The First Law of Executive Logic

Harry was gritting his teeth.  The SVP of Sales was (yet again) derailing Harry’s presentation to the Execs on the Senior Leadership Team, smoothly undermining Harry’s credibility.

Even worse … the execs were listening to the Sales guy.

How does Harry gain control?

Harry, the new VP Technology, prides himself on being logical.  Logic is a system of thinking that enables you to reach conclusions and then take action.

Logic runs on assumptions and data.

Harry’s mistake was thinking there was only ONE system of logic:  his. 

To Harry, things were either logical, or they weren’t. Simple.

Harry’s assumption was that everyone runs on the system of logic that’s so obvious to him.  And he was frustrated when they didn’t.

Harry’s second assumption was that others (legitimately) require robust quantity of data in order to buy into his conclusions.  It was offensive to him to hear a conclusion without having ALL the data first.

So Harry had NO CLUE why senior execs multitasked while he presented every bit of his (to him vital) data.

Harry ESPECIALLY didn’t understand why the panel of Execs perked up and paid attention when the Sales SVP simply said, “I think this is a good idea.  Customers will like it and it will increase revenue.”

Only after hearing the Sales SVP chime in did the Senior Leadership Team look at Harry in unison and say, “Good idea, Harry.  Go ahead.”

Harry should have been happy they supported his recommendation, but he was miffed that they had to hear it from the Sales SVP.  He was especially fuming because the Sales SVP didn’t present ANY data to support his statement.

Here’s what Harry’s was missing:  Executive Logic™. 

The logic Execs use to make decisions was foreign to him.  I’ll give you one component of it.

One of the assumptions executives operate with is this:  They hired you to worry about the details. 

Yes, Execs ABSOLUTELY want hard data.  But Harry was confusing hard data with details.  Big mistake.

They TRUST you with all the details.  And they don’t want to hear the them all.

If they want to hear the details, they’ll ask you questions about them.  But it’s a SAFER assumption to assume that the less detail, the better.

Here is a law of Executive Logic:  The further down the organization you go, the more concerned about details you should be.

The higher you go, what Executives are increasingly interested in is your EVALUATION of the data.

The details aren’t valuable.  Your evaluation of the data and the details is.

That, very simply, is WHY they listened to the Sales SVP. They easily got the main point of Harry’s hard data.  The Sales SVP saved them from all of Harry’s details.  He evaluated Harry’s data for them and offered an easy to understand conclusion:  Customers will like it.  It will increase revenue.

The trust Execs had placed in Harry to evaluate the data and manage the details, very simply, was not part of Harry’s logic.  Trust was not logical in Harry’s universe. 

He couldn’t fathom how the Execs could give him so much trust without seeing all the data themselves. As a matter of fact, it was illogical.

Harry also had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that the Execs were not the least bit interested in the details.  How could that be?  Personally he found the details fascinating, so this was doubly hard for Harry to grasp.

So much for Harry’s logic. 

Harry got that his logic was PERFECT … at his level and below.  But NOT when he needs to communicate UP.  I taught him how to think like an Executive.  He caught on quickly.

Harry’s presentations to the Senior Leadership Team became tight, brief, concise.  

He said much in few words.  Although he was ready with details if they asked, Harry presented only critical hard data.  His conclusions were precise.  His recommendations were easy to understand.  It was enough.

Even the Sales SVP was nodding in support.

For the first time they said that Harry was, “Clear” and, ”Compelling”.

Harry was blown away.  He made a brilliant observation:

“I use my logic to get to the table.  I use Executive Logic to win the poker game.”

Wishing you a winning hand for your next presentation!

Be the cause!

Ingrid

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The real secret to presenting to senior execs [Part 1]

“Too many words.” – a Senior VP’s answer when I asked why he sent Frank, his new VP, to me for coaching, hoping for more effective presentation skills.

Right off the bat Frank complained the Senior Leadership Team only gave him 12 minutes to present his team’s complex research.  He’s a technology genius.  But it’s difficult for him to “compress everything important”.

I asked him to give me a typical presentation so I could see what he was doing.  He managed to keep it to 8 ½ minutes.

Frank started out with the most commonly used –the most overused - sentence in corporate presentations: “I want to talk to you a little bit about….”

Yawn.

