MWE 120 Nancie McDonnell Ruder-sr marketers scale to new heights FINAL

Marketing leadership roles require a diverse set of skills. Because as you all know, marketing is a big umbrella that a lot of different functions and channels and skill sets and aptitudes fall under. Today's guest surveyed tons of marketing and wrote a book on her findings to help senior marketers maximize their potential and scale the heights. If you're looking to move up the marketing ladder within your company, today's episode is a must listen. My guess Nancy McDonald Rooter is the owner of Noetic Consultants and wrote a book called How Senior Marketers Scale the Heights. She's joining us today to share insights from her book along with her own 25 year career where she's worked with a lot of big brands with the Leo Burnett company including Procter And Gamble, Eli, Lily, the Gap, Lexmark Computers, and her own consulting business where she's had clients including Samsung, pep CEO, Nike, Marriott, Mayo Clinic, and Discovery. Nancy's also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the creator of the Noetic Art and science assessment that we're gonna be discussing today. Welcome to marketing with empathy.

The podcast that helps content marketers more confidently navigate the world of brand storytelling. I'm your host, Sarah Panous, and I've spent the last 20 years creating and growing successful editorial brand storytelling strategies teams and operations. People are craving connections, and I'm on a mission to help brands better connect with their audience By creating content, people actually want to consume. Think of this show like your creative content marketing jam session mix with chicken soup for the soul. Let's hear from today's sponsors and then jump right into today's episode. Okay, Nancy. We talk a lot about story selling and content marketing on this show. And and often how it's this blend of art and science, but, you know, too often people might lean too hard one way or the other, which creates gaps.

And when we were talking before this show, you had brought that up as well. as, like, this this this blend of art and science and these gaps in our careers that can slow our professional growth. And it's where I want to start the conversation today because you found a way to help marketers navigate through this with your knowetic art and science assessment. So will you walk us through how this assessment works exactly?

Sure. Yes. I'm I'm happy to should really be successful in marketing in in the long run across one's career, you know, as you said, you really need to avail yourself of that full range of skills. across art and science. So within my book, how senior marketers scale the heights, we have an art and science assessment So in the book itself, it's self directed. And, you know, with a with a pen or a pencil in your hand, you can you can take it and you can get to a score. And that score will tell you whether you are more art leaning or science leaning, or you may be balanced in the middle. And we actually work it on a scale where if you were perfectly balanced, meaning you are, you know, equally strong at art and science, you would be at a 0.

So in this case, 0 is good. And so if you are more art leaning, you're gonna have a positive score, If you're more science leaning, you're gonna have a negative score. Negative is not negative in this case. It's just showing which, you know, which side of things you lean on. And then importantly, once you have that score, so if you would be, you know, heavily art, you might you might have a positive score of, like, a 26. If you were just a little bit leaning science, you might have, like, a negative 3. So wherever you fall in that range, the book also has a full toolkit of resources that can help you strengthen whichever side you need, including if you do fall in the range of being balanced to help you continue to hone those skills on both sides. So it's pretty self directed and and self serve, but it does only give you you know, quite frankly, like, the surface level when it comes to what are the underlying skills within art and science that you may be strongest or weakest in.

So outside of the book, we offer workshops, live, and virtual, where we can take it down to the individual level where we can actually identify for you where are you strongest where do you have most opportunity areas? So for example, in in art, you might, you might have a gap or a weakness when it comes to intuition or ideation, for example, which sit on the art side or in science, maybe you have a gap data analysis, just as as an example. And then we work on tailored work plans to help you figure out how you want to spur that growth. And it's also really interesting when we do it in a workshop environment because people get their individual scores and their individual skill assessment landscape, but we can also roll it up and look at a team. And that can be really instructive. For example, we were doing this with a team of marketing leaders that were that click below the chief marketing officer So we had about twenty people in the room. And, collectively, they were more typically science leaning. And then there were a couple things when it came to the art side that they were collectively, notably low on, but there were a couple people in the room who were strong. So it can be great from a team perspective too because the idea is that, you know, not everybody is gonna be strong at everything, and part of it is availing yourself of the right resource at the right time so that you can be sure that you are leaning into the art and the science where and when needed, even if that means tapping into the expertise of others.

Because if you have a key strength that your team lacks, you're definitely gonna wanna lean a lot into that. But Also, depending upon how you want to grow in your career, the more senior you get, the reality is is that you really need to avail yourself of that full range. So if you do have a notable blind spot or gap, you're gonna wanna make sure that you do what you can to at least make it less of a weakness, it probably won't become your biggest strength. Typically growing up, like, people have some sort of a leaning I personally grew up very much artful. I was like, all art. No science. And I made a point. I'm like a lead living breathing example of someone who really went after the science side.

