Communication
The CEO is the leader of the business and as such, is expected to be an excellent communicator. This means more than just being eloquent, it means delivering meaningful content as well. The effective use of language is a challenging skill which many of us poorly develop as we go through school (or so our teachers would tell us). But proper use of language will go a long way to influence people to get the things done that are important to the business.
In a business setting, people are prepared to fore give communication deficiencies when using a second language but mostly expect some level of correctness when using your native language. Given that many young businesses are founded by entrepreneurs with primarily technical backgrounds who can communicate well-enough to get the business going (and perhaps funded), few are appropriate to be the guest speaker at a Gartner Group conference. For the entrepreneur to remain in the CEO role, it is important to develop effective communication skills to meet the demands of the job.
The CEO needs to be able to communicate the essence of the business strategy and equally important, the methodology for achieving it. The CEO needs to be approachable -- every encounter should be a memorable one, even at the coffee machine. The CEO is expected to be able to receive critical input and understand how to deliver critical output without being offensive. The CEO is expected to be able to run a meeting efficiently, illustrating how to respect time.The CEO is expected to understand when positive contribution is being made and so recognize it. The CEO is expected to be able to stand in front of the team and deliver motivating presentations (and show how to be brief). The CEO is expected to be able to lead sales calls, develop partner relationships, discuss pricing and deflate critical support situations. The CEO needs to be able to use communication skills for many things.
Not everyone is born with the capability to be an excellent communicator -- in fact, few people seem to have this as a natural skill. It does not mean you will fail in taking on the CEO role, it means you have to work hard to be an effective communicator and more importantly, understand how to use the team around you to compensate for any weaknesses. This section addresses the many aspects of communication the CEO should be aware of as well as a variety of ways communication skills can be improved. It should be no surprise, that practice does make perfect in this instance, but even endless practice will not turn a poor communicator into an eloquent one, especially in spontaneous scenarios.
Establishing Communication Rhythm
Communication is a challenging aspect of business behavior that is rarely perfected. In fact, you should never become complacent about communication always striving to use communication as a way to better integrate teams working together. One of the most effective ways to plan communication is through a defined rhythm -- making communication predictable in terms of the who, what, where, when and why people will hear things -- from the CEO, in this case.
Predictable communication sounds easy at first glance -- but over time it can fall into the background as noise that people don't pay attention to. It's important that the content be fresh, ideally interactive when appropriate and most importantly contain value to everyone listening (that's the hard part). The benefit of rhythm is that the team comes to expect and anticipate certain opportunities to connect with the CEO. It reduces the feeling that no communication is happening, it increases the comfort that the team will be kept informed authoritatively. It reduces the impact on rumors.
Here are some ideas about the types of rhythm to establish from the office of the CEO:
- Annual presentation of the strategic plan -- A great presentation to hold at a team-wide kick-off at the start of a fiscal year. The materials should present the strategy at a high level and contain information about how the company is executing against it. It should identify relevant challenges and objectives and be honest on how things are going so far. Everyone should be able to relate to the challenges of the Company not just sales (targets) and development (product deliverables). The materials should be available for anyone to look at throughout the year. Elements of the plan should also be presented to all new employees as part of their in-take process -- ideally presented personally by the CEO.
- Quarterly results -- For young companies, the team typically likes to hear the CEO present results. It allows people to ask questions of the business leader, which increases confidence overall (depending on the answers of course). It also provides a forum for the CEO to ask questions of the team which improves the feeling of equality that many modern team structures thrive on. No secrets is a good policy although couching answers may sometimes be needed. Not everyone can take direct and honest answers in an open forum like a team-wide meeting.
- Company milestone announcements -- Not always rhythm oriented in terms of time frame, but predictable in terms of making sure everyone knows of the achievements as they occur. The most common ones would include a large account win (or revenue achievement), but the ones that recognize some of the little things also help such as passing through a total lead count goal, number of active customers, closing the Nth support call, etc. Sometimes the leader of the relevant operational area will make these announcements and then the CEO will follow up as appropriate. It depends on whether there is risk the CEO would seem out-of-touch by not appearing to know about the achievement until the operational manager announces it. The operational manager will feel slighted that they can't announce a key achievement in their area -- communication is not easy!
- Monthly internal newsletter -- Not that commonly done per se, but the CEO could issue via email a personally written update about important or interesting items that affect the Company. It might contain contributions from others in the Company, include a summary of recent announcements, etc. Marketing might get involved to help prepare it so it has the appropriate sheen.
- Recognizing individual achievement -- Like many aspects of communication, it can be a double-edged sword. Who do you recognize, how much do you say, how do you know if you are leaving someone out? Do you exaggerate your knowledge of the event or your familiarity with the person (perhaps larger company issue)? Nonetheless, knowing that the CEO will recognize special achievement helps people strive for special achievement.
A subtlety to keep in mind is even though something is communicated, it does not mean everyone has heard it. Sometimes people are absent or do not have time to attend the communication event (or can't hear it because it is not broadcast clearly (a common problem for remote office workers)) -- others did not appreciate the written delivery of a message (e.g. yet another email) so are also looking for the achievement to be recognized the next time the team meets more formally. Don't hesitate to repeat certain messages using a variety of communication methods (email, video or audio conference, post on internal web, hang message in lunch room, etc) -- sometimes just the repetitiveness helps (or hinders). Winning at communication is not easy.
