An Interview with Syl Saller

Syl Saller was Diageo’s Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer until her retirement from the company in 2020. During her time in this post, Saller’s leadership skills won her a plethora of industry awards, including being honoured with a CBE from the Queen in 2021.

Syl Saller now works full-time as an executive coach and mentor, specializing in working with CMOs and agency heads.

Leadership Development

At university, Saller studied psychology and organizational development, and was already managing a team of 24 people by the age of 22, instinctively understanding that talent development was crucial to achieve the best results possible for clients. She says she has always seen her role as leader as intrinsically linked to that of coach and mentor, enabling the members of her team to find and develop their creative skills.

Aligning Goals

For Syl Saller, the strategic and creative consultancy Blitzworks — founded by Marcus Brown, Ajab Samrai and John Pallant — offers a great template for collaborative, multi-agency working. She cites trust, honesty and the effective alignment of goals as being fundamental to the success of a project, explaining how the best approaches result in arising issues being resolved quickly and ultimately lead to a rewarding experience for everyone involved.

Promoting Growth Mindsets

As an executive coach, clients often talk to Saller about their fears of not meeting the expectations of others, or about being able to undertake their role to the standard they aspire to.

For Saller, this comes down to a need to build self-confidence; she understands that the real anxieties that people have are usually about whether they can live up to the high standards they have set for themselves. She helps clients to develop a growth mindset to nurture their self-confidence, which, she notes, their teams will undoubtedly respond positively to.

The Next Step

In the interview, Saller talks about leaving Diageo after spending 21 years with the company, during seven of which she held the post of CMO. As well as feeling it was time to let a new generation come to the fore, she was also keen to work full time in executive coaching and leadership development, roles that she finds extremely fulfilling.

The Marketing Leadership Masterclass — which Saller recently co-created with Thomas Barta — has been a significant success, with feedback from attendees pointing to how the course has benefited them in developing their leadership skills, enabling them to be more influential and effective in their roles.