Effective leadership within digital marketing teams is an undoubtable necessity for winning teams – a conclusion that stemmed from interviewing and speaking to hundreds of team leads and managers throughout the year.
From award-winning agencies such as StudioHawk, to interviewing Global Search Award Judges on our webinars, one of the most crucial factors towards an industry-shifting, award-winning and revenue-churning of team structures all boils down to one thing: the team leader.
“Developing the next generation of leaders is the top challenge for 55% of CEOs according to a recent survey. This makes sense because 63% of millennials believe they aren’t being fully developed as leaders by their employers for management positions. This obviously creates problems in employee retention as many employees aren’t being recognized as future leaders quickly enough and are moving on to other opportunities as current employee recognition statistics show.” – ApolloTechnical, 2022
You could have the most talented team in the world, but it wouldn’t mean much if they weren’t managed effectively. And likewise, you could have a dedicated team willing to learn, but with the right leader, they could skyrocket in no time.
That’s the key right there. The key to a successful agency: identify and build-up effective leaders that then identify and nurture effective teams.
“An effective team leader is the greatest asset to any team structure, and is the biggest asset to a business’s path success.”
The Benefits of a Good Leader
As SEO For Hire’s expertise lies in building-up strong, effective SEO teams, we are more than aware of the investment agency owners put into their teams, the role of effective leaders and teammates, and how to best structure a team in accordance with the company’s culture, growth prospects, visions, goals and mission.
Likewise, we are also aware of the importance of tapping into the right incentive and motivational triggers within talented teammates looking to join teams, and have struck the ability to enhance the negotiation phases in order to best suit all parties involved.
Today, we’ll be exploring how the right choice and investment in a great team leader can be the best asset to your business.
When your company has the pleasure of attracting and nurturing great team leads, your business will experience multiple benefits, including a few of the following:
✅ – Sustainable Team Growth
✅ – Team Alignment
✅ – Productivity, Efficiency, and Innovation Increases
✅ – Leaders Birth Leaders – your business will begin to sustain itself and grow sustainably
✅ – Conflict Resolution and Enhanced Communication
✅ – Fantastic Company culture
✅ – Improved Work-Life Balances – for everyone involved
✅ – Problem-Solvers and Solution-Drivers
✅ – Talent Retention – a reduction in resources wasted through the hiring, onboarding and offboarding stages
✅ – Improved Client Retention & Satisfaction
✅ – Enhanced Trust and Transparency
✅ – Clear Accountability
An Unfortunate Expense: The Lack of Leadership Development
On the contrary, a recent study by DDI World found that 60% of leaders feel worn out by the end of each day, and from that, a further 44% of leaders plan to move to a new company in order to advance their career, with 26% of those respondents planning to do so within that same year.
In addition to that, over 77% of organizations reported a lacking in leadership, with +10k Baby Boomers retiring each year, and less than 5% of companies implementing leadership development across all levels, that has definitely left us in a predicament:
We are suffering a decrease in effective leadership and leadership development.
With +$357 billion spent worldwide on leadership training in 2020 (especially due to the new dynamic shifts with the pandemic restrictions), there was an estimated increase in leadership learning by 25% and leaders also admitted a 20% increase in performance.
If we can compare these stats directly to Behesti’s article for Forbes on the connection between employee engagement and wellness, Behesti highlights that:
- Higher engaged teams show 21% greater profitability, 41% reduction in absenteeism and an astonishing 59% less turnover.
- 89% of HR agree that ongoing feedback and check-ins are key for successful outcomes.
- Employees who feel heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered and perform their best work.
- 96% of employees believe showing empathy is important to advancing employee retention, yet 92% feel that empathy remains undervalued. Interestingly enough, the question was flipped to CEOs, of which 92% feel that their organization is empathetic, yet only 50% of their employees felt their CEOs were empathetic, highlighting a greater need for establishing importance on building emotional intelligence and soft skills within our newer generations of leaders.
- 89% of employees that are receiving well-being initiatives are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work for.
- 61% of employees have made healthier lifestyle choices due to their company’s wellness programs and improved work-life balances.
- 87% of employees expect their employer to support them in work-life balance and commitments.
- Lastly – and this one probably hits the hardest – disengaged employees can cost U.S. companies up to $550 billion a year an exhaustive report by the Engagement Institute highlights.
Where do we Go From Here?
With all the statistics laid out in front of us, it’s easy to identify the very real problem: The decline in leadership development and the presence of effective leaders within our organizations.
And this is impacting everyone: Agency owners, C-Suites, Leaders and employees & teammates, in very different but still equally critical ways.
In consideration of the above information gathered, the team at SEO for Hire identified the crucial need for a course specifically created and curated towards nurturing the development of effective SEO leaders, from initially joining a team, through to managing and enhancing communication (internally and cross-departmentally), team-building, team-alignment, managing conflict and conflict resolution, team motivation, mastering soft skills and promoting team empowerment.
All this and more is covered in what we are proud to release to our SEO and agency owner network as the SEO Leadership Playbook; a 90 module, 4 chapter lifelong companion for SEO leaders which comprises templates, prompts, step-by-step processes, things to consider, practical examples and much more.
In the above points highlighted by Behesti, we’ve aimed to bold a few of the key problems, concepts, and approaches that are directly solved within the SEO Leadership Playbook:
🏆 – Turnover
🏆 – Feedback
🏆 – Feeling heard
🏆 – Performance
🏆 – Empathy
🏆 – Emotional Intelligence
🏆 – Soft Skills
🏆 – Well-Being
🏆 – Work-life balances
This, among many other topics, are covered and explored within our latest course. If you’d like to invest in your team leaders, team and overall company health, you can find the link to the SEO Leadership Playbook: https://training.seoforhire.co/
Resources:
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2019/01/16/10-timely-statistics-about-the-connection-between-employee-engagement-and-wellness/
- https://www.ddiworld.com/global-leadership-forecast-2021
- https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends/2019/team-based-organization.html
- https://www.betterup.com/blog/team-management#:~:text=According%20to%20research%20by%20Deloitte,and%20uncertainty%20than%20ever%20before.
About the Author
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Josh Peacock – Co-Founder SEO for Hire
I’ve been building SEO teams for over 2 years now. Working with 100’s of clients from global start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. My team and I have a passion for going above and beyond for our clients and our industry. If you enjoyed this article, please make sure to follow me on Linkedin. My DM’s are always open 🙂