It took Frank 5 ½ minutes to get to, “The biggest issue we have is…”

At the 7 ½-minute mark he said, “The most important thing is…”

He ended without a recommendation, closing with the words, “So, I would like your input …”

It would have been a GREAT presentation …. IF Frank had a lower-level technical audience.  But he didn’t.  He had the CEO of a major multibillion, multinational corporation with his direct reports.

And here’s the effect this kind of presentation has on senior execs:  Most tuned out, openly multitasking, until the 5 ½-minute point.  And the rest didn’t engage until the 7 ½-minute moment, a minute from Frank’s closing.

From their point of view, Frank hadn’t said anything meaningful until then.

Why is there such a disconnect?

Frank is a brilliant technical guy.  What has he been taught? 

The current overpowering, but misguided, system for educating brilliant technical guys almost always guarantees that their communications will be misdirected when presenting to execs.

It’s both HOW Frank organizes his thoughts AND how he communicates them.

Brilliant technical professionals use brilliant technical logic. This logic requires that great quantities of minute detail be discussed.  It mandates that not only should ALL this detail be laboriously presented and defended, it should ALSO be comprehensively duplicated on every accompanying slide. 

This logic blindly follows the mandate, “Prove it!” 

In a technical world where absolutes are unobtainable, this logic builds slowly, painfully, systematically, to a plausible conclusion like, “Most probably this is what we should do ... unless you think that we shouldn’t.”

Executives find it excruciatingly frustrating.  This isn’t how they think.  This isn’t how they decide.  This isn’t how they act.  Yet they have to rely on the person giving the presentation to help them make good decisions and act intelligently from an executive level.

Both sides feel defeated when it’s over.

How do you cross the divide keeping technical genius from reaching the executive mind?  Next week I will talk about the presentation structure that follows Executive Logic™ and creates the language of success.

In the meantime, notice if this goes on around you.  I’d also love to hear your war stories of the battle for minds in presentations.

Be the cause!

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How to transform a crusty senior executive

Don is a crusty senior executive in a large corporation. And although the metrics inarguably prove he’s successful in producing stellar business results, Don as a person is blunt and crude. People have been trying to get the message through to him for years that he needs to be more diplomatic.

Steve, a peer of Don’s who made it to CEO, recommended my coaching to Don to help him with his “interpersonal skills”.  Don was less than enthusiastic, but called me and asked if we could meet in person.

When we did, he managed to insult me twice before we even got to the conference room to start our meeting. These things don’t bother me, I just notice where someone needs to improve and start figuring out how to help them.

Turns out EVERYONE had been telling Don he needs to be more diplomatic: his boss, HR, his peers, his wife.  And they had been telling him for YEARS. He had even alienated one of his two daughters who was no longer talking to him.  

I’m not given a lot of time to create major change in these situations.  I have to help clients create a meaningful transformation - sometimes in a matter of hours.

While assuring me of his profound skepticism, Don agreed to a four-hour coaching program with me.

At the end of four hours, Don was still direct and incisive. He lost none of that. But he was also sensitive and considerate, even warm.

The effect this had on others was profound.

Whereas before they had followed his orders, now they did it with much greater enthusiasm and investment of their full selves.

Most importantly, they did it without fear.

Don approached his alienated daughter who found herself surprisingly willing to engage in a conversation. By the end of it, his daughter hugged him and cried. They both did. Their conversations became the kind of father-daughter conversations that live in your heart, that you remember, forever.

Don’s wife stopped in the middle of doing dishes to look at him and tell him how much she loved him and how he was very much the man she wanted to marry.

So how did I get through to Don when others had failed?

Words.  Normal words used in a very special way.

Your words mean something to you. You have a very specific, very particular meaning in mind when you speak them.

The problem you encounter is that when you say something, your words can mean something completely different to the people hearing them.

When that happens, your words are powerless.

That’s what was happening in Don‘s case. Everyone could talk and talk to him endlessly about his needing to change, but their words meant nothing to Don.

In these situations, most people make the mistake of using more and MORE words that have no meaning.  Then everyone gets tired of the subject.

What I did differently was this:

I pretty much used the same words everyone else was using.  But, and this is a COLOSSAL difference, I caused my words to have the same meaning for Don that they did to me.

I never told him he needed to be diplomatic.  I never told him he needed to be sensitive, kind or considerate.

But I got him to have full conceptual understanding of each of these principles.  Then I stood back.

I never, ever tell people how to behave. School and corporate life have done too much of that and robbed them of their character and unique identity.  My job is to bring it all back.

The change in Don came from within.  He looked at me and said, “I feel different.” I looked back at him and said, “We’re done.”

