Remote Career Development: John Wiltshire of the Canadian Marketing Association On How To Advance and Enhance Your Career When You Are Working Remotely
An Interview With David Liu
Encourage your teams to do fun virtual events to get to know each other. There are plenty of them out there: Trivia, escape rooms, even virtual ‘field trips.’ Get creative!
Career development is the ongoing process of choosing, improving, developing, and advancing your career. This involves learning, making decisions, collaboration with others and knowing yourself well enough to be able to continually assess your strengths and weaknesses. This can be challenging enough when you work in an office, but what if you work remotely? How does remote work affect your career development? How do you nurture and advance your career when you are working from home and away from other colleagues? How can you help your employees do this? To address these questions, we started an interview series called “How To Advance and Enhance Your Career When You Are Working Remotely”. As a part of this interview series, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Wiltshire, President and CEO of the Canadian Marketing Association.
John is the President and CEO of the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), where he leads the strategy and execution of the CMA mandate, including the growth of the Chartered Marketer designation. Prior to joining the CMA, John spent more than 20 years as a senior executive in the financial industry. His core strengths include product design, branding, promotions and communication.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is your “backstory”?
I grew up in London, Ontario and attended Ivey Business School. After graduating, I took on an information services role with Canada Trust, which eventually merged with TD Bank. I worked in marketing and product development, and then led both these functions at IGM Financial for about 20 years.
Five years ago, I landed my dream job as the President and CEO of the Canadian Marketing Association. We are the voice of marketing in Canada, with more than 400 member organizations including small businesses, large brands, consultancies, agencies, NFPs and technology firms. In my role, I lead the CMA’s mission to embolden marketers to impact business. We do this through initiatives focused on our three main pillars: standards of excellence, influence and community.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
It was the drama around launching a major ad campaign at IGM. Releasing the ad at a national conference of 2,000 advisors and watching the tears roll down their faces imprinted on me the power of creativity and storytelling. This has stayed with me over the years. I write a weekly blog for my staff as well as a weekly note to CMA members, both of which involve a lot of storytelling and anecdotes. I believe that this type of messaging, that focuses on the human connection, is what resonates with people — especially in the challenging and uncertain times we find ourselves in today.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
It was a media interview, of course. I was prepared for any question. At the end of the interview, I was told that the interview was over, and I was off the record. The question was “Why do you really advertise so much during RRSP season”. I said: “We have to be out there with everyone else”. Guess what the headline to the article was the next day in the Globe and Mail?!
Lesson learned: you are never truly off the record, and you have to live and breathe your brand message. Also, now I know where media get those funny headlines from.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“There are two ways to solve a problem. Change the outcome or change your expectation.” As someone who is very competitive, this has helped me to reset at times, especially when I begin to overthink tasks and metrics.
“Everything in moderation. Including moderation.” Sometimes its ok to not be all that moderate — you have to take a stand when it matters and swim against the tide to make an impact.
What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees thrive and avoid burnout?
It’s always about the contract, whether it’s explicit or implicit. Is there a fair exchange happening? If not, it’s likely time to make a change. Also, leave room for joy in your life and make sure that joy is your own, whether it’s needlepoint or triathlons, or my personal favourites (in order): my grandchildren, date squares and the Dallas Cowboys.
Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Working remotely can be very different than working with a team that is in front of you. This provides great opportunities but it can also create unique challenges. To begin, can you articulate for our readers a few of the main benefits and opportunities of working remotely?
Some of the benefits are obvious: nonexistent commute times, working in sweatpants and waking up 20 minutes before your first meeting. But there’s also more opportunity to be bold and meet new people since they’re all just a click away. We can all be a little nimbler these days, whether that’s doing research on the fly to improve conversations or eliminating processes and structures that are bottlenecks to efficiency and growth.
At the CMA we’ve also been able to organically expand our reach, as our events and meetings are no longer limited by geographical boundaries. While we have always served a national audience, we’ve been able to specifically elevate our active engagement across the country.
Can you articulate for our readers what the five main challenges are regarding working remotely?
- We all miss out on those hallway conversations and chance encounters on the street — relationships aren’t forming nearly as naturally as they once could, especially for those more introverted in nature.
- It’s much harder to show compassion and empathy virtually. It’s not impossible by any means, but it requires more intention.
- Collaboration and creativity are more challenging to foster.
- Our view of what’s going on in the world is driven by what we read and see online, rather than what we experience for ourselves. We’ve all become fairly insular, both practically and in terms of our perspectives beyond our immediate surroundings.
- Last but not least: Speaking for myself, I go through way too many groceries. The fridge is just way too close!
Based on your experience, what can one do to address or redress each of those challenges? Can you give a story or example for each?
Schedule in chance encounters. Set up virtual coffees, or just make a Teams video call to say ‘hello.’ Don’t rely on email — so much nuance is lost in formal communication and it’s important to make time for casual chat and ‘shooting the breeze.’ This is where ideas big and small stem from.
On a related note, limit your time on social media and take those extra hours and put them into reading a good book or having a meaningful conversation with an expert or thought leader.
Encourage your teams to do fun virtual events to get to know each other. There are plenty of them out there: Trivia, escape rooms, even virtual ‘field trips.’ Get creative!
And finally, when it comes to food: Delivery services like Skip the Dishes are your best friend. The choices are endless and trying new restaurants stimulates the local economy and breaks up the patterns of the day.
Let’s talk about Career Development. Can you share a few ideas about how you can nurture and advance your career when you are working from home and away from other colleagues?
Take courses and earn designations. There are a number of great virtual courses in the marketing area that will allow you to network and be current — at the CMA we offer seminars and workshops, 10-week certificate courses, and events and exclusive experiences all year round. Our topics reach far and wide, ranging from privacy and CASL compliance to integrated branding to marketing math.
If you’re a marketer, get your Chartered Marketer designation. This robust, interactive program is specifically designed to teach mid-level marketers the hard and soft skills needed to advance to leadership positions. Professional designations elevate the credibility of practitioners in many professions, so if one of those is available to you, take advantage.
Books are great for self-directed learning but looks for works that are based on research and not just on someone’s experience or opinion. Try to strike a balance between books that directly relate to your line of work and those focused on the broader societal or economic landscape.
Can you share a few ideas about how employers or managers can help their team with career development?
The key here is to build professional development into your corporate culture. Provide employees with time off for professional development, and reward them in their performance assessments for taking on learning and upskilling opportunities. This involves some empathy and flexibility as well — not everyone has personal or professional circumstances that allow for committing to a course, but half-day seminars or events might be a better fit.
You can also make learning fun and collaborative. Offer to pay for non-fiction books that your employees want to read and set up virtual book clubs to facilitate dialogue.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
My word of the year is kindness. There is not a more powerful concept for success out there than empathetic leadership. When a leader is kind, they create fertile soil for their employees to grow. It can be difficult to achieve, but I would wish a movement of kindness on society.
Another word I’m focused on this year is optimism. I believe that better and brighter days are ahead, and I try to embody that in my interactions with my staff, with our members and with my broader community.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I’m very active on LinkedIn. I post at least once a week through my own account. I host our CMA Connect Podcast, and my CEO insights are published weekly. I was recently featured in CanadianSME, CMSWire and Generation1.ca.
Thank you for these great insights! We wish you continued success
Thank you — it was a pleasure chatting!
