Eric Le Blanc Email & Phone Number

Most of us have seen the Venn diagram that shows three over-lapping circles: what you’re good at, what you like doing, and what the world (or your company) needs. The intersection of the three is where you gain your greatest fulfillment and success. I think of the skills I have and the things I’ve experienced, and I try to fit them into their place in the Venn diagram.It seems to me that my “soft skills” occupy a special place in the intersection of these circles. Foremost, I am a teacher/coach/leader/manager. In my first job as a Director of Marketing, I took over a department that had been severely depopulated. We needed to build capability and bandwidth. Reaching greater effectiveness for the department depended on hiring more people, hiring the RIGHT people, expanding skill sets, and building a culture. I had a similar experience at Tyson Foods where I took over deli marketing with one manager as my only direct report. This one manager, by the way, was intelligent and driven, but lacked marketing fundamentals. She absorbed what I had to teach her and used her own smarts and hard work to continue to grow. I can’t claim credit for it, but she’s a VP today. I focused on the same things at Tyson that I had in my previous role: hiring the right people, giving them tools and support, and defining a unique culture. The culture we created together was: customer-focused (internal and external), drama-free, ego-free, collaborative, and respectful. The size of our team expanded with the size of our business and the scope of our work. Pound per pound that was the best, most functional marketing team I have ever seen. And it was a rare thing for someone to leave our department, because they enjoyed the work, enjoyed the team, and felt proud of what they did. That’s why they were so good.Teaching, building, and coaching are the skills that enable all of the other ones that we rightly focus on. Do I know how to write and create a budget and do all of the other administrative and managerial functions of running a department? Sure. Do I know how to analyze a situation, think strategically, implement new solutions for changing circumstances? I am always ready to tear down what we built to make something better, and some of the highest praise I ever received from my boss was when he said that my team )reinvented itself every year.” And we did.So: Digital marketing, Content Marketing, Insights, Trade Communication….They’re all in my profile. But what every company needs, what I enjoy, and what I am good at is creating a team where these things happen.

Listed skills include Customer Insight, Product Development, Integrated Marketing, Marketing, and 23 others.

• 

  Oberlin College

  Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.)