Syl Saller CBE on balancing life, leadership & making the right career moves

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uncensored CMO. So I've got an absolute treat for you in this episode. Sil Salah is one of the most famous CMOs on the planet. She was global CMO for Diageo for many, many years. Now she's since retired and become a career coach. And I convinced her to come and talk to me about what she's learned in that career and what advice she has for life, leadership, and how to have a very successful career. Sil is one of the warmest, most incredible human beings you're ever likely to meet. and in this episode she's sharing all the learnings she's had from an amazing career.

0:40There is so much in this. I know you'll absolutely love it. Here it is. Welcome to the show, Syl. It's great to be here, John. It's great. Thank you so much for doing this. I've been really looking forward to our conversation. It's been a long time. Having heard you many times and of course most people will know you, won't they, from your global CMO role at Diageo, which you're very well known for. What's that kind of role really like? I mean, I'm sure everyone's got their ideas about what it's like to do. coming up. What's it really like? Well, I honestly think it's one of the best CMO roles in the business because right now CMO roles have been chopped up into learning or marketing services.

1:18And the Diageo CMO role has the whole shebang. You have the global brands, innovation, R &D, digital, all marketing services. And so you really feel like you can make a difference to growth. It's an enormous job. And I guess the thing I learned in terms of what it's really like is you can only do it if you know it's not all about you. It's about the people you have working for you. And you've had many of them on this podcast because they're truly great. So I approached that job really as a leader, as coach. And I vowed at one point to try to make every conversation I had a coaching conversation, Even if it was about a technical marketing subject, that's a bit hard to do.

2:04And you think, well, yeah, you can do that for the good conversations. But what about the not so good? How do you leave people feeling better than they did originally? And that was my goal. And even in the tough conversations, people could feel better. Because when they reflect on it, would you rather find out later that something's not going well? I hate when people surprise people with bad performance evaluations. And what I felt like the people reported to me could trust is they'd get the honest answer. And hopefully it would be delivered with skill, which I had to learn. I mean, when I first started Diageo coming fresh from America, somebody was in a meeting with me, Graham Penter, who's a very good friend.

2:47And, you know, the team came in, they left, and he said, you just ate that assistant brand manager for breakfast, you know. So I had to learn not to do that. I love that because we do fear difficult conversations. don't we? It's natural, isn't it? Everyone wants to be the, you know, the hero, deliver the good news, the bad news is much harder. So any tips on how to have difficult conversations like that? Yeah, picture what it's going to be like when you have to have the really difficult conversation. Picture what the implications of that for the person's family, themselves, if they're surprised.

3:20And it's never just one conversation, right? It's being specific, approaching it with a coaching attitude, you know, here's the issue, how's it going to get better? And knowing that ultimately, ultimately, you are helping the person. It's funny, actually, in my experience, whenever I've faced into tough conversations, it's always good has come out of it. It's almost it's the worry about the conversation before that's paralyzed, isn't it? But once you break through it, very often, almost always, it leads to good things. And there's a relief, isn't there, that the issue's on the table, we can tackle it together and move on.

3:54Absolutely. And you feel like a weight is lifted, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's huge. Yeah, I can really relate to that. Now, you were also on the board, weren't you, of course? Yes. Of this huge organization. And, you know, I guess it's well known there aren't many marketers that ever reached board level. What's a board position like? And what would surprise people to know about what it's like in that position? Oh, wow. You have to always, always. But I think this is one of the reasons I got the job when I didn't expect to get the job, is you have to be thinking about the total company. I don't think you go in as the representative of marketing.

4:27Of course, you are the voice of the consumer. Of course, you're the advocate for growth, you know, creating tension around short-term and long-term. But really, if you're not seeing things from the highest level, from what is good for the company, I don't think you're going to be as successful as if you come in wearing a marketing hat. It takes an enormous amount of time, and you have to know that. That's one of the reasons your people have to be so good, because the amount of time that you spend, managing those relationships, you know, smoothing the path, having a great relationship with the CEO is a lot.

