Marketing is one of those fields, where emotional stability, is not a prerequisite for being in a strategist, management, or leadership position.

In fact, many business owners and executives DO get caught up in the currents of emotions, and thereby make impulsive decisions based on “gut feelings”, fears, anger, greed, or other low vibrational emotions.

This manifests in many ways:

• Being passive aggressive to subordinates or vendors, based on not hitting goal(s), or for other reasons. (instead of addressing issues head on)
• Firing staff or vendors based on being frustrated, angry, impatient, or greedy.
• Ignoring actual data and letting emotions take the decision wheel.
• Pressuring marketing to cut corners to achieve even higher KPI’s even after goals AND stretch goals are hit (no success is EVER good enough..)

I’ve seen many times when business owners and executives make impulsive decisions, usually based on false assumptions, bad data, or just being emotionally driven.
For example, I’ve had many times when I’ve tried to tell companies about operational or other issues that were impacting the marketing, but instead of being receptive, they get angry, and tell me to stay in my lane, and then fire me.

Things like:

• Compliance issues that may cause issues later on (let’s correct it NOW)
• Tech issues causing a loss of data or friction in the user experience
• Reputation issues

And sometimes politics come into play as well. Just because I stay quiet doesn’t mean I don’t notice when someone is playing political games. I see when someone has hired me just for the sake of using me as a puppet to make themselves look good.

The trademark of a good leader is someone who will acknowledge and praise success, and then in a collaborative way, work on any blocks/issues with their team. What a good leader does NOT do is always focused on negativity, and use their team members as pawns to make them look good. Truthfully, when leaders do this, they generally just embarrass themselves as most people can see through this behavior, but unfortunately it does happen.


Here are some additional signs of a poor leader:

• Exaggerates your failures to other team members/leadership
• Ignores successes
• Takes credit for your success
• Engages in a political campaign to fire you

My advice to you, if you find yourself engaging in these low vibrational behaviors as a leader, take a quick inventory. Are you ok with manipulating situations just to try to make yourself look better at someone else’s expense? Perhaps it’s time to start behaving like a leader.