I I chose a master's program that was very quantitative. so that I could really learn how to analyze data and and get strong in that side. So, you know, depending upon where you wanna go in your career, depending upon the team that you are with and and what their makeup is, you're really gonna wanna look at each and both. of strengthening where you are not as strong and then also leaning into the strength you have.

I would say I'm the same where I was mostly art, but then 20 years in corporate made me a lot more science minded of having to defend and track and analyze everything through the years. And so now I feel like I definitely approach things with the blend. I talk about and data, which would be like the art and science for sure of how how you bridge into it. Are there any, like, key things that you've found that help a marketer scale to new heights, you know, what you talk about in your book. And I'll definitely include a link to your book as well in the show notes for so you can go a lot deeper into all of all of this. But I would love just to kinda hear your take on how to help all of us listening be more successful in our career

Yeah. I'm happy to speak to that. And that really was the impetus for the book, Sarah, was to try to unpack what made these senior marketers so success So I, I've just been really blessed in my career to have access to and, and work with so many notable accomplished marketers, and I wanted to look at that. Like, what are their ingredients for success? So a couple of really key things, and I can tell any, you know, reader, potential reader that it we go deep into all of it in in the book. One of the biggest things is really striving to be a generalist. There's great power in being a generalist often being a generalist gets a bad rap in our world. You know, people think Jack of all trades, it's always followed by the criticism master of none. but that's actually only a partial quote.

the full quote is master of none is better than master of

1,

which is to say that particularly in marketing, but it's also been well documented across fields that really leaning in to the horizontal learning, not just vertical learning. So it's good to have a specialty, but at the end of the day, you really need that horizontal learning. You really need to know a lot about a lot because it helps us in terms of our ability to be a really avid learner and to get up learning curves that are steep and to be really creative problem solvers. So the the power of being a generalist is is probably the one of the biggest things and then a close cousin to that of how these marketers really scale is by leaning into learning and really being all about curiosity. Curiosity is actually the opposite of fear, and our brains are wired for fear. So if we're doing something new and particularly if we're, like, highly incompetent at it or consciously incompetent as we can talk about. You know, you're you're fearful. You you feel embarrassed.

You feel weird. But the folks who are most successful in this space, they just really embrace that and and they embrace the learning and they strive to just stay in a curious state and let go of the of the fear side of things. And then lastly, what I'll say, and again, there's a lot of other things in the book that that we go into, but I think this this whole way of leaning into the art skills or the science skills and and knowing when to lean into 1 or the other. And I think your, your whole approach with storytelling of of bringing art and the science in it is a great example of that. You know, you can't tell great stories without both. And that's really true in in marketing overall. And so successful marketers know that, and they know when to lean into this or that skill on on either side of that range.

Got it. That's so interesting about the being a generalist. You're the first person I've heard lately. That's talked about this, but I can see your point of as marketers and as senior marketers, marketers have a lot of things under that umbrella. Right? There's so many different facets to marketing. So as a senior marketer, I could see, like, if you want to keep advancing up, it is smart to know a little bit about everything to stay open and creative and curious and leaning in on all those teams to be able to innovate and to think of new things

Yes. And that range of, you know, things you're gonna be caring for. So now, you know, you get the promotion and now you have data and analytics under you, and you didn't have that before. You have e commerce on you. So that's a key reason. And then the innovation that you mentioned is another key reason. Marketing continues to face innovation and create innovation. So now the latest flavor is AI.

So if you're not willing to learn and and really come to know these new areas, you're you're just gonna get eclipsed and kind of back yourself into a corner because marketing by its very nature will continue to invent and reinvent itself.

And so from your research and what you do, what role does empathy play then in our professional success?

Yeah. So empathy is so key in our lives in general, but if if we're thinking about particularly how marketers go about their craft. If you're staying truly close to your customers, if you're really putting your customers at the center, you are not assuming what they want or need, but you're really avidly and continually listening to what they want or need. And that is really where empathy comes in. So, again, it's staying curious, but it's also asking great questions and setting any judgment or bias that you may have aside. And and that's really hard when you're sitting inside the walls, be they virtual or actual walls of an organization because You feel great about your product or service that you're offering, but that might not be where your customers are or how it fits into your customer's lives might not be what you assume. So really being able to do marketing well and staying relevant over time, I believe, is all about empathy.

Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. And I know your agency works with a lot of marketers. You work with a lot of different companies. Can you share some examples of how all of this thinking has helped professional scale to new heights in their careers.

