CEO’s inner circle

In many companies, a lot of the decision-making power resides with the CEO’s inner circle. If you want to break into this elite club, make yourself stand out with a few strategies:

• Make your numbers. Your CEO wants to know that you can achieve the objectives set for you — and that you’re accountable. Don’t make excuses when you fail.

• Don’t spring surprises. If bad news is about to hit, tell senior management before it materialises. You don’t want to run the risk of appearing incompetent or unsure of yourself when your boss finds out from a board member or the media.

• Prove your loyalty. CEOs still feel vulnerable — they know that one or more of their direct reports want their job. If you want to show that you’re loyal, be wary of cozying up to board members or forming coalitions with peers.

(Adapted from How to Break Into Your CEO’s Inner Circle, by Jacques Neatby)

Craft a strategy for audience input

Asking audience members what they think during a presentation is a great way to heed the pleasure principle. When people feel their voices and ideas are being heard, they’re happy and therefore more likely to open their minds to what you’re proposing. But you need to decide in advance when you’ll ask people for input. Maybe you want to ensure that people are following along as you make your argument. Or perhaps you want to draw on their knowledge to support your message. Either can be useful. Just avoid empty questions aimed at the whole room: “Is everyone following? Good.”

Those don’t captivate anyone — people will just nod. Instead, directly address individuals: “Does that seem like the biggest problem with customer satisfaction, Mary, given your front-line perspective?”

(Adapted from Presentations, from the 20-Minute Manager series)

Get real work done

As a leader it’s your job to make sure your team doesn’t get burned out. One way to reduce stress and help people focus on what really needs to get done is to schedule uninterrupted work time. When people get distracted, it can take at least 20 minutes to refocus on the task at hand. Encourage people to set aside an hour or more each morning for quiet, proactive work. There should be no interruptions during this time, unless it’s an emergency — this means holding off on meetings and limiting email. By making this a group goal, you increase people’s collective focus and prevent backsliding. You can also help your team break larger projects up into smaller tasks that can be accomplished in the amount of time you’ve set aside for strategic work each day. Once they start using this time effectively, their productivity will improve.

(Adapted from Help Your Overwhelmed, Stressed-Out Team, by Julie Mosow)

Make conference calls more efficient

No one wants to sit on a boring conference call, especially when there is other work to do. Yet it’s become standard practice to send blanket one-hour meeting invites to as many as 10 people, even when only five are relevant to the agenda. You don’t need everyone on a conference call from start to finish. If you create an agenda and know which topics will be discussed when, you can stagger invitations. For example, if the marketing budget won’t be covered until the last half-hour of a fiscal year planning meeting, invite the marketing team to that 30-minute portion only. Aside from making the call more efficient, it gives valuable time back to your employees. Stop worrying that they’ll feel left out if they’re not invited to join every call. Let them know that you’ll share relevant information in a recap email.

(Adapted from 4 Ways to Make Conference Calls Less Terrible, by Rob Bellmar)

Plan a leadership summit

Leadership summits can fuel collaboration and lead to innovative solutions and new strategies — as long as you take the right steps to create a coherent, focused event.

• Assign clear roles. You need a summit director to oversee the agenda, a coordinator to handle logistics, an emcee to guide the sessions and facilitators to lead small-group discussions.

• Define a clear set of objectives. Have an answer to: “What do we want the outcome to be from an attendee’s perspective?” and “What do we want them to say when others ask, ‘What happened?’”

• Survey attendees to find out what’s most important. Ask: “What’s the one question you would like addressed at the upcoming conference?” and “If you could tell the CEO one thing that would improve the company’s prospects, what would it be?”

(Adapted from Leadership Summits That Work, by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene)

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, May 4th, 2015

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