Have you climbed your way to ladder to the point where now you are
just one promotion away from the C-suite, but you're wondering, what
do I got to do to succeed, to guarantee my promotion?
So in this video, what I want to share with you are three crucial
skills to develop in order to be successful at getting into the
C-suite and be successful while you're in the C-suite.
Because let's face it, the skills that you've developed so far has
allowed you to propel your career to where you're at right now as a
senior executive.
And as a senior executive, it's allowed you to function well to create
alignment, to communicate and build trust in your teams, to be able to
do your job well, it has helped you to ascend to where you're at
today, but the skills that got you here are not necessarily the skills
that will allow you to be successful when you are in C-suite and it
may not be successful in order to really solidify your candidacy for
C-suite.
But there are three crucial skills that a lot of people overlook.
As an executive coach for more than 10 years, one of the biggest
mistakes that I see are senior executives, who don't focus a lot of
time on these three crucial skills, because they've been so busy
trying to do their work and be good at what they've done in the
previous rungs of the ladder, but they're not being proactive enough
to develop these skills.
So that's what I want to share with you today.
And if this is helpful, give me a thumbs up and remember to subscribe
to my channel, ring that button as well, because every single week I
release videos like this on these types of topics and so much more.
The first crucial skill is communication.
Because if you look at your career trajectory, as of date, you will
have noticed this, that no matter what industry that you're from, no
matter what organization you're working with currently, or maybe
previous organization that you've worked with, when you're first
starting out and you're getting to that ladder that you want to climb.
When you're first starting out, you know, you are an implementer,
you're the person who's doing a certain thing, and that's your area of
expertise.
And in that role, as an implementer, you seek to be good technically
you want to increase your technical skills, your know-how, and that's
an implementer.
But if you look at it, implementation is actually the lowest level of
value in the marketplace.
No matter what industry you're in, it's the lowest level of value.
And that's why you're working hard and trying to contribute and trying
to do good work.
And so then you get to the next level of value.
And as some of you are recognizing this, you go from implementation
and now you become a manager.
And at this higher level, now you're climbing up the corporate ladder.
Now you're a manager.
You manage teams, you manage processes, you manage projects as well.
And so as a manager, you're working at a higher level of value than
when you were in implementation.
At the level of a manager you're no longer the one who primarily does
the thing.
It's a little bit less technical, but you're still involved in the
technical work of it.
But that's not the highest level of value.
As I mentioned before, what got you here successfully is not going to
be what's most required in the C-suite.
So the highest level of value is communication.
And this is where you are articulating value.
This is where you're creating alignment.
This is where you're creating a culture of trust and accountability.
Right, accountability.
Communication is the highest level of value in any marketplace you can
be in, in any industry you can be in.
And that's why, when you look at the C-suite, when you examine what
they do on a day-to-day basis, when you examine their career path and
examine their functional roles within the organization, you're going
to notice that the C-suite spend their days in communications.
They spend their day talking, communicating with who?
With among each other, with their management teams, with their
vendors, with stakeholders, with investors and so on, they are
communicating.
And they are also the ones who contribute the most value in an
organization towards the mission of where they want to be.
So if you desire to be in C-suite, it is utmost important to develop
your communication skills.
Communication is not just about the mechanics of speaking by the way.
And this is something I hear so often, right?
People come executives coming to me and say, I know it I'm one
promotion away from getting C-suite and they see communication as
well, maybe I need to pronounce my words better.
Maybe I need a more refined vocabulary, or maybe I need to, you know,
diminish my accent a little bit to sound more of a native English
speaker.
Those are all mechanics of communication.
It has nothing to do with C-suite.
When I'm talking about communication, I'm referring to the strategy of
communicating.
How do you communicate the value?
How do you communicate strategic direction?
How do you create alignment among your teams with all levels of
management below you and above you?
And how do you communicate so that everyone can see where we're going?
See where we are right now and see our results towards the progress?
How can you communicate that?
So communication also involves a level of clarity.
It also involves a conveyance of certainty.
It also involves how you show up as well and how you convey the
deepest and most dynamic things that are necessary to communicate, and
in a way that people can understand.
And in a way that creates alignment, unity, and buy-in, these are all
parts of communication.
It is not mechanical at all.
It has nothing to do with the mechanical mechanics of speaking, but it
has everything to do with the art of communication, the science of
communication as well.
So if you're somebody who's serious about, I want to go to that upper
level of my career path.
I know that I was meant for more.
I know that I can do that work well if I involved in that c-suite,
C-suite, and you're serious about investing in your skills today,
because this is a meaningful goal for you to get into that c-suite, if
that is your most meaningful goal, then I invite you to work with me.