Perception of Excellence
Setting a high standard for effective communication is an important element of being the CEO. If you don't check spelling or grammar, why should anyone else? If you are not prepared with your speech, why should the team act any differently. If you can't form a proper sentence in a public setting the embarrassment for everyone else may be too much. It may all sound obvious, but requires a bit of extra time to do well so surprisingly does not get done as often as one would think.
Some obvious hints in the right direction include:
- always use the spell checker to validate outgoing email. There is nothing more embarrassing than sending an email with gross spelling or grammatical errors. If you receive one, take the time to tell the sender how unacceptable it is to send email without spell checking. Bad grammar and spelling distract from the message -- really!
- have a trusted source review important communication prior to sending. It's rarely the case that the author is the best reviewer. This means you have to leave time for the reviewing cycle so keep that in mind.
- review formal presentations, especially if created in tools like Microsoft PowerPoint. It is embarrassing to be unfamiliar with animation or slide timing or to be caught off guard with a theme you are not familiar with, especially in front of prospective customers. Never blame the slide creator, if you are presenting, they are your slides.
If proper communication rhythm is established, the time needed to achieve a degree of excellence can be planned in. If communication is often ad hoc, it's hard to have it all come out right.
Practicing
If you are one of those who feels uncomfortable with communication, practicing helps. Some straightforward (and hopefully somewhat safe) venues and methods include:
- make a small speech during a team lunch. It provides a forum to practice standing in front of an audience appearing to sound prepared (even if nervous). Make sure you look at the people you are presenting to, make sure you ask questions and take a few questions. The more comfortable you feel interacting with an audience, the better
- review what you are presenting. This is especially true with formalized slide presentations. It is very embarrassing to be in the middle of an important customer presentation and have problems with slide mechanics. Ask someone to come to your office for a dry run -- rehearse overall timing of presentation and what key messages you want to give for each slide. Make sure the slides are properly checked for spelling, grammar and formatting errors.
- be purposeful with all emails. As many people would say, email is perhaps one of the worst used forms of communication available. No structure, no personality, easy for someone to convey messages in tones that were not intended. Given that an email from the CEO is an important email, it should be well written, to the point, use language properly and be clear as to what follow ups are required. Don't be one of those who always does a Reply-All, rarely checks spelling or grammar and has no specific point to make. If needed, have someone review a company-wide email before it is sent, or put it in Draft for a day and re-read the next day to see if it still says what you intend.
In the end, you'll likely find you're not as poor a communicator as you may think. Your passion for the business tends to uplift the way in which you talk about it which will come across when communicating. The important thing is to be prepared, take your time and use the team around you to illustrate your ability to get the message across.
Communicating with Customers
For the most part, customers would not often have a chance to meet with the CEO of a Company. As such, you should treat the opportunity with equal respect and use as many skills as you can to make sure the customer finds the encounter the strongest reason yet to do business with you. You need to establish a variety of things when communicating with customers:
- mutual respect -- regardless of the position of the person you meet with, they are an influencer over a business decision. Treat everyone with maximum respect, make sure they relish the encounter with you. Refer to them by name, inquire about their job activities, other relevant experiences including and especially any exposure to the competition. If they have used your solution, get some feedback. Feedback given to the CEO is the best feedback possible, users tend to focus on high level needs not the nit-picky stuff they might tell a product manager or support specialist.
- mind your sales manners -- it's easy to always be in selling mode to the point where your audience tires of the incessant pushing on differentiators and value propositions. Once you feel you have the sales close you need, focus on the partnership being established. Assume they are becoming a customer -- as a given, so use the time to make sure they become a long-lasting customer. Let your sales team get them across the finish line, your job is largely to give the customer a reason to jump across the line to the benefits that being a customer would bring.
- be approachable but careful -- every CEO hands out business cards with contact information. Call me any time statements are easily made in the heat of a business meeting. What are you going to do if the customer does indeed call you or send you an email? The key thing is to provide rapid response and thoughtful follow up. The impression left on a customer where the CEO actually responds to communication is very positive. Few customers will abuse this and if they do, your team is there to step in and take up the mantle as needed. Don't forget your team should not be cut out of the loop so always try to redirect the contact to the appropriate team member but make sure they respond as well or it looks like you are just shuffling the customer off to a corner.
- follow up -- if you say you will do something, make sure you do. One of the most common follow-up faux pas relates to product issues where the customer mentions a deficiency and the CEO says it will be checked into. Does it get checked into -- even if the answer is yes, does the customer know this? Make sure that some communication is sent to the customer to indicate you have followed up -- even if all you say is that you are working on it. An important issue to a customer occupies their thoughts every day whereas it may only be a fleeting thought amongst many for you.
The role of CEO will certainly put you in touch with customers regularly (it should). You need to be prepared, well practiced and confident. You are the business leader and the customer wants to feel they are being led down the right path for their business needs.