I sat down with marketing vice president and seasoned mentor Karen Becker to chat about her mentorship “special sauce” and what it takes to become — and cultivate — a leader:
[This interview has been edited and condensed.]
You are the best mentor I’ve ever had. What is your mentoring “special sauce”?
I think every leader — any person who has people who work for them — has a responsibility to be a mentor. And when you become a leader more broadly across the organization, you have the responsibility to mentor people outside your direct team as well. There are altruistic reasons to mentor; you get to see someone gain important skills and be a part of their success. But it’s also important for the organization at large. Mentorship raises new leaders and builds skill sets; there are always people who want to move up in an organization, and the only way they’ll learn the politics and science is if someone helps them. That’s my philosophy — it’s a responsibility to the organization and gives you a great sense of satisfaction to see people grow and succeed under your leadership.
What do you think are the defining characteristics of a marketing leader?
01.
An understanding that marketing drives revenue. You may say “of course it does,” but often marketing teams forget that — it has to be in their minds every single day. The investment and the time that the company puts into marketing must result in growth. One of the things that’s a characteristic of a marketing leader is a tight connection to sales leadership so everyone is on the same page about where the opportunities are and where the problems are. Then marketing develops the strategy to address them. They must work in tandem in order to be successful.
02.
Curiosity. Curiosity about the customer and what motivates them. Curiosity about how customers use the products you’re selling and their impressions — the good and the bad. And a willingness to spend time with customers so they can give you insights on how your product is working for them, enhancing their life, or helping them succeed.
03.
Flexibility. Marketing is part creative and part science. Teams need to be unleashed to go solve problems, encouraged to try new things, and given the freedom to do that investigation. Teams often believe what they’ve always done is working so why change it — a strong leader can drive for results while at the same time encouraging and rewarding a growth mindset that is constantly looking for improvement. Marketing has to be able to constantly pivot based on new learning, new assumptions, new intuitions, and new data.
What advice would you give middle managers who are looking to move into more of a leadership role?
I belonged to a group called Autodesk Women in Leadership. We’d meet once a month with middle managers — women who wanted to solve career problems and learn the “secret sauce” of moving up. And so much of the advice given revolved around building an advocacy group outside of your realm of knowledge.
We don’t spend a lot of time building relationships outside of our own teams. Often what I would say to these women is, go build a professional relationship with one, two, or three people outside your organization and start to learn about their work. Yes, you can move up in your own field but ultimately, if you want to be a leader in a company, all other disciplines will have to see you as a leader. You must invest in stepping out of your day-to-day work to learn how sales, engineering, etc., work and what matters to them. Build those relationships so they know you and advocate for you. Ultimately, your boss will ask other people if you are qualified to take a new role or how you’re perceived in the organization. You have to do that work.
You also have to raise your hand when new projects outside your scope open up because it gives you visibility with leaders outside your organization. It’s a great learning experience, but just as important, it’s another advocacy group that will understand how you work, what kind of communicator you are, and the quality of the work you bring to that team. You have to get tentacles deeper into the organization outside your functional area in order to be considered for a new opportunity or promotion.
I was at Autodesk for 12 years, and about every three years someone would come to me and say, “We’ve got a problem over here and we want you to go solve it.” I was always comfortable where I was and the new project was inevitably out of my comfort zone. It was only because I’d had visibility and built relationships that people felt confident I could take these new roles and trusted that I could go build something new. The only way middle management can get those opportunities is if they have visibility more broadly across the organization.
Conversely, what advice would you give upper management on mentoring and cultivating leaders?
One of the best ways to help people get prepared for the next opportunity is to give them ownership over something they do not know how to do. When you do that, you are giving them the opportunity to find out how to do it. It forces them to self-educate, to go out and ask questions of people they may not know very well, to report back on their progress, and it gives them the skills to move something forward by pulling in experts and leveraging their knowledge.
Ultimately, we all have to be in charge of our own careers, but upper management should foster a culture of team growth. They should invest time in uncovering opportunities for their team members to learn new skills and be exposed to more of the business, and stand up new projects and programs for employees to lead and have visibility across the organization. And then be prepared to give honest and actionable feedback along the way. In the end, a leader’s job is to find the rough edges of someone as a professional and encourage them into those situations where they can be exposed and strengthened to better their career. And that’s how new leaders are developed.
