Everyone who is about to get promoted to a higher role that requires them to manage people, should sit in a meeting and demonstrate that they can:
If they talk too much, if they interrupt others, if they ignore the person who is silent, if they don’t ask open questions and listen, if they go back to the same topics every other meeting.
They are not fit for the role.
You get what you measure.
Unless you measure too many things.
In that case, most likely, you get nothing.
Define success, pick a good proxy, and stick with it.
When you raise through the ranks, keep in mind that your role, responsibilities, relationships shift.
It is mainly a journey you have to do alone. And you can’t make up for it by pretending you are still friend with everyone. Your words have a different weight. Your messages have a different weight. Even your ideas and opinions have a different weight. The best you can do is embrace this fact and act as it is expected by your new role.
Instead of cracking an ambiguous joke, shut up and listen.
Instead of sharing your pain and frustration, own other’s pains and frustrations.
Instead of giving your opinion on every topic, ensure that others can give theirs.
The friend complex is dangerous for founders, executives, managers. Whether you resist to it might make the difference between being alone and being lonely.
If things are difficult, everyone is impacted. Those in high positions, those in the middle, and those at the bottom.
And it works in a way so that those at the bottom do not care for the impact on those higher up. Because for them, it is often a matter of survival, and survival does not allow for unselfishness.
The point is that if you are in a situation of crisis and you are on top, do not expect others to give you empathy. Be prepared to be giving it out by the bucketload instead.
Of course, this is triggering for every marketer.
But the reality is that those sentences will continue to be spoken in companies everywhere. And the only remedy to this simple truth, is to be prepared. To have a plan, to have a reputation, to have leverage. Because it is always true that one of the main task of every marketer is to market marketing.
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