Talking about the results this change in him produced during our follow-up session a month later had us both simultaneously grinning and crying a little, especially when it came to his daughter.

Don had never experienced so much love and warmth from others, especially from the people below him in the organization. 

Your words give physical expression, give body, physical presence, to your imaginations, realities and your desires.

If your words lose their meaning when others hear them, you lose your power.

The key is to create the exact meaning you intend.

Then others respond to you the way you intend.  And then you are able to enlighten them, reach them, influence them, persuade them, move them.

How quickly you can do that defines your success.

I have a workshop coming up in December where you will learn all about the power and secret of words.

I have a precise method I use that I will teach you.  And I mean LASER precise, which is what allowed me to reach Don in 4 hours when others hadn’t gotten the door to Don to open even a crack in 4 years.

You’ll learn how to create powerful meaning and impact with everyone who hears or reads your words.

How prized is this ability?

It’s the one defining factor that makes a successful senior executive. It’s the one defining factor that gets people promoted to senior executive ranks. It’s the one defining factor that enables them to be successful.

Let me give you some examples.

• A Senior Vice President was unsuccessful trying to get the concept of respect across to his CEO and his peers.  When he used this approach, they all closed their laptops and started listening to him. The culture within the senior leadership team changed in one meeting.

• Another Senior VP had changed organizations and was overwhelmed in his new role. The learning curve in the new organization was killing the rapid success he was expected to produce. When he used this approach, that all changed in 2 hours. He was back in control, gained immediate traction, creating organizational success at a greatly accelerated pace.

It’s not just for senior executives.

• An Executive Assistant’s daughter threatened to commit suicide because she was flunking out of nursing school, wrecking what she believed was her last hope for success. Using what she learned, the mother turned the situation around with her daughter in one Saturday and the daughter graduated nursing school in the “top three” of her class.

• A sales professional in the semiconductor industry was given an unpromising territory because she was new to the role. Using what she learned, she took business away from competitors.  Despite the obstacles she faced, she rapidly became one of the top sales people in her organization. What was truly unique about her was she didn’t “sell” in the traditional sense.  She simply got her true meanings across to her prospects.

Words.  Powerful stuff.  When you know how to use words, you can do anything.  Change their minds. Change a culture. Change lives. And you can even change yourself too if you’d like.

I personally get really excited delivering this workshop. My biggest problem is not waking up at 3:00 in the morning the night before because I’m so looking forward to it. I don’t know when I’ll be offering the workshop again because it’s truly a unique offering. So make time in your December schedule or request an on-site version of it if this resonates with you.

In the meantime, understand that, in every aspect of your life, your words are key to your success. 

Be the cause!

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Melting Jack Frost: the difficult senior exec

Sophia had been a shining star as a Director. When she was promoted to VP and given a much larger zone of visibility and responsibility, she also took on real risk of failure.

In her new role, Sophia now attended weekly senior leadership meetings, which is where she ran into Jack every Wednesday.

Jack had the ear of the CEO.  Sophia didn’t.  Jack dominated every meeting he was in. In this Silicon Valley corporation, he was the most technically proficient person in the room. He presented his ideas forcefully. Jack liked winning and believed in intimidation.  There was nothing warm about him, kind of like “Jack Frost” himself. He shut you down if you expressed a dissenting opinion. Most people never dared.  Even the CEO deferred to Jack.

Sophia had been successful as a “backrooms influencer.” She preferred to hash out diverging views away from an audience or public scrutiny, and then bring a consensus, neatly and politely resolved, back to the larger group.  She found conflict unpleasant and shied away from it.

Suddenly Jack was taking her on center stage, and despite her vision and passion, she became subdued and ineffective.

Sophia’s goal when she arrived to learn Causative Communication was to navigate these difficult situations while successfully getting her ideas implemented.  Her goal was to get Jack to listen.  Her goal was to transform Jack so they could collaborate effectively.

Sophia values being warm and graceful under pressure.  But she found herself agitated and frenzied at these meetings.  She wanted to preserve a calm elegance and genuine friendliness while under intense fire.

This takes a lot of skill.

I taught Sophia the formula for communication that works in every situation. We spent a lot of time applying it to the difficult conversations and meetings which were now routine in her VP life. With practice and coaching, real transformation emerged.

The first transformation was in herself.  Sophia gained the ability to comfortably face severely uncomfortable conversations. She also gained the ability to be very direct, yet very warm and friendly and still be powerful, deliberate and intentional, even under fire.

