I always like to start meetings by something that lington used to do quite often, at the beginning of a meeting we would say this meeting will be a success. If so, that helps anchor people and ok, we're all here for a reason. This isn't a waste of time. And we need to come out of this with an outcome. I also always recommend to people, do not bring slides and read from them. That is the most sure fire way to lose your audience within about two minutes. It drives people absolutely crazy. So i think those two things, once you kind of nail those ... are just so much more effective.
Today’s episode is with Shannon Brayton, a Silicon Valley veteran with more than two decades of experience shaping corporate narratives and leading teams at companies like LinkedIn, OpenTable, eBay, Yahoo!, and Intuit. She recently joined Bessemer as the venture capital firm’s first-ever CMO.
In today’s conversation, Shannon shares the comms and leadership lessons she’s picked up along the way. In addition to sharing her broader philosophy around the role of comms and her thoughts on why it’s one of the more underappreciated functions, Shannon gets into the tactical weeds on everything from killing stories and creating new categories, to her frameworks for building relationships with reporters. There’s plenty of career advice as well, from how she approaches selecting companies to work for, to what the transition from head of comms to CMO was like, to what she’s learned from mentors and bosses like Jeff Weiner.
Here’s the reverse mentoring post Shannon mentioned on how she approached taking on the CMO role: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-tackled-first-100-days-my-new-role-reverse-brayton/
You can follow Shannon on Twitter at @sstubo.
You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson