Learn To Communicate Like A CEO, Whatever Your Job Title

The typical entrepreneur usually lacks significant leadership experience when they first start their business. Entrepreneurs however must eventually master the art of being in charge. They can start by studying CEO-style communication, to help them earn buy-in from their first employees and take the business to new heights and beyond. How is this achieved? Well, the skill is to adopt these top tips of communicating like a CEO.

When an entrepreneur starts a business, they often start off by working by themselves or in a close-knit group of people who share their values and trust with. And that is logical. After all, starting a business requires the kind of grit and commitment that can only come from true believers.

A successful company, however, will eventually expand beyond its small team foundation and begin to resemble a business more and less. At that point, the founding entrepreneur must change roles from sole proprietor to CEO. Not every entrepreneur is successful in doing this. It takes a lot of learning and failing, a lot of trial and error too. Sadly, as start-up failure statistics suggest (50% of businesses fail in the first 5 years of trading) 1 in 2 fall short at getting leadership basics right.

Finding out how to become a true leader—the boss, if you will—is the challenge. For business owners however, stepping away from the daily operations of the enterprises they founded is not always simple. Even worse, many business owners struggle to establish authority among their staff members who are accustomed to behaving more as peers than as subordinates.

Talking like the boss is the only way to establish yourself as the actual boss.

And so, with no further ado, here’s a quick lesson in how communicate like a CEO.

What communicating like a CEO means

It’s crucial to comprehend what communicating like a CEO entails before commencing any formal training. In the business world, it’s common knowledge that performance is at the heart of the majority of leadership positions. A CEO must talk authoritatively, command attention, and convey their point clearly, just like a revered stage performer.

However, and this is crucial, they must do it while maintaining their authenticity.

In other words, a businessperson attempting to reinvent themselves as a CEO must be true to themselves while radically changing how others see them. Every meeting, phone call, and email shapes those perceptions, which is why becoming a leader by learning to speak like a CEO is such an important transition.

What Every Successful CEO Projects

The core components of communicating like a CEO are all about mindset. As CEO, everything you do and say should conform to a few specific characteristics:

• Confidence: Projecting confidence inspires others to follow your lead, so if you can’t be confident about something you’d like to say, don’t say it.
• Transparency: Nobody wants to follow someone they think is withholding critical information from them, so be as open and honest with your employees as possible at all times.
• Clarity: For CEOs, brevity is a virtue, so get your message across as succinctly as you can without being curt or dismissive.
• Enthusiasm: Even when you’re at your most serious, it’s important to project your enthusiasm for what you’re doing — it’s infectious.
• Constancy: In a leadership role, everyone will look to you to be a steadying force, so you must project purpose while remaining calm and steadfast — and never panicked.
• Connection: As a CEO you want to humanize yourself and stay connected to your team and customer base through emails and your website. Creating these authentic connections will strengthen commitment to your brand.

No matter which mode of communication you’re dealing with, you’ll find that the concepts above apply. There are, however, some communication method-specific things you’ll need to know if you want to communicate like a CEO.

Public Speaking as CEO

The skill of public speaking is by far the most challenging kind of communication for entrepreneurs to learn in order to talk like a CEO. This is especially true for people who don’t enjoy being the centre of attention. However, there are a few straightforward suggestions that can help.

To begin with, start off modestly. A novice public speaker should never begin by speaking before a sizable audience. A better strategy is to progress from small, trusted groups to larger, unknown ones. It’s also a good idea to practise with individuals outside of your organisation. Offering to speak at the upcoming meeting or public event of your local chamber of business is a good method to achieve this.

Finding, learning, and using a relaxation technique that works for you is another smart move. You’ll be able to approach your subsequent speaking engagement without fear if you do it in that way. Nothing turns off a crowd more quickly than a speaker who comes out as awkward, anxious, or unsure of themselves. You’ll want to demonstrate both confidence and constancy while you speak, which are two of the qualities we addressed previously.

A CEO’s Phone Manner

Except for CEOs, not many individuals these days spend much time talking on the phone. When videoconferencing or text chat are not alternatives, they must still conduct conferences and one-on-one consultations over the phone. They must know how to enter each interaction with the proper frame of mind in order to succeed.

To start, whenever it’s practical, you should create a written agenda for your phone communications. You’ll be able to progress through each conversation and get the most out of each call by doing this. On every call, it’s crucial to develop the skill of active listening. This will show the caller that you are listening to and understanding what they have to say and will also enable you to answer intelligently, as a CEO would.

Emailing Like a CEO

Learning how to use email like a CEO is a significant step in communicating like you are indeed, the boss. Thankfully, this is the simple part as there are an abundance of examples online of very effective CEOs managing their email conversations, all you have to do is perform a quick Google.

A study that looked at the emails of 38 successful CEOs discovered some similarities among them. One of the most prevalent—and significant—qualities they had in common was that they established limits for their use of email. For instance, Mark Cuban (the American billionaire entrepreneur) informs his staff of how frequently and what to email him about. Others insist that a response deadline be included with every correspondence.

While having someone set up filters, forwards, and labels as well as identify and delete spam emails allows CEOs to focus on emails that are important, outsourcing your inbox to an assistant allows CEOs to concentrate on emails that are important and that demand their attention.

The adoption of predetermined responses to help handle routine emails was another characteristic that was shared. As a CEO, your aim should be to develop an emailing style that everyone can understand, anticipate, and respect. You are speaking like a CEO as long as you manage your emails in a way that ticks those criteria.

You ought to now have a good understanding of what it takes to speak like a CEO. We’ve discussed how CEOs should act generally as well as how to handle the most crucial forms of communication. If you adhere to the ideas presented above, it won’t take you long to speak like a CEO. The only thing left to do at that point is to walk the walk and develop into the leader your expanding start-up needs in order to succeed.