The next transformation was in Jack. Jack didn’t come to our workshop, of course. Sophia did. But her new skills now allowed her to transform OTHER people…even people as difficult as Jack.

The next meeting she attended, she put forth an innovative idea and Jack instantly dismissed it.  Usually that would be the end of it.

This time, Sophia held Jack’s gaze and let him know she fully understood his point of view. When he looked at her, all Jack saw was real understanding, powerful intention, and genuine friendliness.  Sophia let her acknowledgment sink in.  She wasn’t in a rush.  Jack was quiet, waiting to see what Sophia was going to say next.

Not forcefully, but powerfully with very strong intention, and still with great warmth, Sophia said, “Let me explain why I think this is a good idea.”

She directed her comments to Jack, but also included the other leaders. Jack was listening and so was everyone else.  She had their full attention.

Sophia was clear.  She was concise. She said a lot in a few words. She was deliberate. She was purposeful. She was elegant.  She wasn’t rushed.  She wasn’t pressured or pressuring.  She was compelling.

The look in Jack’s eyes changed. To respect.

With a new, very pleasant tone of voice, Jack asked her a couple questions, then paused, and agreed her proposal was worth trying.

The next transformation was in the senior leadership team.  With her new skills, Sophia had completely changed the dynamics of the group.

Once that happens, there is no putting that toothpaste back into that tube. Suddenly the dynamic wasn’t, “We have to do what Jack says.”   The new dynamic was to have polite, in-depth conversations, allow input from everyone and make the best decision.

The final transformation was in the organization. When a senior leadership team starts working together this effectively, the organization can’t help but transform as well.

Sophia is an example of the power of a single individual.

Yes, you could say she was in a VP role and so was in a position to generate the transformation.  But I have worked with individuals at every level, down to low level individual contributors with no one reporting to them.

It doesn’t matter where you are in the organization. When you make that first transformation - with your own self - when you become a world-class communicator, there is no limit to the impact you can have in this world.  No limit at all.

The most difficult part of this entire journey is making the decision to begin.

You might think that the obstacles keeping you from getting where you want to go have little to do with your communication skills.

But that’s only because people have been taught to believe they AREN’T as powerful as they actually are.  Don’t fall for it.

You have the power to transform your entire world just like Sophia did.

If she can do it with Mr. Jack “Frost,” you can do it too.

This is the purpose of our Causative Communication Live! Workshop. This is where you learn the formula for communication that ALWAYS works.  Then you seriously upgrade your ability to communicate effectively, enabling you to rapidly achieve your vision.

Be the cause!

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ALL thinking kills your executive presence

Ethan is 28 years old and works with billionaires.

He presents to SVP’s of Fortune 500 organizations and helps broker deals worth millions and even billions of dollars. Last week I spent a couple of days coaching him on his executive presence.

One of Ethan’s biggest problems was non-stop thinking.

Most people believe that thinking is good.

People in large corporations do way too much of it.  

During coaching they often tell me, “I know I’m overthinking this.”

I find that ALL thinking is overthinking.

Power is in observing, knowing, deciding and acting.

These happen fast.

And then you start to think about them.  Not only does that slow everything down, it completely obstructs your ability to be causative.

Ethan was so “in his head”, that as you were talking, he was simultaneously busily churning over what you were saying in his mind.  It gave him a terribly worried look.

And as he was talking, he was carefully considering every point he was making. That made eye contact difficult.  It made him look unsure of what he was saying.  It killed his ability to communicate with real intention.

Because of his job, everything Ethan does is high stakes. This gave him a constant sense of anxiety. This made him think more and more.

He was afraid to stop thinking and to just LOOK.  He was afraid it would make him stupid. Words would fail him, he wouldn’t know how to respond, he would look inexperienced.

He was afraid to just KNOW. He invalidated his ability to know because of his age.  Actually, people that age often know more truth than people twice their age.  They haven’t yet been taught how to compromise on what they see in front of them, to distort their vision to what others say they should see, or to lie to themselves.

He was also afraid to DECIDE.  The word decision comes from the Latin de which means off and caedere which means to cut.  When you decide, you cut off every other option, only one way forward. 

And he was terrified to ACT.

He replaced all these with thinking.  But the only thing that thinking accomplished was to take him around in circles.  Into more thinking.

