Session Summary: Getting to the C-Suite is challenging, but navigating the room once you’re there can be just as challenging, if not more! The technical or functional skills that may have paved your way to the C-Suite suddenly matter a lot less than leadership skills and cross-functional understandings. Similarly, the organizational politics of managing as a member of the C-Suite are significantly different than the organizational politics of the climb up. In this interactive sessions, we will discuss the challenges of being an effective member of the C-Suite, including:

Key stakeholders: How to identify the key stakeholders, both inside and outside the C-Suite, build relationships with them, and understand what they want and (more importantly) don’t want.

Creating partnerships: How to create partnerships with other C-Suite members that go beyond gaining mutual alignment on issues.

Building cross-functional knowledge: How to build knowledge in areas outside your core expertise so you can be an effective voice in the room.

Communications: How your communication style needs to change, both for the C-Suite role, and for each stakeholder.

Bringing forward business challenges: How to bring business challenges forward to be addressed by the C-Suite team, both for challenges in your own functional area and challenges you see in other areas of the business.

Challenges that are specific to women: Being a woman in the C-Suite, particularly in those situations when you are the first woman, the only woman, or one of very few women, brings its own set of challenges. We’ll discuss as a group the challenges women have faced and how they have managed those.