Do you feel confident in your technical skills to get things done, but
when it comes to stepping up into higher levels of leadership, that
it's challenging to bring that executive presence.
And it's really common when we feel that we don't have that executive
presence.
It leads to a feeling that we're being undermined by the executive
leadership team.
And it feels like we're being seen as a worker or a pair of hands
instead of a leader.
And you're going to notice that as you step up into senior levels of
leadership into the executive team, as you move up into director, and
C-suite, right.
You're going to notice that these technical skills matter less and
less your ability to be good at what you do, your ability to have the
know-how, the deep technical knowledge that you did when you were an
individual contributor, you're going to notice that those things
matter less and less as you go up.
And if your emphasis is still on the technical skills, if that's only
the area where you have confidence it's going to be difficult to
convey the value you bring to the executive team.
And that's why they're going to see you as a worker, a pair of hands.
And the emphasis then is then to keep you on the technical side of
things, because you do that work so well.
But if you're somebody who wants to step up into executive leadership,
you don't want to stay a worker.
You don't want to stay being skillful and your contribution and your
task, and you want to move up into executive level leadership.
That's why it's important to have that presence.
And in this video, what I want to share with you are three very
crucial skills to develop if you want to have that presence and you
want to convey the value you bring to the executive team.
So these are the three non-technical skills to master if you want to
avoid being undermined by the executive leadership team.
The first non-technical skill is communication and communication is a
large umbrella.
There's many elements to communication, but there are three key
elements.
And the three elements start with the letter P the first P is
persuasion.
And this is how do you motivate that audience?
Your executive team is the audience.
How do you motivate them to take a particular action as a result of
what you said, being able to persuade them for your recommendation,
persuade them with an idea that you want to share, or persuade them in
a direction that you see as the most fit attitude.
So that's the first P, it's persuasion.
The second P is presentation, and this is where, how you share your
wisdom behind your solutions.
And notice I used the word wisdom.
I did not say knowledge because what you are used to is having
technical knowledge, but the executive leadership team doesn't care
about the details about your technical knowledge.
They want to know your wisdom.
So presentation is being able to share your wisdom.
And that's what adds value.
What are the principles that you operate?
What are the principles that you have been applying to have wisdom in
suggesting the direction in which we're heading?
So that is P, presentation.
The third P is in, in terms of positioning.
Positioning, and there's two types of positioning.
There's verbal positioning, and there's nonverbal positioning.
When you're positioning, what you're doing is you are telling the
executive leadership team that you are in charge, or at least you
deserve to be.
That you are a great leader, or at least you deserve to be.
And so this is an area of positioning that you want to step up into
higher levels of leadership, but you don't have the job title yet, or
you're not officially in that position yet, but before you're in that
position, even before you get there, you already need to begin to
position yourself that way you already need to begin to play at that
level.
So that's why in communication, there are these three PS persuasion
there's presentation and there's positioning.
So that's the very first umbrella of the non-technical skills to
master.
This is the umbrella of communication.
If you're listening to this and you're resonating with it, maybe
you're somebody you're nodding your heads, and you're saying, yes,
this is what I need to shine.
This is what I need to improve, but you're serious about developing
this non technical skill, then I invite you to work with me.
Below this video, in the description, there is a link for you to apply
to my coaching program.
And this is where I'm going to walk you through all the steps to help
you master your communication skills in those three areas.
How to become more persuasive without being manipulative, without
trying to push it on without trying to fake it and pretend to be
somebody you're not.
How you can be presenting yourself better in terms of conveying your
wisdom.
How do you extrapolate the wisdom behind your knowledge?
How do you do that?
And finally, in terms of positioning, how do you position yourself as
a senior leader in your organization so that you can get into the
board room so that you can be involved in their inner circle, this the
strategic meetings and being involved in those discussions.
So if you want to know how to do this, then click the link below, send
your application.
And I look forward to working with you on the inside.
The second non-technical skill to master, you want to step up into
higher levels of leadership is self-mastery.
Self-mastery when you achieve self-mastery this is where you have your
heightened sense of self-awareness.
You have your climax of self-awareness.
And when you have a degree of self-awareness, this deep, that
reflective self-awareness, you are aware of how others perceive you.
You're aware of how you create the culture around you.
You're aware of how you're showing up.
You're aware of how you're conveying your ideas.
You're aware of how people respond to you.
You're aware of areas that you are not aware of.
You're aware of your blind spots, and you are completely conscientious
of the effect that you have on your audiences.
And the way you've been leading this is a heightened level of
self-awareness.
And from that space that self-mastery from that space, this is where
you are able to achieve very easily and very naturally two areas.
They start with letter A.
Number one is your ability to influence others and your ability to
influence self as well.
Before you can influence other people, you need to first be able to
influence yourself, to be able to be motivated, intrinsically, to do
what's hard.
And to be able to move, to be motivated intrinsically, to have that
level of self reflectiveness, to uncover your blind spots, to
challenge your own beliefs.
So when you influence yourself this way only after you've achieved
that level of self influence, now you can have the ability to
influence others.
And the reason why it works this way first, we must first be able to
influence ourselves before we can influence other people.
Because if you're going to influence other people, be a change agent,
you might be needing them to make different decisions.
You might be needing them to shift their mindset, shift their beliefs,
but how can you ask somebody to do something you have not been able to
do yourself?
So the key to be able to influence others is influencing self, which
goes back to self-mastery.
That's the first A, ability to influence others.
The second A is your ability to manage your emotions.
And this is so important when you're leading teams, when you're
stepping up into higher levels of leadership, there is a great amount
of ambiguity.
You're a you're needing to solve to to self-direction you say you
needed to solve problems and to make decisions with less and less
information with more and more ambiguity and uncertainty.
And this requires an ability to manage your emotions.
When you manage your emotions, you're able to make decisions that are
more rationalized.
When you manage your emotions, you're able to show up differently.
You're able to respond to disagreements.
You're able to respond to the way that people see you.
You're able to create environments and cultures that are productive.
And you're also able to be maintaining momentum as well, form the
momentum in your career path.
So that's why the second key non-technical skill to master is
self-mastery.
Before I moved to the third non-technical skill, remember to subscribe
to my channel just a quick reminder, to ring that bell below as well,
because every single week I release videos on this topic and so much
more.
So far, we've discussed two non-technical skills to master so that you
can step up in to senior and higher levels of leadership so that you
can avoid being undermined by the executive leadership team.
The first non-technical skill was communication skills.
The second non-technical skill was self-mastery skills.
And now the third non-technical skill is decision-making skills.
When it comes to making decisions, it is the most important part of
your role in senior executive leadership team, because there's two
C's two C's in decision-making.
The first C is contextualization.
When you're making decisions it's important, can you contextualize the
decisions you're making with the broader context of the company's
strategic direction?
What about contextualizing it with the context of the system of the
company's processes?
What about the context of the marketplace as well?
What about the context of the objectives and goals and the mission of
the company at large?
So this is important to be able to contextualize and to bring pieces
together cohesively.
And so therefore your decisions become insightful.
Your decisions become informed and your decisions become very
impactful as well.
So that's the first C contextualization.
The second C, which is still part of decision-making is critical
thinking.
Critical thinking is your ability to take in specific information,
data, and information, be able to synthesize that into new wisdom, new
learnings, and apply that to solving real problems for the company.
And by the way, if want to go deeper into that, what is critical
thinking?
How do you develop it?
I have created a video exactly to address those questions that video
is coming right up next.
And this video is going to tell, to tell talk about how do you develop
critical thinking skills?
What are they, and what can you do to hone your critical thinking?
That's coming right up next.
I'll see you there.