How do you effectively communicate with C-Suite executives? 🤔💭 As part of a pilot coaching program at Remotish, Liam has worked on several skills to improve his ability to service clients, including communicating more effectively with executives. Find the Muse article discussed here.

TRANSCRIPT

Hey LinkedIn, it is Liam Redding, HubSpot Strategist with Remotish agency here. Today I wanted to talk to you about a coaching plan I'm actually part of at Remotish.

Remotish is piloting a new coaching plan. And I volunteered to be a part of that project, one selfishly for myself, because I'm always looking to better my skill set and achieve a higher level of excellence. And two, to be able to provide feedback to the company on how they can improve this program moving forward.

So we went through as part of the first step of the coaching plan all the roles and responsibilities that HubSpot Strategist is responsible for. From there, we basically talked about what I did the best, what I still need to work on. And I was very strong in all the areas but like everybody else, I still have, you know, room to improve. And we kind of dialed down to some things to focus on. One of the things that I really wanted to focus on is improving my communication with executives.

As somebody who's constantly interacting with C suite execs on a day to day basis, I have multiple meetings with the C-suite. So being able to communicate effectively with executives, as well as people who are down at the tactical level, who are going to help me build out those implementations as well. And being able to code switch between those two, because an executive and you know, implementation, or a lower-level manager or something like that, they're going to be really two completely different styles of communication. So we went over several really good points that came out of this article written by the Muse, Six Rules for Communicating with Executives. And I wanted to just bring out some of these points, I think they're beneficial. For anybody who's communicating with executives, even if you've been doing it for a long time, everybody can use a refresh on best practices and being able to communicate effectively. So point one, getting straight to it is:

Executives Fly to at a Different Altitude

They see the entire organization or even the industry, and they connect those points from the top to bottom. And they're looking at it from a 30,000 point view. So they're going to fly to different different altitude than everybody else. They don't necessarily focus on the day to day, they're looking on overall impact on revenue and big ticket items, big goals. Main thing that they want from you is they want to know that, that you have confidence and that they have the confidence in you on the work that you're doing. So you need to be able to really switch context, you need to be able to quickly and concisely get to the goals or the importance of the work that is being done. And they really just care that the goal is being met. And it's being met as an efficient and beneficial way as possible for the company. Your confidence cannot be arrogance, it actually needs to be backed by fact because they are really good sniffers and they're going to sniff it out if you are coming in with arrogance as your confidence.

When you are coming into an executive conversation, you need to set the stage for the altitude that we're flying at, you know, an executive can get down to the technical level too. But they primarily want to stay high level. But if you need to, they're willing and able to go deep into the details. So you need to one, ask whether they want to keep it high level or get down into the details, and then proceed with that altitude that everybody's going to be flying out for that meeting.

So being aware of the attitude that we're flying at, very important. As well as leadership changes. So when when new leadership comes in, you have to be ready.