By Dr. Te Wu and Gail Yosh
— Successful professionals know how to balance both hard and soft skills to deliver results for the organizations they support.
In recent years, the importance of soft skills has garnered much attention. If a manager can’t motivate, lead, and resolve conflicts, difficult tasks and projects become even more challenging to implement.
However, today’s ambitious professionals must expand their soft skills beyond the basics of creativity, collaboration, and conflict resolution, to name a few. They must cultivate the human-centric skillset needed to engage C-suite executives, bridging the gap between what needs to be communicated and how executives need to hear it.
There is a nuanced language one needs to speak when communicating with top-tier executives. Learning that language can elevate projects, foster stronger relationships, and drive implementation success. This article explores three human-centric communication skills for engaging C-level executives that drive successful business outcomes.
Repackaging your message – the importance of language and context
Have you ever had to translate a message into another language? First, you have to know what you want to communicate. Then you need to translate those words into the other language. Often this process is not a literal word-to-word exchange, but rather the transfer of the essence of the original message, so it resonates with the same intensity and clarity in the new language as it does in the original language. This requires you to consider your message goals and then repackage the message into the language your recipient will understand.
For today’s professionals, repackaging a message for the C-level audience means tailoring your words to fit the strategic and operational context in which the executives operate. You may be inclined to use technical terms and performance metrics. But our minds think in pictures. Words are merely the symbols we use to create the picture.
Instead of leaning too hard on your metrics, leaving your audience to create their own picture, offer a visual story. Use the words that create the most compelling picture for your executive audience. Consider a project manager who needs to communicate a complex portfolio dashboard to the governance board. The information that needs to be communicated entails project performance using Green, Yellow, and Red traffic light indicators.
Original Message: The portfolio dashboard shows the current status of 50 different projects in the portfolio. Overall, the portfolio is performing well, with 40 projects in Green, seven in Yellow, and three in Red. The message goes on to supply details of the projects in Red and Yellow.
Repackaged Message: The portfolio dashboard shows the current status of 50 projects in the portfolio. Overall, the portfolio is largely on track to meet the agreed portfolio goals, despite some pockets of concern. Based on the current portfolio performance, we should be able to achieve 100% of Strategic Goal 1, 95% of Goal 2, and 80% of Goal 3. We are seeking your help with three of the projects in Red, and with proper resolution, we should be able to fully achieve Goals 2 and 3.
By choosing less technical terms and relating project performance to business metrics, you will offer a more compelling story for your C-level executives, allowing them to visualize your message, understand the impact, and provide guidance more readily.
Optimizing your message
After repackaging your message, optimizing it for the audience’s unique communication style is crucial. Message optimization is akin to customer relationship management. Like CRM requires a customer-centric business culture, communicating with top executives requires an audience-centric approach. Optimizing a message involves knowing how your audience hears it, i.e. how they filter your words based on what motivates them. According to Dr. Elias Porter’s Relationship Awareness Theory, three primary motives guide how individuals interpret messages transmitted by others. Some individuals are guided by the drive to protect others and help them grow, while some are led by the desire to organize resources, such as time, people, and money, to achieve results. Others are driven to ensure organizational functions are carefully thought through and the right processes are followed to accomplish strategic goals. To achieve optimal communication, professionals should first be aware of the motives that guide their own choice of words. They can then adapt their message wherever necessary to suit their audience’s motives. Optimizing your messages is like using a translator to transform your words into those that deliver the greatest impact to your audience.
How do you determine the best words for your executive audience? This requires active listening and learning the hot button topics of the executive. Do you notice a pattern of words or a consistent communication style in your interactions with key executives? Executives motivated by the desire to optimize resources frequently use nouns such as achievements, results, and goals; and modifiers such as definitely and quickly. While you may feel comfortable using nouns such as processes, standards, schedules, technical jargon, and modifiers like accurate and efficient, your executive audience may not hear your message in a way that resonates. The details of your message don’t need to change, but the words and modifiers you use to package your message should adapt to the cognitive space where your audience thrives. For example, on a project in which budget is a concern, instead of, “We are managing the budget efficiently, achieving a CPI (cost performance index) of 1.1,” consider rephrasing it as, “We are managing the budget well, and we are currently under spending by about 10%.” In your interactions with key executives, notice how often they use certain nouns, verbs, and modifiers. How are they choosing to deliver their messages? Understanding their preferred language suggests words you might choose to optimize your messages each time you interact.
Enhancing your delivery
The final step in human-centric communication is enhancing your delivery to foster relationships and build credibility. As Steven Covey said, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Active listening requires you to make a conscious effort to understand the information being relayed to you and learn from the person speaking. When we listen with a learner mindset, we’re not waiting to speak, but rather, we’re listening for information that tells us about the speaker’s outlook, concerns, and priorities. By actively listening, we gain audience-specific information we can use in future interactions to repackage and optimize our messages. Active listening techniques include clarifying to ensure you understood what you have heard and summarizing to restate the big issues involved. As you clarify and summarize, you are in a better position to respond with more precision. This feedback-and-adapt process builds rapport as both parties leave the encounter feeling heard and understood.
Mastering communication with C-suite executives is an art that requires a nuanced approach. These human-centric communication skills are not just tools. They are essential elements in building strong, effective relationships with top-tier executives. As you refine these skills, you can become a key facilitator of strategic communication and collaboration within the highest levels of your organization.
Dr. Te Wu is CEO and CPO of PMO Advisory, an associate professor at Montclair State University, and the co-chair of Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Development Team on the portfolio management standard. He also has these project management certifications: PMP, PgMP, PfMP, PMI-RMP.
Gail Yosh is a teaching professor of business communications at Montclair State University and the founder of Quanta Communications, a communications consulting company. Gail has an MBA in international business and will obtain her doctorate in Marketing from Pace University in 2024.
Allison Kugel
Full Scale Media
akugel@fullscalemedia.com