5:02And you have to be ready for that. You mentioned the CEO, of course, it's a critical relationship, isn't it? And you work for Ivan. What was that like? Wonderful. I think most people would say the most difficult thing they faced in the last five years, or many people would say, is COVID. For me, it was Ivan's very sudden death in 2023. we had worked together for 21 years and he was a big part of the reason I took the job. He actually hired me originally as CMO which is you know something that's come full circle and so it took me you know people it was devastating to the company to the community because it was so well known and so well loved and I was probably one of the last people to write something on LinkedIn because I wasn't ready to.

5:49And of course, I wrote the good things, but I also said he was difficult because he was. And I say that now to anyone listening because the point I want to make is it's up to you to manage your boss. CEOs are aggressive, you know, people who have, many of whom have similar mindset and what they're driving for. And if you're built differently, and I was built differently, it was me who had to bridge that gap. And I think you bridge that gap by having an honest conversation. I mean, sometimes as a coach, I feel like I should just press play and say, someone say, oh, my boss, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

6:32And I'll say, have you talked to them about that? You know, no. I mean, I probably asked that question, you know, 20 times a month. Have you talked to them about that? And when you think about how different an Ivan and I were, he is a provocateur and I'm a deliverer, right? So if I think I have to deliver something, I'm thinking not what is the stretch goal, I'm thinking I must deliver this. And the first email he ever sent me said this, dear Sil, please see me tomorrow with 200 million pounds of ideas that will generate revenue in this year. Wow. Now, that's a lot. Even for Diageo, that's a tall order.

7:12It's huge. So I immediately forwarded this to Helen McKells, who I worked closely with for many years, and said, WTF, got any ideas? And I thought, well, I need to start as I mean to go on. And I went into his office and I said to him, just let me reach into my sack of 200 million pound ideas that I haven't told you about. That's a good reply. And, you know, he got it. And the great balance that we had was, do we get 200 million? No. Did we get 85 that we wouldn't have gotten because of his push? Yes. The other thing that's both amazing and difficult about Ivan is he is strategic. he's creative, he's full of ideas.

7:59And sometimes when he wasn't traveling, we'd go, oh no, he's not traveling. The emails will start coming. And just an idea, an idea, an idea, an idea. And it was really up to me to decide what to do with those. Because if I just passed them down to the team, they would be completely overwhelmed. So one thing a CMO has to do is to really decide, stick or twist, stick or twist. But I had that conversation with him. And I said, you know, I ignore half your emails. And he says, yeah. Wow. You know, it was in sort of a development conversation. He's open to feedback as well. I said, well, I know. I said, and do you know why?

8:36Now I sound like a mom. He goes, because they're a distraction. Yes. You know, so we had this agreement. How did you decide which of the emails ignored? Well, again, that goes back to having a keen sense of what is important to the corporation. Not pleasing, not what does he want, what's important to the corporation, what's going to generate growth. So that would be do. Something important that we need to change his mind about, that would be meet. And then something that he's probably going to forget about, isn't going to make a difference, or he's a ridiculous this request, ignore. I like that.

9:13What advice would you give then, Marcus, thinking about all your experience managing up with CMS? I think you're onto something as well because so many people see the boss as the problem. Oh, things aren't going well. I'll blame the people in charge. We like to push up, don't we, in terms of our problems. And that's the reason why the company's not doing it. Whenever you see, you know, company SaaS action surveys cut by layer, You see this thing, the further away from your own team, the further up it goes, the more you blame people sort of thing. And actually, I love the way you talk there about taking ownership of your relationship with your boss.

9:45So what would be your advice to marketers to foster that, a positive relationship with the CEO? First of all, I'm going to go back to the same point, seeing it from their point of view and asking yourself, what would you do? I mean, I had an open conversation with people saying, I know there's a lot of criticism up of us as an exec. Tell me, what would you do in this difficult situation? And you have an open conversation about that, like, well, just invest more in marketing. Okay, where's that money going to come from, the magic money tree? And getting people to see it like that is really important.

