Starting Blocks Coaching Ltd

It's Wednesday morning. You log into your e-mails, out of the 284 unread ones, 37 are from legal/compliance. Fearing the worst, you open the e-mails to find your latest advertising creative just got annihilated by the brand police. What was once a bold, provocative concept is now a hollow shell of an advert, totally drained of its edgy personality. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗴𝘂𝗲: "What....did we take it too far with compliance this time?" 𝗬𝗼𝘂: "Take a look at these amends. They've added so many disclaimers and footers that it's basically 50% hairline text at this point. We've killed the campaign before it even launched." Oh well, that's just another typical Wednesday for a marketer having to invent new media tactics just to sneak in some real messaging. Who else got soul-crushed like this before?

𝟰 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺'𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁. When you're in a leadership role, having the trust of your team is essential. It can get broken (eg. a missed deadline, a poor decision, insensitive behaviour). And then severely lowers your ability to lead. And get buy-in on initiatives. 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 1️⃣: 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 The first step is understanding what led to the breach of trust in the first place. → did you fail to create an environment where your team felt comfortable voicing concerns? → were you perceived as prioritizing your own interests over the team's? → was it a lack of follow-through or reliability on your part? Get feedback through honest 1on1 convos. Pinpoint the key issues. 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 2️⃣: 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 Once you know what damaged trust, you need to take full accountability without making excuses. → explain what went wrong, the impact it had, and accept responsibility. → a simple "I'm sorry, I made a mistake" can go a long way. → show you're self-aware → don't deflect blame 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 3️⃣: 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐚𝐦𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧 What specific actions will you take to rebuild trust? → if it was an instance of being unreliable, you may need to over-communicate for a period of time. → for emotional safety issues, work on being an active listener who makes them feel heard. → if you were self-absorbed, find more opportunities to prioritise your team's needs. 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 4️⃣: 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤 It takes consistent behaviour to regain trust after it's got broken. It's really just like with any relationship, if you ask me. Keep putting in the work day after day. Acknowledge when you slip up. Reiterate your commitment. The payoff of an engaged, trusting team makes it worth the effort. On that note, have a lovely day!

Marketing leaders I coach have come from: Hoya, Unilever, Scholl Wellness, RMG, BEIS, Wella, Microsoft, Amazon, Lexus, Learnerbly and many more... I coach individuals and create & run group workshops too. "Magali is a fantastic leadership coach who helped me gain a completely different perspective, helping point out areas of improvement and providing a different point of view that has really helped give me inspiration and confidence. I'd recommend Magali to anyone looking for the next step in their leadership career." You can book a free 30min call with me. We can talk about you or your team. You're a button click away from it. https://lnkd.in/eVB_u-mn

You get copied on an email from the CMO. 𝗖𝗠𝗢: "Exciting news team! We've secured an A-list celebrity influencer for an upcoming campaign!" 𝗬𝗼𝘂: get a little happy dance going ! Finally! The chance to make a big splash and get some cultural relevance for our brand. 𝗖𝗠𝗢: "The ask is that they get final creative approval on all visuals and messaging." *Your happy dance momentum grinds to a halt *Fake smile on And just like that, you know you're in for a roller coaster of ridiculous amends and notes from a celebrity's entourage that has zero context on your brand or the strategy. Prepare to have your amazing launch ideas watered down into a sad puddle just to appease an influencer's handlers. #marketinglife

Morning team huddle. 𝗬𝗼𝘂: "Ok, big day today! We've got the influencer primed, the social assets designed, the paid media queued up to amplify the NPD launch announcement!" Drinks half a jug of tea to prep for the big push... 5 mins later, your phone rings. 𝗡𝗔𝗠: "Heya...erm yeah slight issue. We don't actually have anywhere near enough stock to meet demand if this launch goes as well as we're hoping." *bashes head on desk 𝗬𝗼𝘂: "What do you mean? We gave you the forecasts back in January! This is a total nightmare!" 𝗡𝗔𝗠: "Yeah...about those forecasts..." And just like that, it's all hands on deck firefighting. Figuring out if you delay the launch, omit certain channels, scale it way back, etc. So much for all those carefully aligned media buys and well...the actual stock availability. Another successful product launch in the books for the brand marketing crew! *silent cry *fake smile on DM me if you want to silent cry with me, or simply discuss how I could help you and your brand team through the unique challenges of marketing leadership !