At the beginning of Causative Communication you do two exercises designed to get you out of your head. These very unique exercises get you to operate completely in the moment and to LOOK, to aim all your attention outward, to keenly observe the person in front of you, to SEE.

The noise in your head is gone.  You are comfortable and full of well-being. Time seems to slow down.  You are in control.

This is the very foundation of presence. And superior communication.  

It’s also vital for forming a full connection with another person. You’ll never do it in your head.

Ethan developed a powerful presence. His age no longer mattered. He forgot about it and you forget about it too.

He also developed the ability to fully connect while he is talking with someone, anyone.  This is the foundation of a powerful relationship.

This is what Ethan told me after he took his new skills for a test drive in the real world:

My experience of people is so much better. It’s a complete shift in how I am.  It’s not only working in my negotiations, it snowballs into more and more parts of your life.

If you’re communicating effectively this is what it looks like.  If you want gravitas, this is what it looks like. I will never, ever forget what I look like in those two videos [his “before” and “after” videos], the one where I was thinking and the other where I was being, looking and connecting.”

This is presence.

This is one of many things we teach.  We taught Ethan and we can teach you.

The same applies when you are talking to a group or giving a presentation.  This is where thinking and being in your head can easily go into hyper drive and destroy your impact. 

In our Transformative Presentation Skills you learn how to stop all that and fully be in the moment. 

You gain a presence so strong, so true, so compelling, that your audience is forever changed by the connection they feel to the REAL YOU.

Give it a try yourself. The ability to do it is native within you. It’s one of your greatest abilities.  You develop it by using it.  Feel free to let me know what happens.  And let me know if you’d like any help with it.

Be the cause!

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Making it to CEO

He was a fire fighter.  Several fire departments had asked me for a workshop on how to achieve goals.  He sat in the front row.

Afterward he contacted me and said,

“I don't want to be a fire fighter anymore. I want to succeed in business. I'd like your help.”

He took on an opportunity to become a sales rep for a financial investment company.  Before becoming a fire fighter, he had been a cop.  He knew nothing about sales. 

I worked with him on the exact communication skills he needed to be successful and he rapidly became their top sales rep.

So, they made him a sales manager.  He called me and said,

“I'm in over my head, I don't know anything about managing people and they're making me crazy.”

We worked on the communication skills he needed as a manager. The sales department became extremely productive and they made him a Vice President.

He said,

“I had no idea there was this much to deal with as a VP, sales was way easier.”  

I coached him on the precise communication skills needed at a senior level. They made him an Executive VP, and then the Board made him CEO.   

Being CEO had a whole new set of people and leadership challenges.  He transformed each of them with out-of-this-world communication.

The company succeeded and expanded to the point where he purchased land and built an enormous new building to house all the additional employees.

At the stage where the company reached just about $1 billion and 22,000 accounts, Wells Fargo purchased it.  For a lot of money.

He met all his financial goals and started spending a lot more time flying his plane, riding his motorcycle, SCUBA diving, skiing, and generally being outdoors.

Today he works with private clients and spends most of his time volunteering to give back to his community. People listen to him with great respect.  He leaves them inspired.

He’s a leader wherever he goes. 

He succeeded because he did the work (and it IS work) to master the skill of communicating causatively in every situation he faced. He mastered a powerful, non-manipulative, authentic way to communicate, a way that removes every obstacle, a way that leaves everyone better off, everyone wins. 

He could have decided to be anything.  He still can.  He has the communication skills to make it happen.

Everything you want is on the other side of this skill.

Communicate causatively! Create the reality you want.

Ingrid

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Small change, big impact

He walked into the room like an executive. His presence alone calmed everyone. He had an air of dignity. When he spoke, he only had to say it once, everyone listened.

He wasn’t an executive, far from it.  He was an individual contributor.

But the power of his communication had the impact of a leader.

If you had seen him before he took the Causative Communication® workshop, you wouldn’t have recognized him as the same person.  He was fidgety, always in a hurry, very short attention span.  He spoke fast, in short bursts and he stopped listening the moment he thought he knew what you were going to say.

He had worked at the same large corporation for over 10 years, trying to get promoted, but without creating much visibility or recognition.

A year after the class, he had been promoted to Team Lead and then had 2 more promotions in very rapid succession.  He was now viewed as a charismatic and respected leader on the fast track to senior executive.

What was it he changed?

His speed.

