The biggest challenge I face every time I’m brought in as a fractional CMO or COO isn’t setting goals or hitting milestones. It’s getting the company’s team to trust me.
That’s hard for any new executive. It’s ten times harder for a fractional one.
Trust is hard to build. It’s easy to destroy: one mistake, a piece of criticism, an unwanted task, or a misread of the political environment. Full-time executives get time and support to listen and make changes at a pace that fits the company and the team. The best practices say earning a team’s loyalty takes three to six months.
As a fractional leader, my “onboarding” happens in a matter of hours. And I’m likely to do almost everything that destroys trust, before I get it right. I’m going to make mistakes. I’m brought in to improve the team’s performance, which means being critical of their work. I’m focused on strategic goals, which usually means asking the team to do things they don’t want to do. And without a real feel for the politics yet, I’m likely to step on toes with some of my full-time peers. All while the team knows I’m a short-timer, someone they can placate until I leave, or work to get me fired.
Sometimes that’s exactly what happens. At one CMO engagement, improving the metrics made the marketing manager feel threatened. At another, the plant manager simply didn’t implement any of my proposed changes. Fortunately for me, both of these situations exposed the team’s need for different managers, but it could just as easily have gone the other way.
My goal is always to earn the team’s trust, and the CEO’s, before I try to lead. Some of that is process: listen first, be responsive to what the team actually wants and needs (not just what the CEO hired me to fix), and make an early change that helps them succeed, not just one that looks good in a report. But the process only works because of the mindset behind it: humility and respect.
Coming in as a fractional executive, I’m expected to be “better” than the team. But I’m not there to prove that. I’m there to raise the team up and help them succeed. When they see that’s not just something I say to placate them, but something backed by my actions every time, they become my greatest allies and my biggest asset in meeting the company’s goals.