Marketer as leader: step up to leadership!

• Author: Carnahan, Martha

What is the ongoing, everyday, ultimate challenge of the legal marketer? Being seen as a key part of the law firm's strategic decision-making team! But to achieve this place of value, we believe legal marketers must break out of the production trap so attorneys can view them as leaders at the firm.

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The topic is regularly discussed, but with only varied and random thoughts about how legal marketers can go from marketer to leader through professional development. These disjointed thoughts can be wonderfully creative, but their scattered nature can render them powerless to impact sustainable change. From time to time, organizations have considered a certification program. CMOs participate more often in sales calls, as well as market analysis regimes. Business development staff fights to get moved off administrative floors.

Now is the time to think of moving from marketer to leader as a psychologically, human development based process that can be applied in an organized manner. And isn't getting organized to take action what a leader would do?

What Is a Leader?

As starting points for self-analysis and learning, it is important for marketers to seek greater understanding of leadership models and there are many diverse and time tested theories to explore. As leadership assessments can't be administered through a magazine, consider a few perspectives from notable writers and researchers on the subject.

[1] John Gardner in his book, "On Leadership," identifies a common list of traits that are found in all leaders.

* Physical vitality and stamina

* Intelligent

* Action-oriented judgment

* Eager to accept responsibility

* Task competent

* Understands followers and their needs

* Skilled in dealing with people

* Need for achievement

* Capacity to motivate people

* Courage and resolution

* Trustworthiness

* Decisiveness

* Self-confidence

* Assertiveness

* Adaptability/flexibility

[2] The behavioral leadership models developed by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton plotted leadership styles based on a leader's concern for tasks versus people.

Concern for task: Leaders are achievement- and production-centric. Leaders look for high levels of productivity and ways to organize people and activities in order to meet those objectives.

Concern for people: Leaders look upon their followers as people--their needs, interests, problems, development and so on. They are not simply units of production or means to an end.

[3] Paul...