Leadership Challenges in the Marketing Industry

  

 The most detrimental barrier to good leadership is people's fear of accepting the prevailing changes and acting accordingly. Anyone can lead, but good leadership depends on how well-equipped one is for the inevitable changes. I remember my first leadership role was quite overwhelming. Being the most hardworking, innovative, resilient, and academically qualified employee positioned me to a point of assuming the role of the manager immediately after our manager resigned from the company. Given that I was just a junior employee and the new position meant dictating everything in that company, including giving directives to my previous bosses and colleagues, I felt pretty uneasy.

Suddenly, the whole group of employees started looking at me for guidance and directives. The employees who were previously my friends began employing some formality when addressing me. The company’s environment eventually turned from a comfortable area for me to a lonely and devastating working station. Any suggestion I made to my friends was a command they did without questioning my decisions. Little did I know that the whole company's fate rested upon my actions and decisions. Everything turned absurd, and employees I looked upon as friends could no longer perceive me as their friend but as their Boss. Although everyone seemed to respect me, the relationship between employees and I kept deteriorating. The fear of getting fired from the job conquered my juniors, and they slowly started segregating themselves. The company began registering losses drastically. Like any other Boss whose company is registering losses, the atmosphere became too hot, and the pressure from my seniors became immersed.

The pressure became so immersed that I lost control of myself. All my careful thought plans and decisions seemed unrealistic. I became too worried and asked too much of some workers and little of others. Some employees began feeling underutilized and pressured to resign from the company. The feeling of being the Boss had already taken its way upon me. I could walk around the workplace spitting out commands which were, in turn, responded to by the go-slow of all employees. Then they reached a point where they could not heed my instructions since all of my decisions resulted in nothing but failures and losses.

Despite losing the employees' trust and confidence, the company began losing its long-term customers. Although I initially thought that the employees were being unfair and jealous of my new position, losing of company's long-term customers caught my attention. I always believe in our company's slogan that "customers are always right," which helped me immensely to my senses. I slowly by slowly began internalizing my mistakes since I assumed the role of the manager.

The phrase by Jack Ma that no matter how smart you are, you should learn from your mistakes got a vital meaning to my situation. I started getting in touch with my employees and engaging everyone in decision-making. To ensure I achieve the credibility and efficiency of the company, I decided to dedicate myself to learning leadership skills from my juniors, who had been leading other groups within that company for quite a long time. With that, I realized that everyone as a leader makes mistakes, but readiness to rectify the mistakes instead of blaming others is what makes the difference. Then slowly, I began understanding the art of leading others into a better future through intrinsic motivation as the best way to achieve progress in any given company. As I initially perceived, achieving employees' trust and getting their performance back to the company's expectations was not an easy task. First, I reorganized them into smaller groups and delegated leadership roles to one of them. Each of these groups' leaders was to guide and instruct their colleagues in the best way possible. With such a move, delegating roles to each group became more straightforward, and the following became interesting. This first step in my journey to leadership took the company back to its standpoint. The working environment started getting more attractive to everyone. Although everyone felt okay with the new atmosphere at the workstation, I understood that more needed to be done to maximize the profit. To increase the company's production rate and improve the provision of services to customers, I introduced individual awards and group awards. Each individual and group with the highest sales could receive a higher commission than the rest. Within one month, the company registered a 30% positive deviation of the total sales.    

It should be noted that any leadership changes that affect the service delivery in the marketing industry directly affects consumers of the given service. On my side, this was not exceptional. To curb the situation regarding losing customers, I opted to collaborate on improved services with a direct motivation to our customers. First, I directed selling the goods at a cost slightly lower than other companies and offered customers who managed to buy goods at a higher quantity. In addition, I improved modes of payment from cash mode of payment to payment by use of cards. Any customer with a membership card of our company could get access to some credits, and other benefits like weakly offer in case they trade with us six times a week. With such a move, the number of customers increased immeasurably from a negative deviation of 8% to a positive deviation of 29 % after one month of employing changes.

It is noted in the historical records of this company that my reign as the manager was when the organization registered the highest losses and the most significant profit ever since. In my third year as a manager, the company received an international award as it offered the best services to its customers worldwide. Still, it is undisputed that I stand to be the manager who ever made grave mistakes that almost succumbed to the company. My experience in this position has enlightened me that no matter how smart you are, you cannot run away from mistakes. In matters to do with marketing, one needs to be an open-minded, retrogressive, and resilient leader in order to withstand the prevailing changes and leadership challenges within the marketing domain.

In any given market industry, those in leadership hold the key to the company's progress. The decisions they make will directly affect the sales of the company. Despite the assumption that being a leader is an easy task, leading without experience is accompanied by several mistakes. Some leadership challenges within marketing industries include building their team quickly, managing expectations, lacking processes and organization, limited data and analytics, being new to the industry and targeted customers, and lacking resources. To succeed as a leader in the marketing arena, one needs to understand that being smart does not mean one cannot make errors. In addition, Failure to adapt to the changing dynamics in the market will directly affect the company's profits and sometimes lead to significant losses if not mitigated.

In summary, it is essential to note that the aspect of leadership is of great value in the marketing industry. For any company to register progress essentially in meeting the expectations of its customers, then the leaders in charge need to understand the framework of leadership in business entities.