6 C-Suite Leaders Share How They Learned to Support Employees During the Pandemic

As the country starts to reopen and businesses start to welcome their employees back to the office, it’s hard to forget that the last year presented many challenges for everyone. For many of us, working from home became the new normal and a recent survey from the Pew Research Center shows that 54% of workers want to remain home even after the pandemic officially ends. However, one workplace factor that remains more important than ever before–being an understanding and empathetic leader. Throughout the first season of The Business of Marketing Podcast, we spoke with C-Suite executives from across the industry to find out the most important lessons they have learned during the pandemic and the one thing that was present throughout each response was the importance of both empowering and being there for your teams. EXTEND YOUR DEFINITION OF SUCCESS "My dad used to say when I started to think about selling the business and putting all the materials together, he would say, “the most valuable thing about this business walks in and out of the door every day.” And that's so true. Through the course of the pandemic, living by that, and caring and checking in on everyone's situation, whether it's someone that reports directly to me or all the way to the bottom of the ladder and just being super present as a leader I think is important." Gus Wenner, President and COO, Rolling Stone "The one lesson that I've learned is that the definition of success must also sort of be extensible. We look at market share and what are we driving in terms of top-line sales and bottom-line revenue. I think in this pandemic we were grateful for people's health. We were grateful for recognizing when someone felt stressed out or isolated. We had a case of a very high performer who also has a couple of kids and hadn't realized the impact of schools being closed on this person's performance and mental state. Once we did, we were able to sort of share the load and try to lighten up some of the pressures. I think really coming out of this thing with the team fully engaged in the whole is a success. It's elevated the conditional factors of what it is to work together and importance a lot." Rodney Williams, President and CEO of Belvedere Vodka 4 Tips for CMOs From C-Suite Leaders on How to Truly Make an Impact Today SHOW YOUR HUMAN SIDE "Showing your vulnerability as a leader. Last year was really hard for everybody and I send out an email every week to my team and to all our stakeholders. It's mostly a business update, some things that are top of mind and I started to include a personal section at the end of every email. Sometimes it's very light stuff like pictures of my dogs and kids and other times its just things that I would say that I'm personally struggling with. My family moved across the country this year during the pandemic. I have teenage kids and that was really hard for them. I shared how that was hard and why that was hard and I think just a lot of working parents could really relate to that. I would say showing your human side as a leader and sharing your vulnerable moments is one of the things that I think everybody needs to see leaders demonstrate so that they can feel safe and also taking what they need for themselves as well." Lauren Weinberg, Global Head of Marketing, Square "What I've learned is we need to give people space and I think it's important for them to understand that we're going to give them either days off from this madness because I think they're more stressed now than they had been before, or just make sure that they understand that it's all right." Tom Hayes, CEO, Ocean Spray RELY ON THE FOUNDATION YOU'VE BUILT "One of the key lessons I take away from the last 12 months is how important the satisfaction is for the consumer and the team member is. That combination is what creates the brand. When you have engaged team members for whom you've created space to learn, make decisions, empower them, and give them the opportunity to develop themselves. You create meaningful circumstances for all and I'm going to take that for the rest of my career." Gonzalve Bic, CEO, BIC "When stress is put on teams and people in leadership teams, you fall back on those relationships and you fall back on that culture you have built, and you really see who you've hired. Do they have grit? Do they have resilience? When you're under pressure, you see people's true colors. All those decisions in the past come back to roost. My experience is hire for grit, hire for resiliency, build relationships with your peers and close relationships with the people that you work with and for, and who worked for you that pays off in spades later. And that's something I learned over and over." Jay Livingston, CMO, Shake Shack

Business of Marketing

6 C-Suite Leaders Share How They Learned to Support Employees During the Pandemic

Executives from Square, Rolling Stone, Belvedere, and more share their advice on The Business of Marketing podcast

Al Mannarino

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Al Mannarino