10:16I think it's very important not to protect your people, right? If you're protecting your senior leaders who report to you, you're literally protecting them from their success because they're going to have to figure out how to do that stuff. So if there was a sticky issue, you know, I'd come back and say, okay, here's the issue. What do you think we should do? And we'd go in and they would be the person presenting on that. But that also means they're thinking about what is that person's motivation? You know, how are they wired? What are they going to care about? What is going to convince them? How are they going to get them on board?

10:51So it's just some basic influencing skills, but you need to use them all the time. And build a human relationship with people. You know, see them for what they are. And sometimes people think, what does that mean? I need to make small talk all the time. No, but when you're in front of them, connect. You know, connect viscerally with them on things that they're interested in. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One thing I think I've learned in a similar vein is don't just present a problem, but present a range of options and solutions. Because I find this on the receipt, not that I'm CEO, but in a senior marketing role, the amount of people that just come to me with a problem, I'm like, well, what do you think we should do?

11:31You're closer to it. It's all the people feel like I could just serve up all the problems. And they realize, as a senior leader, it's such a relief when people take ownership for the problem and say, well, look, we could do it this, this, and this. My recommendation is that one. Here's how we could do it. And you're like, wow. Exactly. And there's really simple coaching techniques you can use for that, which is, okay, you listen really hard and you say, and what else? And what else? And what does that mean? And what will that lead to? And what are you most worried about? And with a series of questions, you get to the nub of what they're worried about.

12:04But the pivotal question is, okay, now what are you going to do about it? And in my case, people always knew they were going to have to take the first shot. No matter where the person was in the hierarchy. You know, global head of supply, not releasing enough whiskey. Okay, have that conversation. And they know that I'd be having that conversation next if they didn't succeed. That was fine. I was there to support. I love the fact you said, what are you going to do about it? Because our human instinct is it's their problem. Yes. You know, what are you going to do about it? How do you learn? Yeah.

12:36How do you learn if that's not the question you're asking? That's really, really good. Now, we're talking about, obviously, your career. Where did it start for you? Take us back to the beginning and your childhood and what got you to this place. I know you do a lot of counseling as well. But yeah, tell us the journey for you. Pretty humble beginnings. I am a second generation Greek-American. And it's really funny living here for so long where people see me as definitely American and where my identity growing up was I was Greek. And that was a big part of who I was. I'd say life at home was chaotic, ironically.

13:15And sadly, my dad was an alcoholic. And that brought a lot of uncertainty in the house you never quite knew was going to happen. And this was something that I couldn't talk about when I was CMO. It made me highly sensitive to the difficulties with alcohol abuse. And I think that helped me to really live the code of responsible drinking. but it also impacted me as a leader. And I think leaders really need to understand how they grew up affects them as leaders. And I work with many of my clients on this. And I'm really clear that I'm not a therapist. That is not my training. But I do have a series of questions that we will devote at least a session to.

14:01What were the sorts of things you heard growing up? What did your mother say? What did your father say? What's the situation? because sometimes the voices in their heads are the voices they heard as a child. And that unlocks some really difficult things that people are facing. When I see someone stuck and they're just not getting over that hump, we do that piece of work, and it's really, really valuable. So what that meant for me is I really feared chaos, and that meant that I was too controlling as a leader. Let me see the pre-read. Let me see the presentation. Is that okay? Because I didn't want chaos to disrupt.

14:39I was trying to control it. I wasn't able to live in that ambiguity. And work with my coach, Martha Graham, who's just amazing and life-changing, really helped me get to the nub of it. And she helped me develop a leadership mantra, and it went like this. Deep belief in myself and others sets me free. And every one of those words means something. So deep belief in myself meant I had to get over a lot of these confidence gaps and just decide not to listen to them, have more belief in myself. And others meant I had to visibly show more belief to people all the time. Because I ask tons of questions.

15:23And I have to make sure that people understand, I'm not asking this because I think you're stupid. Or you don't know what you're doing. I'm asking because I'm just curious. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Oh, I see now. Okay.

