Bravery is not brave

Like last year, bravery is on the 2018 agenda at the Marketing Society and it started with a bang. Not only were we treated to a masterclass from Syl Saller and Craig Inglis, we got to enjoy it in the Bloomsbury Curzon sitting in those super snazzy chairs that recline when you lean back #winning.

Expertly chaired by Gemma Greaves, the Q&A centred around a single question; How do the very best get so much from their teams? What does it really take to be a remarkable, brave leader?

Here is a snippet of the things I learned;  

Brave thinking is critical, brave leadership is mandatory

Growth is getting harder in almost every industry and innovators who weren’t even in our category last week seem are trying to dash off with half our market share. Only those who can pivot and think differently will find success.

As Craig said ‘this [brave agenda] is not rhetoric, this is about survival’. Marketing doesn’t need Steady Eddy’s at the tiller, it needs leaders who embrace, guide and support difference and who are prepared to really step up and lead. We are those leaders, we have to be prepared to be the lone voice in the room, to say what needs saying and to light the path for our teams to walk down. No pressure guys.

Bravery is not brave, it’s a different way of seeing the same thing

Bravery is often written up as recklessness, but it’s anything but. Repetitively we heard that brave leaders calmly step back and survey the bigger picture. By lifting ourselves above the day to day and focusing on our end goal, we will see things afresh. With this mindset, ideas that feel vomit-inducingly brave might just shape shift into terribly sensible ways to achieve difficult goals.

Syl said it when she said ‘Elevate your narrative to the big decisions and responsibilities your board have on their mind. Then your narrative is better and aligned with what the company needs’ 

Design the team with bravery in mind          

As Craig says ‘you are only as good as the team around you’; brave teams are teams that trust and respect each other. But they are also teams that can challenge and push each other to the edges of each other’s comfort zones in pursuit of a shared goal.

Design. Your. Team. Because a badly constructed one never made a brave decision. Make it small, lean, and focused, give it a flat structure and let everyone have a say without judgement …even if it gets a little bit shouty (ask Craig about music and Christmas ads).

Your job as a leader is to make like Syl and be ‘amazingly demanding and amazingly supportive. Set the stretch big and the standards high, then hear them and support them in becoming bigger than they thought they could be.’

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?   

It takes guts to be brave (otherwise it wouldn’t be called being brave). But actually, bravery is not as dangerous as it might feel. It’s normal to be scared by big tasks or crazy ideas, but ask yourself this ‘how many people do I know who lost their jobs by being brave?’ 

Most of the risk is in our heads, people who leave businesses usually leave because they didn’t make enough difference. So, if you know your customer, you’ve checked your data, and you know where you need to get to; the chances are you will be rewarded not punished for pushing innovation and trying to make a difference.

I’ll leave you with one final thought.

Brave leadership is not about singular decisions made at specific moments in time. It’s a mindset; it’s saying ‘I believe it’s possible’, ‘I believe we can be the ones who do it’ and ‘I believe that you, my team are the only people I want by my side whilst we try’.    

By Sarah Booth, head of brand and communications strategy at ASOS.com