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As leaders, we often hear the saying “people leave bosses, not companies.” It is a harsh truth that leaves us wondering if we are bad leaders. It naturally begs the question: Are we bad parents too?

While I’m not a parent myself, I have “parented” hundreds of people in my career. And I’ve come to realize that parenting and leadership are closely related. Psychologists define four parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful. These styles however, align very closely with leadership styles.

The authoritarian parenting style is characterized by strict rules, high expectations, and blind obedience. Similarly, an autocratic leadership style has its basis in close supervision to ensure productivity, where deviation or questioning are not allowed. It’s the “my way or the highway” mentality that gives employees little room to maneuver. While it may have been the norm in the past, it’s not a sustainable approach for today’s workforce and clearly not motivating. Who wants to work in fear? Would you rule your children with an iron fist? Using fear and intimidation to control behavior? Why do it in the workplace?

The permissive parenting style encourages independence and uses manipulation like bribery to motivate. Giving in to every demand our child has, neglecting to set boundaries or expectations, and avoiding confrontation of inappropriate behavior, are not healthy for our children. Same in the workplace. A “free range” supervision style can lead to employees dictating workplace expectations, become sluggish, and underperform which is far from ideal.

We also see too often, the neglectful parenting style, characterized by being cold, unresponsive, and uninvolved. Parents who fail to provide basic care for their children, like food, shelter, and medical attention. Displaying apathy towards a child’s well-being. A neglectful leader unfortunately does the same. Gives employees little to no supervision, being indifferent to their basic work needs – feeling worthwhile, having goals, being balanced, and being well supported and treated in the workplace.

However, I think we will all agree that the authoritative parenting style is the most successful one. Parents who balance high expectations with warmth, support, and flexibility help their children thrive and be happy. They create a positive and nurturing environment that encourages children to become achievers in a healthy manner. Isn’t that what we should also do in our organization? Create a clear vision and support and trust our teams to follow through. Guide them and support them when needed. Help them learn from their mistakes instead of cruelly punishing them. Listen, and care for their well-being and development. This is what makes people feel included and valued, motivated, engaged, and happy, while we help them succeed.

We all know that parenting is a tough job. So is leadership. You must put your time, energy, and care for others at the same level of priority as your personal success and happiness. Not all of us do. Let’s be honest, being told that you are a bad parent hurts. But not too many of us seem to be equally sensitive to the possibility of being bad leaders. I have seen too many neglectful and authoritarian leaders go far in the marketplace, leaving destroyed teams behind. This has to stop.

No one wants to be a bad parent, neither at home nor in the workplace. Do we?

P.S. Image generated with Midjourney AI, crazy what you can do!!!!

Poker. What does this game bring to your mind? Gambling, money, passion, addiction maybe? For me, poker is nothing of that. It is a fun game that has given me also important life lessons.

I am myself an amateur poker player. I play with friends, regularly. We organize male nights, full of whiskey, cigars, laughter and friendly competition. And through these nights, I did not only have a good time with my friends, but I also learned many new things about their character and about myself.

Poker has always been a character game. In Greece, the aristocrats of the past century, when they were considering accepting in the family a new son-in-law, would sit down with him and play poker. Every male in the family, father, brothers, uncles would sit at the table with the new man and put him through the ultimate character test. A Poker game.

Crazy? No. Let’s think a little bit about it. Through poker you can really “read” peoples character. You can understand if they are careless or aggressive. If they are fearful, if they bluff a lot, or not. Do they lose control when they drink, do they get nervous, can they hold their temper? But most importantly at the end of a poker game you will understand if your co-players know how to win with compassion or lose with grace…

All these character traits can become quite evident through any poker game even to the most inexperienced eye…But there is more.

When you are a player, do you expect to be dealt always a hand full of aces?

Would you whine when you are not,  saying “oh…I am so unlucky, why do I have a king, a Jack, 2 eights and a 5? I wish I had 4 aces….Oh, I don’t want to play anymore!!!!”

Of course not. It is not a realistic expectation.  In poker you get the hand you are dealt, you accept it and you try to do your best with it.

When you think of life, isn’t it the same? Aren’t we all been dealt a “hand of cards” in life? Where the strong cards represent our strengths, and where the weaker ones represent our shortcomings and misfortunes? Why do we get sometimes so caught up on our “life hand”? Why sometimes we waste our energy whining and getting depressed, complaining that we don’t have the “perfect hand”, the “perfect life” set-up… Isn’t it better that we accept the “hand” we are dealt with and we focus all our energy in playing this hand in the best possible way?

Poker taught me this. To get in the game and play my best. And that is what we should also do in life. Focus on “playing”, focus on living our lives with our strengths and our shortcomings. And live the best life we can, by playing well. The game does not stop at the hand we are dealt with. It is where it starts.

