To stay on track and take advantage of your opportunity, remember these three tips when it comes to communication skills and senior executives:
- Be Prepared. Executives expect you to put in the time and energy to research and understand what they care most about. Long gone are the days when you could ask a C-Level Executive what keeps them up at night. Before your encounter, identify their priorities, know the company’s priorities, and ideally determine how their success is being measured.
- Be Relevant. Once you have identified what they care most about, you must link your conversation to their priorities. Executives are busy. Successful executives must intensely focus on what matters most. If you want to be heard, make sure that your message is in their top 10 list.
- Be Articulate. To ensure that your homework and relevance does not go to waste, you must be able to briefly and succinctly make your key points with authenticity, clarity, and confidence. This takes practice and feedback.
Remember to pay attention to their reaction. If they are not engaged, respectfully move on. In the end, the impression you make is more important than getting your point across.