Yeah. So a couple of examples come to mind. So in in our company, what we're doing is strengthening inside the house, if you will, And so we work on market research and brand side of things. So we're, you know, practitioners in that space, but we also do training and coaching. So we're both practitioners and and teachers, if that makes sense. On the training and coaching side of things, One literal example would be this organization that we we recently were doing this art and science workshop for and just the way in which they were able to step out of themselves and step into each other's seats to really see the different gaps and and strengths. And they were coming out of their worst year in their retail global history and into their best year, and and so much of it was gonna rise and fall on their ability to be cohesive with one another and their ability to really exercise empathy and show value to their franchises, which really are the ones who who run the business. So that's that's an example.

you know, on the, on more the the brand side of things, we recently have worked with a global leadership company, which is a fascinating space, and they were standing up their global brand for the first time. And as they were doing that, ton of science up front. They they had not done a global research study in in quite some time. They didn't have a beat on the market in a post pandemic world of, you know, what are people looking for today when it comes to leadership in a in a corporate setting? So lots of science with robust research, but then we needed to get very artful when it came to, bringing all of that together. to tell the story to redefine their brand, their brand story, their unique value proposition, And as importantly in the art side of it and pulling the science in at every step was getting alignment within their organization, you know, people are very long tenured there. They have really strong feelings about who the brand is, so bringing people along. But, you know, it's not always, You know, those examples are both global large companies, the names of which you would easily know. but sometimes we're working with, you know, a smaller organization that's standing up their brand for the first time.

And what's exciting in those situations, Sarah, is that time and again, I find that, like, in their bones. They understand the importance of understanding their customer and that empathy, and and they know They really have a good sense, but they just haven't codified it. They haven't done the steps of the research and they haven't pulled it into brand expression. And so those can be exciting and impactful examples as well.

And so with your consultancy, when your clients are coming to you, what would you say are the the main reasons why someone would look to you and your team to come in as a consultancy to help them think through this and how it can help elevate all of them professionally.

primarily, people are coming with either brand challenges or people, aka leader, challenges or both. So on the brand side of things, this would be an organization that perhaps has never codified who they are as a brand. So they've been, you know, doing things in marketing, but they're not really sure if any of it is, like, cohesive in a strategy or perhaps they are a very well known brand, but something's changed. You know, maybe growth is now flatter clining. They have a new competitive set. Even just they have a new CEO or CMO who believes they're not being subject enough in that space. They haven't done research with their audience in a while. Their audience has changed.

So those are many of the things that would happen in in the brand space. In the people space, oftentimes, would be a leader who is struggling with the skill sets in their marketing team. So they need to level up. They might have had a reorg. they might, have people new in their seats. They might be coming in with fresh eyes and saying, you know, we're just not being strategic about how we're going about this. And so those those kinds of needs on the people side would result in, training curriculums, live or virtual And then also on the people side of things, we do a lot of coaching of senior marketing leaders who are typically high potentials and or, high performers who may just need that extra amplification for their skills, and that can be on the marketing side, as well as on the leadership side. And I'll I'll give you a quick example in this space because it's so dead on with empathy, deep in the throes of

2020,

we were hired to coach a woman who was standing up a new, research function in in a large company. So she's coming in to create it. And this is something that she had done in her past life, super bright, She was struggling in a new culture, a 100% remote environment. She didn't have resources. And her style and her strengths were just not on the empathy side of the equation, and we were certified in discs you're familiar with that assessment. And so you can actually look at people's disc styles to see how naturally does empathy come. And through the coaching sessions, we would just have her practice sitting in the shoes of the people that she needed to influence and lo and behold, you know, it was really just a habit to form. And we watched her as she grew this function and she started to kinda come out of the struggle of it.

It was all about decoding primarily internally, honestly, what people were struggling with themselves so she could meet them where they were, and then she could be taking whatever, you know, she needed to get done or persuade them on and bring it in terms that made more sense for them. So that to me is just one of these, like, blossoming empathy examples, and also an example of just where coaching just helps people unlock. You know, sometimes people think coaching is like when someone has a performance issue, that is not when you wanna get a coach that for that, you need a, you know, performance improvement plan. Coaching is when you want to retain great talent who may or may not be having a bit of a struggle, but who you believe that if they spend time in that reflection, and doing that work will be able to unlock or unlock even further. And that's really purposeful and and wonderful work that we love to do.

That's a great example because it is so hard sometimes to put yourself in someone else's shoes. And so having some guidance around how to do that can help you grow that much quicker. And I I've seen that with senior executives and directors, VPs of different leaders in the all the way down to junior. I mean, there's so much learning at every level. So, guys, listening whatever level you are right now, you can lean in and learn this to advance your career no matter what level you're but I think it's important to think about that art and science balance. Before we wrap up, what would be like one thing that you advise everyone to do and take away as an action step following this episode.