Before the workshop he focused on doing everything fast.  We can all understand why, because in today’s crazy world we have to do everything fast to get it all done.  So he did everything fast.  Talked fast, listened fast. That’s what he did until the workshop showed him how to slow down.

You pay a big price for fast.

The price you pay is in the form of quality and presence. Both suffer.

Now I don’t know if you try to communicate too fast, but my hunch is that you probably know.

So here is a very simple shift you can make, right now, today.

Slow down.  

This does not mean be less productive or get less things done. It means slow down to the point where you focus on the quality of your communication, the quality of what you say, how you say it and the quality of your listening.

When you slow down, you make a much stronger connection with others, that deep human connection that enables all good things to happen.  You’ll achieve greater understanding.  

The quality of your communication today shapes your tomorrow, it’s how you create the reality of your very important life.

Be the cause!

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You had me before hello

We've all heard the expression, “You had me at hello.”  I firmly believe, when it comes to presentations, that's way too late.  The really great presenters have you even before they say hello.

You see them standing there, before they even say anything you can see there's something quite different about them.  Even before they start, you're intrigued, captivated, leaning forward a little to hear what they’ll say.

It’s their poise, dignity, their self-assuredness, their calm, their focus, it’s the intensity of their presence. 

There are two VPs in a presentation skills workshop that’s running here right now.  Our Lead Trainer, Janet, is leading the session.  I just sat in at the beginning to watch everyone’s first videos.

If you hadn’t told me that either of these two was a VP, I never would have known.  Reason is neither one had executive presence, neither of them communicated with the poise, dignity and elegance you’d expect from a VP level. 

One is a new VP, so you could say that's understandable in their case.  The other has been a VP for a couple years.

In both cases, the material they were presenting, the content, was very interesting.  But the way they presented it wouldn’t have captured you.  You’d be tuning out and only semi-listening pretty quickly.  The audience, trying to pay attention, was fighting a losing battle. 

Both of them sounded very “Corporate” and correct.  They were articulate, but their words weren’t landing or making a difference.  

And that's really the point, isn't it?  When we listen to a presentation, we want what we hear to make a difference, to matter.

I left after their first videos, had meetings all day and went back in at the very end of the afternoon to see their second videos.  Wow!

It’s not what they’re doing.  It’s how they’re being, their presence.  There’s an invisible chemistry.  There’s an aura.  It creates an atmosphere.  It creates a mood.  It creates an expectation, an anticipation.  A promise of something great to come. 

That's how these two VP’s were at the end of the 1st day.  Very changed. 

They had developed presence. Presence strong enough to notice even before they spoke.   Just the way they walked, stood, looked over the audience. 

They each had that unmistakable aura of an executive, the poise, the dignity of a powerful individual who knows what they have to say is important, a comfortable leader, in absolutely no rush, taking their sweet time, self-assured, creating with their presence a promise of a great outcome.

Then, even before they started to speak, the way they looked out into the audience, they made a powerful connection with everyone in the room. Connection made before they ever said a word. 

As they spoke, the connection intensified.  I could swear the audience stopped breathing at a couple of points.

I could feel the audience’s disappointment when their talks were over. They wanted to hear more, but it was gone. You can only imagine the reception they’ll get when they come back to speak again.

It was the same content they’d presented in their first video.  Almost the same words.  Completely different presence.  Completely different connection with the audience.  Completely different result.

Important point – this doesn’t just apply to VP’s.  It’s even more powerful at lower levels.  People really notice.

This really is how to make what you want happen. Have the powerful presence of someone others are eager to know, make a powerful connection with the audience, make them keen to hear your next words, create a never-ending fascination with your message.  Know that it’s not what you say.  It’s how you say it.

Well, that was the end of the first day of training.  I'm looking forward to seeing them at the end of the second.

Wishing you great success with all your communications!

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How to Get Promoted from Director to VP - Executive Insight

If you're looking to get promoted from Director to VP, this powerful checklist will help you prepare to achieve that goal.  Inside the checklist, you'll find a strategic yet practical "roadmap" for making sure the way you communicate with others demonstrates your capacity to step into a VP role. If you're looking to develop that "executive presence" aura that successful leaders have, this free checklist will help you do it.  

Get the Becoming a VP checklist

I’ve been helping people get promoted for 30 years. Not to mention land big raises too. It's one of the things I most like about my work - helping people achieve their aspirations and dreams.