Because in life, just like in poker, it is not the strong hand that wins. It’s the best play.

I just had the chance to listen on Ted Channel, a discussion with Yuval Noel Harari; an inspiring historian trying to explain the new world order: Nationalism vs globalism. A very inspiring discussion focusing mostly on the future of mankind and possible political solutions in order for humanity to face the most burning global ecological, economic and political challenges.

But as an ad man, my mind went quickly back to advertising. What does this mean really for us? What does it mean for the future of global brands? What does it mean for the future of advertising?

Harari said that nationalism is like a travel back to time. I lived through those less globalized times. Meant less international travel, more local community, fewer international brands, more local production…. But people seem to be drawn to this lately. Cherishing an era when things were more national, less globalized; a time when people felt that things were simpler, less complex, more controlled. And the recent protectionism wave across the mega global trade nations (US, UK, France etc.) probably verify this trend; are we really going back in time?

I think not. The world is way too connected, full of global companies and citizens of the world. This cannot be reversed. However, if we really are in the process of moving towards increased protectionism and nationalism, the question that arises is “will the global brands diminish?” Will they eventually be replaced by local ones? Really hard to imagine this happening. However, I believe that global brands will face increasingly local competition. Local brands will step out of the global brands’ shadows and become more important players, both in the marketplace but also in the advertising scene.

The advertising scene, as a whole, will be affected too. While the local brands will mostly be leveraging somehow the “nationalistic wave of pride”, the global brands will have to work harder in order to become more culturally relevant. Let’s take Always for example and its brilliant campaign – “do it like a girl”. This campaign is based on a universal insight, that girls in puberty are not treated in a way to feel equal to men; they are labeled as “weak”. But no matter how strong this insight is, and how true it may be universally, will this lovely empowerment campaign of Always be able to hold up to a “nationalistic” campaign of a local brand? Will be interesting to see…

In this new emerging protectionist and nationalistic world, global brands will now have to work harder in each local market, in order to connect with the local culture, they are operating in. Claiming any “national identity” (i.e packaged or produced in local country) can be really dangerous and contradictory to the global DNA of the brand.  Advertising (in its wider form) should however remind customers that their “universal global truth” is also a “local truth”. And implement a lot of additive local initiatives to their global platform. Prove that they are here, as global brands, to play an important role in the local market. A role far greater than servicing a “functional” need in a superior manner. Their role will be also to prove their interest (and their worth) in making the local society, stronger and more successful.

As a conclusion, empowering local societies to be successful will be critical to global brands’ success. More than ever. And advertising and marketing plans will have to take that into consideration.

 

For people like me that are old enough to remember how simplistic the advertising scene once was, today’s ecosystem may seem shocking. Well… it isn’t!  I can reassure you that to people like me, today’s environment is not only absolutely fascinating but also very familiar in a way. Let me explain. In the late 1990’s and early 2000, the media scene was predominately TV (cable and aerial), with some promotions (physical contacts with customers), a bit of PR (mostly social responsibility) and depending on the industry, a bit or a lot of direct marketing.

I happened to spend 14 years working at Wunderman and it was absolutely brilliant. My life was full of targeting tactics, testing different creative executions, enriching company data with external databases, studying consumer reaction and figuring out ways to increase the consumer response. But despite the fact that we were sitting at the same table with the “traditionals” we were always somehow “the advertising underdogs”. We were the freaks that were not just selling creative, but babbling about targeting, data, ROI, sales, redemption of offer, etc., etc…

Clearly times have changed. We are not the freaks anymore. We are those who understand, those who can integrate, evolve, explain, coordinate, measure and understand the analytics. Everything is familiar, we done it before, now it just got easier, quicker, and at a larger scale. Just ask any direct marketer of the 90’s about today’s ecosystem and this is what you will get:

• Big data? —- Got it!
• Targeting and programmatic? —- Doing this for ages!!!! Now technology just makes it easier and scalable.
• Cross device? —- No biggie! We have been de-duplicating databases all along!!! Easy.
• Engagement, ROI, sales —- of course! What else? It has always been about that!

All these are not new, at least to the likes of me –  advertising people that had the chance to also be direct marketers. We are absolutely thrilled with the capabilities that technology now offers to clients and agencies. Because now, everything is direct marketing. Every campaign has sophisticated targeting; can differentiate creative execution by medium and target with no hassle; can enrich media through 2^nd and 3^rd party data; can identify consumers in different devices and serve the same message across devices.  And all these can be measured and optimized. So we live in the era where the advertising “freaks” are finally welcome. And slowly but surely the world understands that these people were not freaks at all, they were just ahead of their time…