So this may feel a little left field So I'll explain it once I say I say it, but I would say understand and cultivate your relationship with fear and courage. Our brains are wired for fear. And and that's not our fault. That's just the way our brains are wired. And so when we go to embark on anything that involves learning, stretching ourselves, we're gonna start in a fear mode. So and and including, you know, anything that catches us unaware, we're gonna start in a fear mode. My my kids joke that, like, if I text them and I say, hey. Can you give me a quick call? We have an agreement now.

Like, I never say that without saying it's nothing bad. think, am I in trouble? Something that happened? Right. because that's just how our brains are. So if we really wanna lean into learning and growing and scaling. We need to understand whether we're sitting in fear mode. and if we are pushing ourselves from that into our curiosity and our courage.

How do you do that

A lot of it is just a mindfulness about what fear feels like.

Mhmm.

There are specific places in your body where you will feel fear One of the key ones that I get is if it's really a fearful moment, like somebody, you know, cut me off in the car kind of thing, I'll get, like, a tingling in my forearms. A lot of people get a feeling in their stomach or a tightness in their head. So being mindful of your own physical sensations as well as just taking that pause between something happening and your reaction. So if you take that second to pause and say, like, where am I? And do I need to push myself out of this fear place. Lastly, I sometimes, this may sound a little silly, but, I will sometimes picture fear as a physical thing. I pictured as kind of this bold up, like, dark shadow that is kind of amoeba like, and I will picture it, and I'll say, okay, fear, you know, there you are. And I'll invite it to sit down next to me, listen to what it has to say, And then I'll say thank you and tell it to go away. Does that sound crazy?

No. It doesn't. Definitely doesn't to me. I think that's cool. I've never heard anybody explain it in that way because we don't wanna be fearful. Right? Nobody goes around wanting to be afraid to, like, try something new or to speak up or to take a risk. Like, it is scary in our, like you said, our brains wanna protect our bodies, and that's the way of protecting. So sometimes fear is really good because it prevent us from walking down that dark alley that we shouldn't go down.

But oftentimes in the day to day of our work, and I think especially Esmar -- and especially those of us in the content space. We have to be taking risk. We have to be extra, extra creative. I feel like with, like, all the pressure on top of us to make sure that it drives business results. And so there is, like, that level of getting that thicker skin and and being okay in having that resilience to work through that fear. So that's why I asked you how because there's a lot of different techniques you hear, and and it's always really interesting to hear what works for people. So thank you for sharing that. I don't think it sounds crazy at all.

I'll I'll give you one other quick one, which is, you know, the whole notion of scaling the heights, and I call the marketers that I interviewed Jackson Gills comes from that, you know, old nursery rhyme, technical up the hill, and they come tumbling down. And the reason that I use that is because marketers talk about this, you know, the importance of just not living in fear. And, and so the idea is that these Jackson Jills, you know, they're scaling, but they take tumbles. And when they tumble, they just pick themselves up and dust themselves off. So that's another great visual, I think, that when something you feel like it goes wrong, don't look at it as, oh, wow. I failed, but rather, what did I learn? And I'm just gonna dust myself off and and go again and know that that learning is gonna get you further than where you were the last time. So that can be another way I think of just flipping it so that you're not living in the fear part of it, but you're using it as a tool for insight.

Yeah. It reminds me when my kids were in preschool, the preschool they went to had this incredible saying, and I still repeat it to myself, like, 10 plus years later that they said mistakes help your brain grow.

Love it.

A lot of times, if I was afraid of failure, or I felt like something had failed. The definition of success was just something I made up myself. So people would be like, well, why is that failure? you know, but to me, it felt like failure, but to no one else, it did. Like, it was just to me and I and it was like, you we put these extra pressures on ourselves. or we need to, like, stand up to, like, this, like, ideal. And if you don't get there, it can feel defeating. But to your point, if you're a few steps closer to that ideal, great. That's progress.

Right? You can learn from it and move forward.

You know, scientists, right? They they work every day. They fail and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail. And it's the only way that they're ever gonna get to that breakthrough So I think, yeah, it's just looking at it as this is how I grow my brain.

Well, before we wrap up then, tell us all about the ways that people can connect with you online and and, you know, everything that you have going on.

I'm most easily reached at Nancy McDonald Rooter on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn most every day, and Nancy is with an IE. And my company is no other consultants on LinkedIn and Instagram, and our website is noetaconsultants.com. So those are those are the easiest ways.

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