the middle of the night, while driving or even in the shower. (Though you might want to invest in some waterproof sticky notes – it’s tough to write things down the traditional way in the shower.)
Use Your Voice: Whether to offer an idea, raise a concern or ask a question, being unafraid to use your voice is one of the most important things you can do to become a leader. Getting lost among bigger, louder voices can be easy, but trust your gut. What’s the worst thing that could happen? A team member might disagree with you, but that’s really not as bad as if you have a killer idea you never shared or if something you almostpointed out could have saved the day. You may also feel shy asking a question about something you heard but didn’t understand — perhaps you feel like it’s something you “should” already know. But again, it’s better to ask now than to lose out on understanding key information. 45% of women business leaders say it’s difficult for women to speak up in virtual meetings4, so our best Visioneer advice is to fight the urge to stay quiet, and share your brilliance!
Ready to start your career path toward marketing leadership, create captivating campaigns for our clients, and work with some amazing leaders? Augustine Agency is the perfect environment for all future leaders in marketing, and we can’t wait to hear from you.
Sources:
1: Soloman Amart, “Why Everyone Wins With More Women in Leadership,” Forbes, Feb 7, 2023 hCps://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/02/07/why–everyone–wins–withmore–women–in–leadership/?sh=44a7d1fc3cdd
2: “The Sponsor Dividend,” Coqual hCps://coqual.org/wp–
content/uploads/2020/09/CoqualTheSponsorDividend_KeyFindingsCombined090720.pdf
3: Rachel Simmons, “Why Failure Hits Girls So Hard,” Time, August 25, 2015 hCps://3me.com/4008357/girls–failure–prac3ce/
4: “Catalyst Workplace Survey Reveals Op3mism About Gender Equity During Covid-19, but Skep3cism on Commitment of Companies (Media Release),” Catalyst, June 30, 2020 hCps://www.catalyst.org/media–release/workplace–gender–equity–covid–19/