Recently I’ve had a wave of Directors and Senior Directors I’ve helped become VPs and I thought I'd share 7 key ingredients with you as, for some reason, getting the VP offer seems to be particularly tricky. These ingredients are necessary for ALL leadership roles, yet it seems it’s too easy to get stuck at Director level.

What do you do when you find yourself hitting an invisible wall you can't seem to get through as you're seeking that next step in your career? You come with your innate strategic abilities, you're able to span your attention and efforts across the organization, and you know you can impact key metrics in a meaningful way. Yet, there's that illusive something that seems to be missing.

But the thing I've seen hold people back more than anything is not these items. It's their ability to communicate.

Let's look at why.

As you progress up the organization, your communication skills increasingly go under a microscope.

By the time you’re CEO, you're not only living with this fact of life, you get used to having the magnification turned up to 400X.

What this means is every flaw you have is magnified. So flaws that you get away with as Manager, or as Director, are the kiss of death once you start looking at VP and above.

The reason for this is obvious. Your communication is now going to impact a lot of people. They’re going to read into everything you say and how you say it. There are consequences to even the slightest attitudes you have. Every communication from you matters. It's your main tool for making things happen.

And, most importantly, at these higher levels, it's your communication, and ability to communicate extremely well even under adverse circumstances, that's going to make or break the success of the organization.

What I've seen with my clients is, one for one, when they dramatically improved some very specific leadership type communication skills needed at the higher levels, the promotions not only happened, they happened ahead of schedule.

This is actually true at all levels of the organization, but especially dramatic for the leap between Director and VP.

So what specific skills cause you to rise above and be chosen? The sooner you start manifesting these skills, the sooner your organization organically selects you to be its next leader. It's inevitable. I've seen too much success with these specific skills to think otherwise.

Let me start with a broad statement about the feedback that many of my clients were given prior to coming to me.

I found it interesting that most of my clients were told they needed to develop “executive presence”. 

It's true they did need to develop it, but what was fascinating was they had no clue what it was. To them it was some magical aura that’s invisible but somehow communicates to everyone that you're a leader. It was a total enigma how to do it. They helplessly thought “Some people have it naturally and some (like me) don’t.” They had no idea of the anatomy of this utterly mysterious but vital necessity, which of course put them in a position where there's no hope they’ll ever develop it.

It’s sad that the people giving this feedback don’t themselves know what “executive presence” is. This term is so wildly open to interpretation, it means radically different things to different people. Fortunately, I’ve been helping people develop it for years and can explain, simplify and teach it.

By the way, I love seeing "executive presence" manifest. I feel lucky I get to see it manifest in a very rapid and dramatic fashion in a matter of 3 days because I do “before” and “after” videos of my clients. I just saw it yesterday with my most recent Senior Director. In his first video he looked like a Director. In his final video he looked like an Executive VP and he even had what most people would call an “aura”. 

So, let's look at the anatomy of this aura. 

And how you can start manifesting these skills now yourself to accelerate your next promotion. 

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#1. Don't be frazzled.

Frazzled means you come across as overly stressed and somewhat overwhelmed. Being frazzled is an "executive presence" killer. Directors and below are frequently frazzled, with good reason of course. However, while you shouldn’t even do it at the lower levels, you really can’t afford to do it at the upper levels. 

When you're a Vice President, if you get frazzled it freaks people out. A Vice President needs to communicate with poise, calm, be in the moment, not have his/her attention ping-ponging all over the place. The best Executives stop all their mental noise and are calm and in the moment. People walk in to meetings with this kind of Executive full of mental noise themselves and find their own noise calms down and vaporizes in the presence of real self-command. It gets calm.

#2. Senior executives have a strong sense of dignity.

This is a big component of “executive presence”. The last 100+ clients that I asked what the word “dignity” means gave me woefully inadequate or incorrect definitions for it. This is a very important word to know. “Dignity” is the sense of being worthy of esteem and honor. Many of my clients try hard to please others, look to others for approval, let others determine their value, they lose their own sense of worth. Some of them have been hammered by bad feedback and coaching and don’t have a strong sense of their own value. They will say, "I do good work", but that is a far cry from a robust sense of dignity. Dignity radiates from within. It’s not the same as confidence. It’s definitely not arrogance which rubs everyone the wrong way. Dignity is your own sense of being worthy. It's a skill to be able to communicate with dignity. It can be developed. It gives you an aura. It’s vital in the skill set of a senior executive.

#3. Every successful senior executive I’ve seen or worked with communicates with a superior level of intention.

