“We’re founder-led, and all the execs are still players, not coaches,” shared the new CMO at a $75M services company, “Oh, and they’ve never had a marketing leader.” Sound familiar?

Fortunately, this CMO knew all of this going in and was prepared for the challenge. Many are not. And when they’re not, the results are not pretty.

I’ve heard versions of this story too many times. The role looks exciting. The growth curve looks promising. The CEO seems open. Then, two weeks in, you realize the executive team is full of brilliant doers who have never been asked, or forced, to lead at altitude.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you can’t be a successful CMO in a company where leadership is optional.

Step 1: Vet The Executive Team

TCMOs are great at diligence on the market, the product, and the pipeline. Some are less rigorous about vetting the people they’ll be leading alongside. Before you say yes, ask how decisions are made, what actually gets delegated, and when the exec team last invested in its own development.

If everyone is still playing their old functional position, the CMO role quietly becomes fixer-in-chief. That’s not leadership. That’s burnout with a title.

Step 2: Move From Players To Coaches

This is delicate terrain. Telling a founder or CRO they need to “level up” is a great way to shorten your tenure. Instead, frame the shift as a company growth issue, not a personal failing.

One practical move is to adopt a shared operating system, such as OKRs or EOS. Systems depersonalize the change. Suddenly, it’s not your opinion. It’s how scaling companies operate.

Step 3: Normalize Leadership Coaching

Elite performers have coaches. Executives should too. Bringing in a leadership coach isn’t therapy. It’s leverage. As a CMO, you don’t have to champion this alone, but you can help the CEO see it as an investment in scale.

Step 4: Be An Impact Player

In my conversation with leadership advisor Liz Wiseman at our 2024 Super Huddle, she talked about the difference between multipliers and diminishers. Multipliers make others smarter and more capable. Diminishers, often unintentionally, create dependency by rescuing instead of enabling. [By the way, I highly recommend that every CMO or want to be CMO read both of Liz’s books, “Multipliers” and “Impact Players.”]

At the risk of redundancy, a CMO can only succeed as a leader if the other execs lead as well. If you’re the only one coaching while everyone else is still playing, you’ll be a cultural aberration and end up as the proverbial rejected organ.

And that’s an icky place to be.

Questions For CMOs

So I’m curious:

• When you’ve taken on a CMO role, how much did you vet the exec team, not just the mandate?
• And if you’ve been in a founder-led organization, what actually helped leaders make the shift from players to coaches?

Written by Drew Neisser