How Bad Leadership Ruins Content, Culture, and Credibility
By: LaNae Riviere of FMK Agency
Every agency or in-house marketing team has had one.
The “visionary” who speaks exclusively in buzzwords, opens every meeting with a LinkedIn post quote, and somehow manages to reference ChatGPT five times before you’ve even opened your laptop. This is the guy who thinks talking louder is strategy, who dismisses feedback as “resistance to innovation,” and who treats his content team like a vending machine for thought leadership.
We all know that marketing guy. This is a gentle, public service-style reminder not to be him.
If Your Whole Pitch Is Jargon, You Probably Don’t Know What You’re Doing
Let’s just get this out of the way: Saying things like “leveraging disruptive synergies to maximize omnichannel activation” doesn’t make you sound smart. It makes you unreadable… and frankly, a tad insufferable.
Jargon is a crutch. It’s what people lean on when they don’t have anything real to say, or when they’re more interested in sounding important than in being clear. That might fly in a boardroom where no one wants to admit they’re lost, but it collapses in front of a real audience.
Want to lead? Start by being legible.
Bullying Isn’t Leadership
Marketing departments love to use “fast-paced” and “high-performance” to hide all kinds of dysfunction. But here’s the thing: when your “driven” culture just means yelling, condescending, or publicly embarrassing your team, that’s not leadership. That’s bullying.
The office bully doesn’t always shout. Sometimes he “jokes.” Sometimes he “just tells it like it is.” But the impact is the same: people stop speaking up. They stop asking questions. They keep their heads down and play it safe.
That’s not how good content gets made.
Content Isn’t a Commodity, and Writers Aren’t Tools
Content isn’t something you “slot in” once the important stuff is figured out. It is the important stuff.
Your landing pages, your emails, your product explainers, your ad copy, your blog: every single one of those is a chance to connect or confuse. Yet somehow, content is still often the last thing discussed and the first thing rushed.
Here’s what usually happens: The “idea guy” lays out a vision with zero message clarity and the writers are expected to turn it into brilliance under pressure. Meanwhile, the designer gets looped in halfway through and asked to “make it pop.” Sound familiar?
Threatening Your Team With AI Doesn’t Make You Cutting Edge
There’s a new kind of marketing guy in town, and he’s obsessed with “efficiency.” Translation: he’s obsessed with AI.
He doesn’t really understand how it works. He doesn’t really care what it’s for. But he’s absolutely certain that if the content team doesn’t figure out how to “leverage it,” they’ll be obsolete by next quarter.
This guy doesn’t want to explore AI with his team. He wants to wave it around like a stick.
This doesn’t inspire innovation. It inspires anxiety. If your writers are constantly being told that a tool that can't understand nuance or context is "coming for their job," you’ve already lost their trust.
So, okay, AI has a place. But that shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat, and it’s not a threat you dangle to make yourself sound cutting edge.
Also, Forcing Your Team to Use AI While Publicly Trashing It Makes You Look Like a Hypocrite in a Blazer
If you’ve ever stood in a meeting preaching about the “value of authentic voice” while making your team quietly crank out AI-generated content, this part is for you.
You don’t get to posture about ethics and creativity in public while gutting both behind the scenes. This “brand safety theater” is transparent, and your team sees right through it.
Stop Calling Yourself an Expert and Start Listening
There’s a reason people roll their eyes when someone calls themselves a “thought leader.”
Real experts don’t need to announce it every five minutes. They don’t dominate the conversation, they shape it with quiet clarity. They listen. They learn. They know how to get out of the way when someone else has the better idea.
If your main contribution to every brainstorm is a ten-minute monologue about what you think is best, you’re not leading. You’re holding the mic hostage.
You’re Not the Main Character—The Work Is
If this post hits a nerve, take that as a gift.
You can still change course. You can ditch the buzzwords, share credit, make space, and lead with clarity. You can treat your content team like the strategic powerhouse it is, instead of a department of scribes for half-baked ideas.
You don’t have to be that guy.
And frankly, your team would prefer you weren’t.
