The Myth of the 'Hero Leader' in FMCG: Why Collaboration is Key to Success.
Debbie Morrison • April 19, 2023

The Consumer Goods industry is a highly innovative, competitive and fast-paced sector that demands leaders who can navigate complex challenges and drive results. 


Innovation and creativity are the driving force behind food & beverage excellence but they can also be a double-edged sword. Elevating innovative mavericks and individual leaders as saviours who can lead companies to glory, spawns the notion of the ‘hero leader’ - a single individual who possesses all the necessary skills and expertise to safeguard company success.


In reality, this notion couldn’t be further from the truth. We all love a hero - Ben Affleck's new movie ‘Air’ epitomises this - a story based on monetizing an amazing basketball player on the rise, whose athleticism and fame could function as a self-sustaining advertisement for an ever-expanding product line. But like the real story, one-man missions to rescue a company's fortunes from the brink of disaster belong back in the 80s. Collaboration is the key to success in FMCG, and leaders who prioritise cooperation and teamwork over individual heroics are better equipped to achieve sustained success.


The ‘Hero’ Myth

To understand why collaboration is critical in FMCG, we must first explore the reasons why the hero leader myth persists. One reason is the tendency to attribute success to a single individual rather than to a team effort. This is often reinforced by the media's portrayal of successful business leaders as charismatic and larger-than-life figures. However, this overlooks the importance of collaboration and teamwork in driving successful outcomes. In fact, research suggests that teams outperform individuals in a range of tasks, from decision-making to problem-solving.


In reality, the FMCG industry is constantly evolving, with ever-changing consumer preferences and a constant need for innovation. This can create a sense of urgency and a focus on short-term results, which may lead some leaders to adopt an authoritarian approach. However, this approach can stifle creativity and hinder collaboration, ultimately leading to burnout and high employee turnover.


On the other hand, leaders who prioritise collaboration can create an environment that fosters innovation, creativity, and long-term success. By bringing together diverse perspectives and skill sets, teams can identify new opportunities and develop effective solutions to complex challenges. When employees feel valued and heard, they are more likely to be engaged and committed to the success of the company. Therefore, collaboration is essential for sustained success in the FMCG industry.


One example of successful collaboration in FMCG is Procter & Gamble (P&G). P&G is known for its open and collaborative culture, which has enabled the company to develop innovative products that meet the needs of its customers. For example, the company's Swiffer product was the result of collaboration between P&G's R&D team and a group of designers and engineers from IDEO, a design firm. By working together, they were able to create a product that addressed a common cleaning challenge in a new and innovative way.


Another example is Unilever, which has made sustainability a key priority in its business strategy. By collaborating with stakeholders such as suppliers, NGOs, and consumers, Unilever has been able to develop innovative solutions that reduce its environmental footprint and create long-term value for the company. For example, the company's "Project Sunlight" initiative aims to create a brighter future for children by improving health and hygiene, reducing environmental impact, and enhancing livelihoods. This initiative has been successful in part because it has engaged a wide range of stakeholders in its development and implementation.


In addition to these examples, research supports the idea that collaboration is key to success in FMCG. A study by McKinsey & Company found that companies with more diverse leadership teams and a collaborative culture were more likely to outperform their peers. Additionally, a study by Deloitte found that organisations with a strong culture of collaboration were more agile and better able to adapt to change.


Collaboration: The Necessary Anti-Hero

So, how can leaders foster a culture of collaboration in their organisations? One important step is to model collaborative behaviour themselves. When leaders demonstrate a willingness to listen to diverse perspectives and to work collaboratively with others, they set an example for their employees to follow. Additionally, leaders can create structures and processes that support collaboration, such as cross-functional teams, regular team-building activities, and open communication channels.


The myth of the hero leader in FMCG is just that - a myth. While individual leadership is important, collaboration and teamwork are essential to achieving sustained success in the fast-paced and competitive FMCG industry. Rather than prioritising authoritarian or top-down approaches, leaders who prioritise collaboration create an environment that fosters innovation, creativity, and long-term success.


By bringing together diverse perspectives and skill sets, teams can identify new opportunities and develop effective solutions to complex challenges. Companies like Procter & Gamble and Unilever are examples of successful collaboration in action, where they have been able to develop innovative products and sustainability initiatives by working closely with stakeholders.

Research also supports the idea that collaboration is key to success in FMCG, as companies with more diverse leadership teams and a collaborative culture were found to outperform their peers.


To foster a culture of collaboration, leaders must model collaborative behaviour themselves and create structures and processes that support collaboration, such as cross-functional teams and open communication channels.


The hero leader myth must be debunked in the FMCG industry. Collaboration, not individual heroics, is the key to sustained success in this fast-paced and competitive industry. By prioritising collaboration, leaders can create an environment that fosters innovation, creativity, and long-term success for their company and its stakeholders.


