The Road to the Top: Critical Skills Every Future Executive Needs

Climbing the career ladder to an executive role is no small feat. Discover the essential skills that will set you apart on your journey to the top.

Introduction

As the leading executive search and leadership consulting firm in the global development space, SRI Executive works with many current and emerging executives. These individuals often ask us how they can be considered for larger roles. This article aims to answer that question by offering a blueprint for candidates to guide their career growth into executive roles. Additionally, it provides actionable next steps that candidates can integrate into their day-to-day development.

Please note that this list is not exhaustive and may vary depending on the role. It’s simply the list of what we’ve found to be the most impactful skills after 25 years of experience.

Strategic Acumen

Executives are usually responsible for one major thing — looking towards the future and driving change. As they move away from operational roles, executives are asked to look beyond the day-to-day and towards what comes next. Strategic thinking requires evaluating an organisation's overall mission, values, and resources and then implementing appropriately aligned plans. However, developing skills in strategic acumen is about more than just big-picture thinking. It's also about collaborating with others, integrating your sector knowledge, and executing critical decisions. It includes the ability to set priorities, allocate resources, and measure the success of your implementation. It's one of the most fundamental skills that separates non-executives from executives.

Common questions that we see our clients ask candidates about their strategic acumen include the following:

• What trends or issues in our sector will impact the organisation's work in the next 3-5 years?
• Tell us of a time when you had to question and change your own previous strategic decision.
• How did you explain the need to change direction to your leadership/board?
• What value did you bring to the strategic process?
• How did you build consensus within your organisation when leading a strategic process?

To enhance your strategic acumen, could you look for growth opportunities in your current organisation? Try joining ongoing strategic projects or looking to change your current team. As you go through these projects, conduct a thorough retrospective of your strategic skills. Understand what value you bring to these processes and determine where your strengths lie. Understand the results that you helped drive and where you succeeded. More importantly, identify areas where you can improve.

Board Collaboration

As you move into an executive role in the global development space, you will start collaborating directly with the organisation’s Board of Directors. Boards are concerned with stewarding the organisation's financial resources and leading the overall strategy. Understanding their viewpoint and the best practices for collaborating with them is critical. Successful executives can manage up to the Board by helping them work through financial reporting issues and compliance. You will have to balance getting their input on strategic matters but prevent them from getting too bogged down with operational considerations.

To enhance your skills in board collaboration, look for opportunities to brief or collaborate with the Board in your current organisation. This is especially important if they are connected to existing strategic planning processes or significant fundraising campaigns that you are involved in. You can also join Boards as a volunteer in your personal time, especially with organisations that align with your passions and interests. Find mentors from your network who currently serve on Boards and ask them for insight into best practices.

Fundraising, Partnerships & Advocacy

As you move into executive roles at global development organisations, you'll need to be able to build relationships with external stakeholders. This may take the form of fundraising as you seek to generate additional financial resources from individual or institutional donors. It may take the form of partnerships as you look to build collaborative relationships with other organisations. It may also take the form of advocacy, typically with governments, to help align them with your issue. Either way, building your strengths in developing these external relationships is critical to success at the executive level.

To boost your experience, look for ways to step into fundraising, partnership, or advocacy activities at your current organisation. Start to learn more about diverse types of funding, methods of fundraising, and who your industry’s typical donors are. How can you best reach them, and how can you expand that network to increase the support for your organisation? What does advocacy look like for your organisation? Who are the major players, and what are the most significant barriers to growth or success? Look to support the teams at your organisation that lead fundraising, partnership, or advocacy efforts to better understand the skills required to be effective in building external relationships.

Leadership & Management Skills

One of the biggest differentiators between an executive and a non-executive is the ability to guide large and complex teams. As you move into executive roles, you focus less on direct operational management and more on indirect management, coaching, and mentoring. To transition into executive roles, you must understand the skills and methods required for leading and motivating complex and diverse teams.

To develop your executive skills, look for ways to gain additional leadership and management responsibilities in your current role. Consider indirect ways to manage more diverse groups of individuals, such as on project teams or through mentoring relationships. Understanding your leadership style and being ready to share it in interviews with organisations is also critical. You are already familiar with different types of leadership styles from others around you. Dig into what inspires you about their leadership and how you can integrate that into your responsibilities.

Passion / Motivation for the Mission

One of the final areas to develop as you consider moving into executive roles is passion and how it connects to your goals. Organisations in the global development space typically have someone whose motivation closely aligns with the organisation's mission and purpose. They want to ensure the candidate has a solid personal and professional tie to their work.

For the next steps, it is essential to have an intimate understanding of your professional journey. What draws you to a sector, an issue, or an organisation? How have your passion and experience positioned you as a leader capable of meeting an organisation’s goals? Once you understand these areas, you can share them during the interview process and highlight how you align with the organisation’s mission.

Next Steps

For an emerging leader interested in executive roles, there are many pathways you can take to prepare. We have outlined several above regarding individual competencies, including collaborating more with Boards of Directors, getting more involved in strategic change, and understanding your leadership style.

Overall, communication and storytelling skills are also incredibly important for success in any competitive interview process. As you consider your experience in these areas and how you can better explain it, we encourage you to review our prior article, Storytelling Success: Ace Your Interview with Narrative Examples (sri-executive.com), on using the STAR technique to create memorable summaries of your successes in interviews.

If you are interested in moving into executive roles, building relationships with potential mentors is a fantastic way to gain insight into your development path. If you are seeking CEO or Executive Director roles, we'd recommend contacting former/retired CEOs serving on boards of organizations you're connected to. They would have the time and space to help you reflect on your journey and development.

As a global executive search and leadership consulting firm, SRI Executive does extensive work with executives through our coaching programs. Our global team of accredited coaches supports individuals, teams, and organizations in reaching their goals. Leveraging our extensive advisory experience, we have developed a range of bespoke team and individual coaching programs, ranging from one-day workshops to multi-year engagements. You can learn more here - Leadership & Governance – SRI Executive.