Business departments, especially marketing departments, are not immune to crisis. A crisis (and its severity) depends on a variety of factors. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this article, a crisis is defined as a crisis that disrupts a marketing team's ability to meet its responsibilities, impedes a brand's revenue generation, damages a brand's reputation, or negatively impacts other business metrics. refers to an unexpected event or unintentional mistake that occurs.
Discussions on this topic primarily focus on what marketing leaders should do during a crisis, including staying calm and adapting strategies quickly. MarketingHe has no doubt that leaders will play a critical role throughout a crisis, but their ability to build resilient teams will help minimize crises or prevent them from occurring in the first place. Helpful.
What are the core qualities of a resilient marketing team?
Before marketing leaders can build resilient teams, they need to understand what makes them resilient. Many features define a resilient marketing team. LHH, a global leadership training company, and Ferrazzi Greenlight, a global team consulting and coaching company, identify four classic traits that encapsulate resilient teams: openness, resourcefulness; I identified compassion and humility.
Resilient teams are capable of open and honest discussions and are not afraid to express their opinions and receive feedback. Teams that can collaborate and have tough conversations are better placed to identify and resolve problems as they arise.
Similarly, despite being understaffed or on a limited budget, resilient teams find creative workarounds to deploy innovative solutions even during a crisis. I can.
These teams are caring and empathetic. They care about each other and are less concerned with individual recognition than with the success of the group. Empathy is also important from a leadership perspective, but more on that later.
Finally, resilient teams are humble and aren't afraid to lend a hand when they need help. Imagine someone accidentally emailed his newsletter to the wrong database. Rather than praying that no one notices, this person immediately informs the team and leadership of the failure and begins working towards a resolution as quickly as possible. Humble teams not only accelerate crisis resolution, but also help prevent them from happening again.
Transform your existing team into a resilient team
Building a resilient marketing team starts with an honest assessment of your current workforce. Do they have all, some, or none of the core qualities of a resilient team? After this assessment, leaders will need empathy, trust, and constructive criticism. Through this, you can develop your existing talent and develop them into a resilient team that can withstand any storm.
Research shows that empathetic leaders who understand and recognize what their teams are going through can help reduce burnout and increase engagement and positive work experiences. Engaged teams make careers more rewarding and reduce unexpected turnover. Moreover, these teams often do not crumble during times of crisis and emerge stronger.
Leaders can also build resilience in their teams through trust. People who don't trust their employees tend to micromanage. Micromanagement makes staff more dependent on leadership and less willing to take risks. By allowing and encouraging your employees to make mistakes, you prepare them for a crisis.
Similarly, marketing leaders can build resilient teams by investing in professional development without fear of inevitable turnover. Through trust-centered training, marketing leaders can build more balanced and resilient teams with enough skills to fill in the gaps when someone suddenly leaves or is temporarily unavailable. can be created.
Finally, there's some constructive criticism. Psychologists classify criticism into constructive and destructive. Marketing leaders must avoid destructive criticism that can cause psychological damage to employees. However, leaders must not neglect to provide constructive criticism so that the team can recognize shortcomings, adjust behavior, and learn new skills.
How to hire a more resilient team
Recruitment efforts can also help build more resilient teams. In particular, leaders should prioritize candidates with resilient traits, as well as candidates from diverse backgrounds. Marketing leaders should abandon the idea that diverse teams meet quotas or check his boxes. Research shows that teams of different ages, genders, and ethnicities can make organizations more resilient.
In a paper titled “The Role of Diversity in Organizational Resilience: A Theoretical Framework,'' the researchers argue that diversity is defined as a variety of capabilities that support the three stages of the resilience process: anticipating, coping, and adapting. It is claimed that it may be useful for the development of In other words, diverse teams allow companies to develop resilience to more effectively manage unexpected disruptions.
Additionally, marketing leaders should prioritize data specialists when hiring resilient teams. These individuals can use data to remotely identify problems, allowing them to take corrective action before a crisis (and its consequences) becomes a reality. For example, a data specialist might discover mid-quarter that the marketing team is behind in lead generation. Leadership adapts accordingly and avoids an end-of-quarter crisis.
The ultimate benefits of resilient teams
No matter how level-headed and effective a leader is, at the end of the day, they're just people. A team of resilient individuals can help marketing departments, and the entire organization, quickly resolve or even avoid crises altogether.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom, finding common ground and finding connections.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom, finding common ground and finding connections.