At ELR Executive, we specialise in helping FMCG and Food & Beverage companies identify and hire leaders who value collaboration and have the skills to bring together diverse perspectives and skill sets to drive successful business outcomes. They understand that successful collaboration requires strong communication skills, empathy, and the ability to build trust and respect across teams. With a focus on finding executives who possess these qualities, ELR Executive can help FMCG companies build high-performing teams that are able to navigate complex challenges and drive sustainable growth.


If you'd like to learn more about how we can help you hire the right leadership talent, who can navigate your business forward, securing its competitive advantage to thrive in today’s challenging business environment, speak to us today.

Your Culture Report Won’t Show You This

By John Elliott • June 6, 2025
On paper, they were fully resourced. No complaints logged. No formal red flags. Delivery metrics holding steady. But behind closed doors, the signs were there. Delays. Fatigue. Silence in meetings where pushback used to live. And a growing sense that key people were leaning out, emotionally, if not yet physically. When the cracks finally showed, the conclusion was predictable: “We need more people.” But that wasn’t the real problem. The problem was trust. And most organisations never see it until it’s too late. The Hidden Cost of Disengagement In Gallup’s 2023 global workplace report , only 23% of employees worldwide reported being actively engaged at work. A staggering 59% identified as “quiet quitting”, psychologically detached, going through the motions, doing only what their job description demands. Source: Gallup Global Workplace Report 2023 Disengagement is expensive. But it’s also quiet. It doesn’t show up on a balance sheet. It doesn’t send a Slack message. Disengagement isn’t new, just silenced. And in executive teams, it looks different. It looks like polite agreement in strategy meetings. It looks like leaders shielding their teams from unrealistic demands, instead of confronting the system causing them. It looks like performance metrics still being met… while people emotionally check out. The issue isn’t always capability. It’s safety. Psychological, political, and professional. Many senior leaders don’t raise concerns, not because the problem isn’t real, but because they don’t believe they’ll be heard, supported, or protected if they do. And this is where the failure begins. The Leadership Lie No One Talks About We talk a lot about leadership capability. About experience, commercial acumen, execution strength. But we don’t talk enough about context. Every leadership hire walks into a culture they didn’t create. They inherit unwritten rules, quiet alliances, and legacy power structures. If those dynamics are broken, or if trust is fractured at the top, no amount of capability will compensate. According to a 2022 Deloitte mid-market survey, 64% of executives said culture was their top strategic priority. But only 27% said they actually measured it in a meaningful way. We say culture matters. But we rarely structure around it. And so new leaders walk in with pressure to perform, but little real insight into what the role will cost them emotionally, politically, or personally. We Don’t Hire for Trust. And It Shows. In executive search, the conversation is often dominated by pedigree and “fit.” But fit is often a euphemism for sameness. And sameness doesn't build trust, it maintains comfort. We rarely ask: Does this leader know how to build trust vertically and horizontally? Can they operate in a low-trust environment without becoming complicit? Will they challenge inherited silence, or unconsciously uphold it? Instead, we hire for confidence and clarity, traits that often mask what’s broken, rather than reveal it. And when those hires fail? We call it a mismatch. Or we cite the usual: “lack of alignment,” “wasn’t the right time,” “they didn’t land well with the team.” But the truth is often uglier: They were never set up to succeed. And no one told them until it was too late. The Cultural Infrastructure Is Missing One of the most damaging myths in leadership hiring is that great leaders will “make it work.” That if they’re tough enough, experienced enough, skilled enough, they’ll overcome any organisational dysfunction. But high-performance isn’t just personal. It’s systemic. It requires psychological safety. A clear mandate. The backing to make hard decisions. The freedom to speak the truth before it becomes a PR problem. When that infrastructure isn’t there, when the real power dynamics are unspoken, good leaders stop speaking too. And the silence spreads. What Trust Breakdown Really Looks Like Often, the signs of a trust breakdown don’t show up in dramatic ways. They surface subtly in patterns of underperformance that are easy to misread or excuse. You start to notice project delays, but no one flags the root cause. Teams keep things moving, quietly compensating for the bottlenecks rather than surfacing them. Not because they’re careless, but because they’ve learned that early honesty doesn’t always earn support. New leaders hesitate to make bold calls. Not because they lack conviction, but because the last time they did, they were left exposed. Board reports look flawless. Metrics track nicely. But spend five minutes on the floor, and the energy tells a different story. These are not resource issues. They’re relationship issues. And the data backs it. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report , just 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged. Worse, around 60% are “quiet quitting.” That’s not just disengagement. It’s people doing only what’s safe, only what’s required, because trust has quietly eroded. Gallup also found that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, a staggering figure that reinforces just how pivotal leadership trust is. When people don’t feel psychologically safe, they shut down. Not dramatically. Quietly. Invisibly. What’s breaking isn’t the org chart. It’s the ability to speak plainly and be heard. And by the time it’s visible? The damage is already done, and someone calls for a restructure. “Low engagement is estimated to cost the global economy $8.8 trillion, 9% of global GDP.” Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2023 So What’s the Real Takeaway? If you’re seeing performance issues, before you jump to headcount, ask a different question: Do the leaders in this business feel safe enough to tell the truth? Because if they don’t, the data you’re reading isn’t real. And if they do, but you’re not acting on it, then they’ll stop telling you. Leadership doesn’t fail in obvious ways anymore. It fails in the gap between what people know and what they’re allowed to say. And the price of that silence? Missed opportunity. Reputational damage. Cultural decay. Sometimes, the problem isn’t who you hired. It’s what you’ve made it unsafe to say.