15:38Sets me free came from the insight I noticed that I was much more relaxed and confident as a mom than I was as a leader. And that was, you know, that was so freeing. I mean, dinner table at our house, and we all ate together, not this sort of feed the kids at five, you know, not see them. We had dinner together every night that I wasn't traveling. You know, it was really a let's make fun of mom. You know, at my 50th birthday party, the kids did a intelligence ranking of the family. And it was, you know, dad and then whoever was talking, either Alexa or Jake, and then the au pair and then worms and then dirt and then mom.

16:23Listen, so I was like, yeah, this is great. You know, they're free to say what they want to say. and I felt very free. So I thought sets me free is if I could be more relaxed, more confident, I would be a better leader. And a lot of us think if we're not feeling confident, we have to be a bit insecure to strive. That's really usually not true. And I remember Martha asked me, when are you at your best? When you are relaxed in the flow or when you're uptight and overprepared. And with my coachees, they're amazing. And a lot of the work we do is to just have them build those confidence gaps. That's so interesting.

17:06You gave me a flashback, actually, because in a relatively senior role I had, someone overheard me talking to my kids on the phone. Oh, yeah. Someone in my team and she said, I wish you'd bring that to our team meetings. Really? What do you mean? Like, I'm playing dad over here. Yeah, yeah. She goes, honestly it transformed the team if you kind of like shared a little bit of that because we see you as this kind of scary always knows what he's doing always you know always on it kind of person but she said i love that side that was great absolutely in my head i just couldn't i didn't have permission to bring any of that to the you know what great advice but i love that yeah bring the humanity and right about asking questions as well isn't it because it is scary isn't it like you know presenting somebody that's that you look up to and has got yeah responsibility they're firing loads of questions.

17:53You think, oh, no. Yeah, but you can make it safe. I mean, when I would go travel around the world and go into market, I would say, right, I know everybody here is worried I'm going to control your career. First of all, I only have influence over the people report to me and the people report to them. So everybody relax. And yes, you're allowed 15 minutes to tell me how great you are and impress me. That's great. And now we'll get to the root of the issues. What do you need help with? Because that's what I'm here for. I'm here to help. And And just try to know what people are feeling, burst that bubble, and have them feel safe to say what they want and talk about the problems, not just what's going great.

18:30I love that. As one of my favorite programs to watch is New Amsterdam. I don't know if you watched that. But Max, who runs the hospital, he's got this always, every crisis he walks into goes, how can I help? And you think, well, you're the boss, right? But he said, my job is to put the resources, solve the problem, make you successful. And that's a different way of thinking about leadership, isn't it? Totally. How can I help? How can I unlock this? How can I make you better rather than creating the conditions for people to succeed? Exactly. That's so critical. Looking back then, you know, over a very, very successful career, is there anything you'd do differently?

19:04When you reflect back, what would you do differently? Oh, my God. Everything. Well, so many things. So, right. To be fair, not everything. The only job I ever said yes to immediately was the CMO job because I thought this is a good note to end on. I was 57 when I was important. I was going to do it for three years, and I thought, let me give it a go. That lasted two weeks. Then I started crying, I can't do the job. But the good thing about that is people trusted that I was in it for the company, not for me, not for the next job. And that trust is invaluable. But so many other things. So I didn't have a plan.

19:42I think people should have a plan. And they should have plans with lots of options. And I was good at that. I did like do different things so that I was flexible. But they need to know, particularly if they're going for a specific job, what skills do they need to develop? Who do they need to talk to? You know, some people think they have to run around convincing everyone. No, we can identify the decision makers here and the people who are going to influence the decision makers speak to them. So for me, I played it way too safe. And I really hope everybody listening is a lot quicker than I am to figure this out, which is the reason sometimes we're scared of that next job is because we don't think we're going to be very good at it.

