CMO Work Style Assessments

Effectively managing people, relationships and teams

The role of chief marketing officer (CMO) is evolving. Today, a CMO can add value in the C-suite by fully understanding the working styles of their colleagues—and using that knowledge to foster collaboration and improve team outcomes.

Do you drive your colleagues toward your goals? When faced with challenges, do you engage in creative problem-solving? Do you uphold high-quality standards and see to every detail? Or do you encourage team collaboration and seek consensus when making decisions? Your answers to questions like these can tell you which of the four key Business Chemistry® categories best matches your working style: Pioneer, Driver, Guardian, or Integrator. Applying this kind of knowledge of your own approach as a CMO—and of the styles of your peers in the C-suite—can greatly increase your ability to drive the leadership team forward to the shared goal of a truly focused customer experience.

Each type has distinct likes and dislikes that can be managed and navigated in a work context. The framework is based on research, analytics, and data to help professionals not only understand their own work style but easily identify and work with other types in the workplace. Using this knowledge to strengthen the way members of a C-suite operate together can help CMOs add significant value to the company’s leadership.

To read the full article, download the Seeking C-suite chemistry article.

Pioneers seek possibilities. They tend to be high energy, spontaneous, and adaptable. They prefer big-picture thinking over details and generally are bold, imaginative, and creative. Pioneers tend to have a high tolerance for ambiguity and risk, and they dislike too much structure, repetition, or limitation.

Guardians seek stability. Guardians are marked by their methodical nature. They enjoy structure and discipline, details, and loyalty. They deliver high-quality work that is well thought out. They are likely to be conventional, hierarchical, and disciplined and to speak slowly to properly convey their thoughts. They tend to be risk-averse and respond well to concrete facts, proven principals, and established practices. They can be turned off by disorder and uncertainty. Drivers seek challenge.

Drivers tend to be technical, logical, and quantitatively focused. They are dominant and highly competitive, with strong opinions. They value strong analysis backed up by logic and facts and are good at looking for patterns and synthesizing complicated information. Drivers appreciate when others get to the point. They dislike small talk, indirectness, and indecisiveness.

Integrators seek connection. The strengths of Integrators are the tendency to seek consensus, the empathy they show, and their high tolerance for ambiguity. They value connections with others and strive to be helpful. They generally are traditional, trusting, and dutiful. They make their decisions by carefully obtaining input from others. Integrators value friendships and enjoy getting to know others on a personal level. They tend to dislike aggressive confrontation, interruptions, and arrogance.