The Energy’s Gone, But Everything Still Looks Fine

By John Elliott • May 27, 2025
Why Culture Decay in FMCG Is a Silent Threat to Performance It doesn’t start with resignations. It starts with something much quieter. A head of operations stops raising small problems in weekly meetings. A sales lead no longer defends a risky new SKU. A team member who used to push ideas now just delivers what they’re asked. Nothing breaks. Nothing explodes. It just... slows. And from the outside, everything still looks fine. The illusion of stability In food and beverage manufacturing, where teams run lean and pressure is constant, performance often becomes the proxy for culture. If products are shipping, if margins are intact, if reviews are clean, the assumption is: we're good. But that assumption is dangerous. According to Gallup's 2023 global workplace report, only 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged, while a staggering 59% are "quiet quitting ", doing just enough to get by, with no emotional investment. And in Australia? Engagement has declined three years in a row. In a mid-market FMCG business, those numbers rarely show up on dashboards. But they show up in other ways: New ideas stall at the concept phase Team members stop challenging assumptions Execution becomes rigid instead of agile Everyone is "aligned" but no one is energised And by the time the board sees a drop in revenue, the belief that once drove the business is already gone. The emotional cost of cultural silence One thing we don’t talk about enough is what this does to leadership. When energy drains, leaders often become isolated. Not because they want to be, but because the organisation has lost the instinct to challenge, question, or stretch. I’ve seen CEOs second-guessing themselves in rooms full of agreement. Seen GMs miss red flags because nobody wanted to be "the problem". Seen founders mistake quiet delivery for deep buy-in. The emotional toll of unspoken disengagement is real. You’re surrounded by people doing their jobs. But no one’s really in it with you. And eventually, leaders stop stretching too. We train people to disengage without realising it Here’s the contradiction that most organisations won’t admit: We say we want initiative, but we reward obedience. The safest people get promoted The optimists get extra work The truth-tellers get labelled difficult So people learn to conserve energy. They learn not to challenge ideas that won’t land. They learn not to flag risks that won’t be heard. And over time, they stop showing up with their full selves. This isn't resistance. It's protection. And it becomes the default when innovation is punished, risk isn't buffered, and "alignment" becomes code for silence. Boards rarely see it in time Boards don’t ask about belief. They ask about performance. But belief is what drives performance. When culture begins to fade, it doesn't look like chaos. It looks like calm. It looks like compliance. But underneath, the organisation is hollowing out. By the time a board notices the energy is gone, it’s often because the financials have turned, and by then, the people who could've helped reverse the trend have already left. In a 2022 Deloitte study on mid-market leadership, 64% of executives said culture was their top priority, yet only 27% said they measured it with any rigour . If you don’t track it, you won’t protect it. And if you don’t protect it, don’t be surprised when it disappears. The real risk: you might not get it back Here’s what no one likes to admit: Not all cultures recover. You can try rebrands. You can run engagement campaigns. You can roll out leadership frameworks and off-sites and feedback platforms. But if belief has been neglected for too long, the quiet ones you depended on, the culture carriers, the stretchers, the informal leaders, they’re already checked out. Some have left. Some are still there physically but not emotionally. And some have started coaching others to play it safe. Once that happens, you're not rebuilding. You're replacing. So what do you do? Don’t listen for noise. Listen for absence. Absence of challenge. Absence of stretch. Absence of belief. Ask yourself: When was the last time someone in the business pushed back? Not rudely, but bravely? When did someone offer an idea that made others uncomfortable? When did a leader admit they were unsure and ask for help? Those are your indicators. Because healthy culture isn’t silent. It’s alive. It vibrates with tension, disagreement, contribution and care. If everything looks fine, but no one’s really leaning in? That’s your problem. And by the time it shows up in the numbers,t might already be too late.