217 hours of coaching across Texas, Canada, Europe through to Singapore! I have been working with a group of 14 Global Marketers since 2022 as their coach, that's 217 hours of coaching altogether, with a mixture of 1:1 coaching and group workshops. We've tackled seld-awareness, assertiveness especially with more senior stakeholders and commercial leaders, managing their energy in a busy industry, learning how to spot and analyse group dynamics and how to respond to tension, ways of communiting with difficult characters, and many more topics. I absolutely love when there's blended learnings in my corportate programme, I can tell the difference in the way these marketers now respond to challening and stressful situations and don't react anymore. The impact is massively positive on themselves, their team/department and the organisation. 🎯If you lead a group of marketers and want them to be in the lead in your saled led organisation, let's have a chat. I can help.

Perfection doesn't exist. It's a lure. You can have perfectionist tendencies. They're not a quality. Let me ask you - is this a good thing when: 😲...you spend hours meticulously analysing every font choice, colour palette, and placement of a single comma in your marketing materials? Your attention to detail is borderline obsessive! 😲...you spend hours agonizing over the perfect shade of blue for your logo, and then stay up all night rewriting one sentence in your ad copy, because, damn it, every word matters. #MarketingPerfectionist 😲 ...you obsess over every detail so much so that you get a thrill from perfectly crafted taglines. You're the marketer who won't settle for anything less than flawless - because mediocrity is for amateurs, or the sales team.... If this makes your work life more enjoyable, then it's a quality to have. I've never heard any marketer envy traits like these. Perhaps we should chat?

I promise, I'm not a stalker. If you feel like my posts are talking about you, I didn't spy on you. I simply understand what it feels like, what thinking about it is like. And I know you're hesitating to do anything about it. I get it. Let me tell you how easy the process is from the moment you want to do something about this imposter syndrome, or that you find it just so difficult to lead with confidence in your marketing role... The people I have worked with : - Send me a private message to say a particular point resonated so much with them. - I read carefully their message and reply back. - I offer to have a 30 min chat about what's going on. - I send them a pdf with what to expect from this call, where to book it and price my programmes start from, just so everything is out there - We hop onto the call and always have a really great discussion, sometimes overrunning because we were up onto something new and great. - I explain how coaching works with me - They ask me a few questions and either decide there and then, or ask for a few days to ponder. - I send them all the details in another document for them to have. - A few days later, we are both excited to work together for a few hours! It's that simple, it's frictionless and if you need to see what it does - head over to my recommendation page to read all the whispers ;)

When you're unhappy with your job, the biggest mistake I see marketers do is to update their CV and quickly apply to new jobs. Why is it a mistake? Because their CV lacks personality, a compelling story and it looks like a bunch of bullet points of areas of responsibility. As a former Head of Brand, I've been through heaps of recruitment loops and hundreds of CVs. I was never expecting a movie trailer type story, but I was looking for someone's story, not a list of responsibilities and bullet points of numbers. If you're on a hunt for another marketing job, I'd love to help you write your unique career narrative, which will give you an edge and your confidence back ! 👉 Should we have a chat?

At first, I thought: "why would I be giving away the next role's skills to my company if I'm not paid for it?" Little did I realise this was one of the best career-related advices I've been given as a Brand Manager. "𝘈𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭"...𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘐 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. The penny dropped a few days later. When you act and behave at the next level, you're building up your case. You're making it so much easier for your manager to support it. And your case is so much stronger when you are compared to other marketers during the People's Day, when promotions are dicussed by the leadership team. If they can see it, they don't need to believe it, they just know you've got it. What other great advice have you received in your career?