20:25But you're never as good in the first year as you are going to be in year three. So take jobs that you're going to develop that expertise in it. Know that it's going to be scary. And that's great. You just can learn your way into it. And if you're not feeling nervous, it's probably not the right job. It's not going to stretch you. I finally learned, you know, something that I quote a lot, which is growth begins at the end of your comfort zone. I think that's a great insight. I found it on a fridge magnet that I had. That is brilliant. I love that. That is absolutely brilliant. I think fear is one of the biggest barriers, really, to anything in life, whether it's a career.

21:10you do, whether it's the decision you make on which creative to, you know, get behind or the innovation to do. You know, we're so worried about what might go wrong. It's probably, you know, Daniel Kahneman's loss aversion, isn't it? We feel, you know, negative emotions twice as strongly as we feel positive emotions and that we weigh them more, don't we? You know, our memories are more affected by things that go wrong rather than things that go well. Now, I guess a word that a lot of people might use in this situation would be imposter syndrome, you know, which I think we've all kind of felt, you know, one time or another.

21:38Is imposter syndrome a real thing? How does it show up? What's been your experience? Yeah, I think somebody briefed you to say the word imposter syndrome to me and watch me levitate out of the chair. I'll say about imposter syndrome, you know, but yeah. Listen, I really just dislike the terminology a lot. Because as you said, you know, we feel fear twice as much. You know what that is? That is evolution. You know, we have not come that far from being chased from a saber-toothed tiger. We are wired for fight or flight. So the imposter syndrome becomes a label for what I call the human condition.

22:18And it medicalizes it. You know, it's not a syndrome. It's not a disease. It is what's called being human. And that negative inner voice is wired to protect us. But we have a choice whether or not to listen to it. Sherilyn Shackle, founder, amazing founder, CEO of the Incredible Marketing Academy, who I know has been on the podcast, calls it the itty bitty shitty committee. That's very Sherilyn, isn't it? It's very Sherilyn. She calls hers Mildred, you know, and she just says, shut up, Mildred. You know, we have a choice not to listen to it. So right now I'm thinking, oh, God, I'm probably going on too long.

23:02You know, is John a bit bored? Even though you're smiling nicely, that's your job. You know, why did I ever do this? Yeah, I'm very nervous about just rambling, you know, so I overprep for these types of things still. I can confirm. Yes. But I'm choosing not to listen to that. I'm trying to be solely focused on what is going to be of value to your listeners. Because we're never really good judges of ourselves, right? You know, you have to get a lot of feedback. And I've been told enough times now, I don't suck at this, so do it. I'm just a slow learner. The second thing about the imposter syndrome, it's actually not a very helpful thing to be able to coach into, whether your leader is coach or is a coach.

23:46You know, okay, you have imposter syndrome. Right. Are you an imposter at everything? And it's too general. So what I work on is trying to get to the sources of where people have confidence gaps. And I'm really lucky that my client base is generally some of the most successful CMOs you know. They look like bulletproof, confident people. I assure you they're not. None of us are. But we need to get to the root of where they're going to feel not great about their performance or something. It's usually situational. It may be a certain type of person who intimidates them. It may be a particular skill they need to develop, like having difficult conversations.

24:35But we get to the root of those things, you know, rather than just saying, I feel like an imposter. All right, all right. Sorry to interrupt this conversation. I promise you it's for a good cause. So I've just put a rather large deposit down on a very big venue in central London called the Outernet that can hold 400 people. It's an amazing venue. Now, we're going to be doing the very first uncensored CMO, The Calling. Now, what is The Calling? The Calling is your opportunity to join us live and be inspired by the world's best founders, the most inspirational CMOs and the best thought leaders. This is one day that will completely transform your career.

25:16I promise it will be well worth it. I'm so excited to be doing this. And if you want to find out more details, please go to the show notes and check it out. And I really look forward to seeing you there. It's on the 21st of April. Do not miss it. Now back to the show. Now, fear holds us back. I think sometimes people also are not even sure what they want. Right. You know, I remember I've had times in my career where I've not really been quite clear on where I'm going to go. Back to your point earlier when you talked with me about, you know, having a plan. And I know in your coaching, of course, you help people discover kind of what do they really want?