Leadership should be seen as a responsibility, not a performance

As I look back at 2025, I am struck by the extent to which modern leadership has become characterised by brashness and narcissism. After periods where ‘purpose-driven’ and ‘servant leadership’ were part of the conversation, leadership today seems louder, more performative and less grounded in substance. I can’t help but think these role models will have cast a shadow into other areas, including brands and marketing.

My hope for 2026 is that marketers make a deliberate choice about how they lead and the culture which informs how their brands show up.

I can’t be alone in wondering what impact the world’s most high-profile leaders are having inside brands and businesses. Figures like Elon Musk, with his chaotic decision-making, and Donald Trump’s inconsistency and indifference to fact have redefined what leadership looks like. Leadership is becoming more spectacle than stewardship, and though we must recognise these characteristics command attention, create followship and dominate the algorithms of social feeds, they also leave a trail of fear, distrust and short-termism.

Too often, even in marketing teams and C-suites, charisma is confused for capability, volume for vision and challenge for real innovation.

As marketing leaders, we must pause and ask ourselves what kind of leaders we want to be? And what kind of leadership do our brands – and our people – need to thrive?

Marketers are not just guardians of campaigns and customer insights. Marketers are stewards of their brands, often setting the mood in an organisation, and our brands shape culture to a lesser or greater degree through the choices we make. At a time where trust is fragile, society polarised and employee engagement must be earned, leadership matters. I remain sceptical that the current adversarial, dogmatic and chaotic leadership archetypes are effective, healthy and sustainable.

Leadership should be seen as a responsibility, not a performance. Too often, even in marketing teams and C-suites, charisma is confused for capability, volume for vision and challenge for real innovation. In contrast, respected organisations such as the Harvard Business Review and McKinsey highlight the need for vulnerability, emotional intelligence, integrity and the ability to foster psychological safety.

Former Tesco customer chief awarded OBE for services to marketing

Responsible leadership in action

Against this backdrop here are some practical things I come back to when leading brands and teams.

1. Lead with values and vision

Great brands have real clarity, not only on what they are setting out to achieve, but how they will achieve it. The best brands recognise these are likely to be values shared by their target audience. In the best single-brand businesses, there is congruence between how a brand and its values show up internally and externally, and this goes for leadership too.

Patagonia is a clear example for me – it has always been inherently committed to environmental activism, to the point that the business is now owned by the Patagonia Purpose Trust and Holdfast Collective. Look at your brand values and consider your leadership behaviours – are you embodying what you market? Are you working on a brand with which your values are congruent?

2. Create a brave and accountable culture

We often hear high-performing teams have trust and psychological safety. A lack of safety paralyses creativity and innovation, and increases the attrition rates of the best talent. But pearls need grit, so perhaps it’s better to think about fostering bravery where people can push boundaries, have challenging conversations, take risks, but also be accountable for success and failure. To make this practical: check in to see what is not being discussed that should be, that all voices are heard and ensure you act on it.

3. Celebrate team wins over personal glory

The best leaders don’t just share the spotlight, they shine it on others, giving credit generously, celebrating collaboration over control. To create work which endures beyond the tenure of individuals requires marketers to redirect attention from themselves to the system, and to use success to reinforce culture, not status. To deliver work over decades like Mastercard, Guinness and Dove is about stewardship, not authorship. Think about a collective, not an individual legacy.

4. Be fully present, especially at the most challenging times

Trust is built in the toughest times. It’s easy to be visible when everything’s rosy; far harder and more important to show up when things are not. Leaders can hide behind PR or talking points when things are tough but people value honestly over polish. In practice this means owning the hard stuff, being available, speaking plainly and avoiding corporate euphemism.

Your brand will come to reflect your leadership whether you like it or not. In a time when public discourse is tainted by conspiracy theories, misdirection and chaos-as-content, marketers have a profound opportunity – and obligation – to be different. We can model what it looks like to lead with integrity, to build cultures where truth matters and to treat people with respect. In so doing, marketing can be a force for meaning – not just profit.

Marketers may have limited say in who runs countries or the organisations we partner with to make our brands visible, but we can control how we lead and with whom our brands partner – and in doing so, we might just create the kind of brands and businesses we need more of.