When Leaders Lose Touch

I don't know if it's the midterm elections or just reading headlines about the state of the world and business, but I keep thinking about leadership. Not so much about what makes a leader a "LEADER," but more about how leaders stay humble as they climb the corporate ladder.

I recently sat in a marketing seminar where a guest speaker discussed her experience using an app her team had recently brought to market. In her telling, she used the app to order groceries, had them delivered, and as luck would have it, things didn't go quite right. Missing items, substitutions, produce she wouldn't have chosen, and so on. A fairly familiar experience for anyone who's ordered groceries online.

As she closed on Part One of her five-act story, she stated with full conviction, as though this was the aha moment for us all to lean in:

"If it's happening to me, then it must be happening to others."

That line stuck with me, although probably not for the reason she intended.

As marketers, we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about consumers: their motivations, behaviors, and identities. Why this brand versus another? What drives consideration, purchase, and loyalty? The marketing funnel, which is actually more of a whirlpool. And let's not even get started on media mix.

All of this work is meant to help us better understand the people we're trying to reach. Which brings me back to that statement: "If it's happening to me..."

I don't know this speaker, and I certainly can't speak to her intentions. These seminars tend to run like TED Talks, carefully practiced and rehearsed. But what struck me wasn't that she had a bad experience. It was the emphasis on me.

Because, of course, it was happening to other people. Anyone who has used a delivery app has probably experienced something similar, whether it's cold food, missing items, substitutions that make absolutely no sense, or margaritas that tip over and ruin your entire dinner. Not that I'm speaking from a very specific experience.

Maybe her story was simply an anecdote to introduce a larger discussion about improving the product. Fair enough. But it left me wondering why an experience so familiar to consumers could sound like such a revelation.

At what point, as leaders climb the corporate ladder, do they begin to lose touch with the real world?

It's an interesting contradiction. We spend our careers trying to better understand consumers, but the more senior we become, the easier it can be to find ourselves insulated from their everyday experiences. We have teams to interpret the data, agencies to present the research, and dashboards to tell us what's working. All incredibly valuable, but none of those things can fully replace experiencing the world as our consumers do.

Leaders should recognize problems, challenge assumptions, and push for change. But it raises a question: Would that same problem receive the same attention if it were raised by an everyday customer rather than someone in a position of authority? The frustrations of our consumers deserve attention long before they become our own.

That's where humility comes in.

I don't believe leaders need to have every answer. In fact, I'd argue that the best leaders are the ones who recognize how much they don't know. They listen, challenge their own assumptions, and surround themselves with people willing to tell them when something isn't working. And importantly, they don't expect the world to work differently simply because of the title on their business card.

The more responsibility we have, the more important it becomes to stay connected to the people we're serving. Not just through a quarterly research presentation or a carefully curated customer story, but by recognizing that the frustrations, inconveniences, and imperfect experiences of everyday life aren't anomalies. They're part of the reality our consumers navigate.

As leaders and marketers, we can't expect to be shielded from that reality. And we certainly shouldn't need to experience a problem ourselves before recognizing that it exists. Leadership shouldn't mean being removed from the everyday experience. It should mean being more accountable to it.

The world is messy.

Live in the mess and see how you can improve it.