In this video below this video actually, in the description, there's a
link to apply for my coaching program.
And when you submit your application, the first step is really just to
have a conversation with either myself or a member of my team, just to
discover whether or not we can help you with what you're looking for
and whether or not it's the right fit for both of us.
But if it is, then you're going to be invited to join a team of other
senior executives and C-suite as well as you build your communication
skills, as you understand how to navigate that terrain, how to
understand how to draw out your business acumen and convey the value
of your insights and wisdom.
So you're gonna discover all of this process and all of the training
that will help you be successful at getting into the C-suite.
But once you get in, it's also helping you to be successful while
you're in it.
Right?
So submit your application.
And I look forward to working with you on the inside.
So that was communication.
The second crucial skill is collaboration.
And you're going to notice that every skill that I'm going to talk
about starts, begins with the letter C, right?
So the second crucial skill is collaboration.
Collaboration.
It could be self-explanatory, but from my experience as an executive
coach, it's not really self-explanatory because here's the thing, when
it comes to collaboration in the C-suite, as you're working your way
into the C-suite, and definitely while you are in the C-suite, you're
going to be making decisions with increasingly less and less
information.
And you're going to know increasingly less and less about the
organization that is in front of you, because when you're in the
C-suite, you're managing multiple layers of management levels beneath
you.
But most of these management levels beneath you, you don't even know
what's going on.
You may not even know the individuals by their first name, and you
won't even know that people who are newly hired, the people who've
been there for a while, exactly what they do.
There's so there's a lot about the layers of management and about the
organization and the functions that you don't know about in the
C-suite, especially not at that level.
So as a result of that lack of information, we still need to make
decisions as C-suite.
We still need to make effective decisions that affect the organization
as a whole, that affect the organization's ability to achieve the
vision where they're going and how far we need to be to close gaps and
to be able to manage vulnerabilities.
So that's why collaboration is key, because it's about collaborating
with teams that you don't even directly manage, that you don't even
know who they are exactly, and exactly what they do on a day-to-day
basis.
So collaboration is also vertical.
It is horizontal.
And in many cases, it's diagonal as well.
It's crucial to be able to develop the skill.
So what is involved in collaboration, it requires letting go of what
you've been knowing, letting go of what you've known all along and
letting go of what's been familiar with you up until this point.
Because let's face it, you got here out of sheer hard work,
disciplined focus, having developed your education and technical
skills as well.
And you began as an individual contributor.
So as a result of that, we spent most of our time being good at what
we do and being able to drive ourselves to be productive.
So it's time to start a different vernacular, a different mindset of
instead of individual contribution to see the, interconnectedness
between people, between processes, between business functions and
departments as well.
It is time to make that mental shift, a mindset shift to expand your
time-space horizons, to be that visionary, to have the overarching
pulse on the organization where we're going.
And that is what I mean by collaboration.
So I'm talking about the three crucial skills to get you into C-suite.
Number one was communication.
Number two was collaboration.
And number three, the third C is cohesion.
Yes, cohesion is a skill.
So here's what I mean by that.
It used to be that when it comes to senior executive level of C-suite,
every C suite was in charge of its own business function or individual
business functions.
For example, the CMO was primarily in charge of marketing and the CFO
is primarily in charge of finance.
It used to be that way, but moving forward, what I'm seeing as a trend
towards C-suite being needing to be involved more in the bigger
picture of the organization, the vision where the company is going and
that overarching business strategy, or the strategic direction, that's
what I'm seeing going forward, moving forward.
So rather than working in silos or being isolated as CMO in marketing,
CFO in finance and so on, this is why it's important to develop the
skill of cohesion.
Cohesion means how are we going to create that cohesive culture?
How are we going to be able to speak each other's languages, not just
each other's languages, but speak a common language, a common
vernacular as well.
And how are we going to be able to make key decisions as one unit.
That is cohesion one unit moving forward and creating cohesion means
that this is ultimately how we can maintain a momentum of growth, how
we can maintain a broader business acumen as well, because when you
can create that cohesion, it requires you to have that insight towards
business acumen.
So moving forward, if you are somebody who is finding that maybe
communication is the greatest weakness that you have, and
communication is maybe your top priority for this year or this
quarter, then I have another video coming up for you.
And this video is on how do you improve your communication skills to
get to the senior executive level roles.
So if you are serious about this, and you are also thinking about
working with me and applying to my coaching program below, then stay
tuned.
In the next video coming up I'm going to share with you on how to
improve your communication skills.
Just some tips on how to improve your communication, communication
skills to get to executive senior leadership roles.
So I will see you there.