Leading the C-Suite Requires Knowing How They Speak
Communicators have spent years talking about earning “a seat at the table” where the executives hang out. But that’s the wrong goal.
The real goal is becoming someone the C-suite instinctively calls before the biggest decisions are made. That happens only when communicators stop thinking like messaging specialists and start thinking like business leaders.
That was the recurring lesson across two recent episodes of Cracking the Comms Code. In one discussion, I was joined by
- Ellen O’Brien, founder of Hudsons Media;
- Conrad Bellehumeur, a veteran chief communications officer now working in fusion energy; and
- Sarah Graham, cybersecurity lead at Kickstand.
- Lainie Keller, a longtime pharmaceutical communications executive;
- Alex Dudley, VP of Communications at Cognizant; and
- Erin Weinstein, Managing Director at SKDK,
explored what it takes to position executives for success.
Six accomplished communicators — in healthcare, cybersecurity, technology, government, public affairs, and energy — came to more or less the same conclusion: Speaking C-suite isn’t a “nice-to-have” anymore. It’s a core competency.
Build Trust Before It’s Needed
Every panelist, regardless of industry, kept returning to one idea: Trust comes before influence.
O’Brien noted that communicators are often brought in simply to execute instead of being given time to build relationships with leaders. But it’s those relationships — developed long before a crisis hits — that transform a communications professional into a trusted adviser.
Bellehumeur said the same pattern has followed him through government, transportation, defense, and energy. Trust under pressure might work in a pinch, but it’s not what you want fro leaders over your career long-term. Instead, you want the people who matter to remember that you’ve consistently helped them solve business problems before those problems bled over into messaging.
Weinstein offered the flip side from the agency perspective. Clients often hire outside advisers for one reason: to hear what nobody inside the organization is willing to say. Honest counsel, even where it goes against the company grain, is what builds executive confidence.
If executives hear from you only when they need a press release, you’re a vendor. If they call you before making a business decision, then you’re an adviser.
Trust is Built on Learning the Business
Expertise is a no-brainer in every career, including communications. That’s how you get in the door. But it’s not enough anymore to keep you in the room.
Bellehumeur shared his “five keys” for becoming an executive adviser:
- understand strategy
- know the operating environment
- build relationships across departments
- speak the language of numbers
- volunteer beyond your communications responsibilities
Alex Dudley took that even further: Be a business person first who specializes in communications — not a communicator who happens to work for a business. Saying you’re “bad at math” is disqualifying. The best communicators read the 10-Ks and earnings releases, understand the balance sheet, and know where revenue comes from.
Lainie Keller added that business fluency also helps communicators know when not to respond. Sometimes — maybe often! — acting gets attention, customers, and revenue. But the communicator elevates himself into an adviser when he also knows how and when to remain silent for the business’s long-term health.
Learning the business is how we helped a client develop quality KPIs. They first came to us with a lot of useless measures like pitch volume. By the end of the conversation, we turned it around to them to answer questions like:
- Did the USA Today op-ed help the sales team?
- Was the Financial Times interview repurposed by business development?
- How much content time did earned media save because placements could be repurposed on the blog and in newsletters?
Questions Earn More Influence Than Answers
The best advisors usually arrive with questions. Call it “ask, don’t tell.”
Sarah Graham applies the same mindset in cybersecurity. As buyers shift from CISOs toward developers and CTOs — and increasingly use AI tools to research vendors — she constantly asks where audiences actually spend time and how communications should evolve. This is especially important when trying to help technically sound CEOs who are small today but want to scale, because it helps keep everyone focused on success.
Dudley emphasized another question communicators often skip in a crisis: Who is actually affected? Before speaking, determine whether the primary audience is employees, customers, investors, or regulators. Maybe it’s someone else entirely.
Keller suggested organizing audiences into three buckets:
- core stakeholders who must align
- critical stakeholders who require active management
- contextual audiences worth monitoring
You can’t be lazy about this. The right answer is going to be different in every situation.
Internal Communications Is Business Strategy
Another remarkable point of agreement across both panels was the importance of internal communications. Employees have become ambassadors, skeptics, influencers, and fact-checkers. That’s all wrapped up in the job now.
Keller argued that organizations should tell employees first whenever possible, while assuming that anything communicated internally could become public within minutes — in other words, as O’Brien observed, today’s internal conversation can quickly become tomorrow’s headline.
Dudley described employees as the organization’s authenticity test. They know whether leadership’s words match leadership’s actions.
Bellehumeur stressed that employees trust direct supervisors far more than CEOs several levels removed, making manager communication one of the most important tools in any communications strategy. We’re talking about a lot more than just keeping HR happy here.
C-Suite: Think, Speak, Lead
Across both conversations, the message was consistent: Communicators who earn lasting influence are doing more than simply writing better messages. The next level is that they understand the business. They ask smarter questions. They build trust before it’s needed. They connect communications to growth, risk, operations, finance, and strategy. And they’re willing to tell leaders difficult truths when everyone else is simply nodding along.
Speaking C-suite has to go beyond learning executive buzzwords or faking it ’til you make it. You have to do the work, which starts with learning to think like an executive before you ever speak like one. That will get you in the right headspace to understand that your goal is not to ask politely for a seat at the table. The people already sitting there will get up and come to you, because they can’t afford not to.
Watch each panel below.