Intention is not effort, it’s not putting energy into it, it's not trying hard. Intention is senior to effort.  It commands attention and understanding. Many people communicate with intent. Executives do it at a superior level. It's the difference between watching someone play tennis on weekends or a champion professional. The amateur doesn’t have the skills to win at the same level, no matter how hard they try or how positive their attitude. This level of communication penetrates, inspires, makes things happen. It is true leadership level communication. 

#4. Give your undivided attention to the person who's talking to you.

Look into their eyes, both when you're speaking as well as listening. When you’re on the phone, make the world go away, tune in and feel the presence of the other person fully. 

Directors and below have so much going on, they’re frequently trying to multitask. With those executives who I would say are very noteworthy, I hear the people around them say, “Wow, when you talk with him/her you feel like you're the only person in the world.” Why is this important? Because people want to be led by someone who makes them feel that way. How you make people feel has everything to do with whether not they want you to lead them.

I recently had someone email me this about his new VP: “I love him! I get 100% of his focus. I feel fantastic talking to him. He’s not rushed. I feel like an eternity has gone by, I hang up the phone and realize it was a 12 minute conversation. That kind of impact in 12 minutes! WOW!”

#5. You need the ability to make deep human connections, to build a warm rapport with anyone.

Your ability to make a deep and real human connection determines how much trust you will enjoy. There's a world of difference between "talking" and making a deep connection, and the difference will have a big impact on your career: Getting others to open up and your ability to listen play a big part in this. I have worked with many people who are trustworthy, but they didn’t know how to make deep connections and people didn't trust them. Once they learned how to make that deep connection, trust grew rapidly. Trust is the basis of the real, solid cooperation you’ll need.

#6. You need to communicate so well that you have the ability to make resistance and conflict evaporate.

The reason for this is because unhandled conflict in the organization will escalate to your level. By the time it gets to you, no one below you has been able to handle it - it will be up to you to make conflict go away.

Of course, the best thing you can do is prevent conflict in the first place. Conflict can almost always be prevented with outstanding communication. Disagreement is a natural part of life when you’re dealing with many viewpoints, but there’s absolutely no reason it needs to turn into conflict. I have seen over and over with clients that conflict is never a result of the issues, it is always a result of communication and understanding breaking down.

While we experience a lot of successful communication, there is nothing in this world that breaks down faster, or with more frequency, than communication …. nothing. As advanced as we are as a civilization, as much communication technology as we have at our fingertips, as breathtaking are our opportunities to communicate to each other and to the world, we still experience communication breakdowns daily, both at work and at home, on a personal, organizational and even international level. You need to be able to rapidly repair it when it breaks.

And when you’re high up in the organization, you’re dealing with so many people, so many multiple viewpoints, so many realities, it becomes important that you can manage all of them simultaneously. It kills your organization if you don't.

Start to demonstrate that conflict and resistance do not happen around you, and that when they do, you confront it head on and make them evaporate and get everything rapidly moving forward, and the people in power will naturally put you in a leadership role very quickly because managing communication, other people's perceptions, realities, expectations, frustrations is an enormous part of a leader's job. 

#7. An unspoken question they’ll ask about you before they decide to promote you is, “Will the organization be happy under him/her?” This is another way of asking, “How good are your communication skills? Are they at a leadership and executive level?” 

It takes outrageously great communication skill to not only communicate well with the person in front of you, but to do it so well that it carries through the rest of the organization.

If you start demonstrating these skills now, I see a promotion in your future regardless of where you are in the organization.

These skills are rare. They will accelerate and raise the trajectory of your career and your income. You’ll feel like this client who recently emailed me:

“I am convinced that the skills I learned have been the biggest factors in changing the trajectory of my career. There is no doubt about it. It makes me smile to compare conversations I had before, where they labeled me as a “strong practitioner” to the daily interactions I have now with senior executives who promoted me 3X in 2 years and treat me like a “high level leader”. I was the only person out of the 500+ of us to receive this many promotions and this particular level of promotion. It is heady stuff and very exciting.”

Get the "Becoming a VP" Checklist

If you're looking to get promoted from Director to VP, this powerful checklist will help you prepare to achieve that goal.  Inside the checklist, you'll find a strategic yet practical "roadmap" for making sure the way you communicate with others demonstrates your capacity to step into a VP role. If you're looking to develop that "executive presence" aura that successful leaders have, this free checklist will help you do it.  

Get the Becoming a VP checklist

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