With the needs of the modern workforce evolving, changes are also being made at the top. For this reason, the C-suite leadership skillset needed to thrive has also changed. Here are the top skills for C-suite leaders you should know as you rise.

1. Hard Skills

The modern C-suite calls for these technology-based hard skills:

Artificial Intelligence

AI has become a much-needed saving grace across industries and functions—from chatbots that direct consumers to the right customer support agent to predicting when a sensor machine needs to be replaced to avoid a major stall in manufacturing. And according to a recent HBR article, the pace of AI adoption only accelerated due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with 52% of companies accelerating their AI adoption.

As Athena Founder CEO Coco Brown says, “Historically, women have been excluded from the shaping of the world of business, of politics, of government, of technology. When it comes to technology, we know that AI is our future… it’s imperative that women become deeply integrated into its development and potential.”

For the C-suite executive, AI skills will help them revolutionize their management skills and optimize team performance. With AI skills, leaders can apply advanced analyses and logic-based methods to interpret events, automate decisions, streamline processes, and provide solutions.

Data Science

Data science depends on complex algorithms, software, and statistics to interpret data, enabling executives to take informed action. It is also useful in making speedy yet more accurate decisions. 

Data science skills make it easy to access insights that give your organization an advantage over the competition. As far as strategy goes, the CEO (as a board leader) is better placed to create strategies that will yield results because they depend on reliable data.

Cyber Security

One of the biggest fears of a company CEO, CIO, COO, or other C-suite leader is waking up to the news that the company network has been breached and sensitive customer data accessed by cybercriminals. In 2020, businesses in the US lost $8.64 million to data breaches. 

Cyber security is a hot topic in the C-suite and boardroom. With security breaches increasing an average of 27.4% each year and a single malware attack costing organizations an average of $2.4 million, it is every executive and board director’s responsibility to have cyber security at top of mind.

In addition to risk at the company level, cyber security is something all of us need to be thinking about proactively on our own personal devices. Gone are the days when we could just rely on our IT departments to block spam.  C-Suite leaders need to make it their duty and responsibility to be proactive about their personal cyber security, so as not to become a weak link for the companies we work for.

While you may not need to be an expert in cyber security, you can learn to quickly identify malware, phishing emails, and other threats and alert experts to handle them before things go downhill.

Dev Ops

The modern consumer expects organizations to always step up to the latest technology because it promises better services and products.

DevOps is a set of software development practices that helps organizations to deliver quality software quickly and efficiently. It is a combination of people, processes, and technology working together to streamline the software development process.

With DevOps skills, a C-suite leader to use their understanding of the current cultural philosophies and tools to improve their company’s product offering to retain current customers and attract new ones.

These skills also help them to quickly recognize trends the organizations need to adopt so they don’t lag behind their competitors.

HR Management Systems Proficiency

Human Resource Management Systems provide tools to help manage human resources at every juncture of the employment life cycle and stay compliant with relevant laws.

As a C-suite leader, you need to have a good understanding of how HR systems work and how they can be used to optimally manage your workforce. A key part of this is understanding how different HR systems can impact employee performance. 

Good HR systems are not just pay—they are end-to-end employee systems, that go from hiring to termination. This means that they track employee performance data and goals, and give managers the tools they need to effectively motivate and engage their team. By understanding how HR systems work, you can ensure that your workforce is being managed in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Cloud Computing Expertise 

The trend in business is moving towards cloud-based solutions because they’re more efficient and economical. Cloud computing skills help you manage a remote workforce and keep your data safe and secure. While you don’t have to be an expert, it’s important to have someone on your team who is so you can make informed decisions related to the cloud.

Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT creates a readily available data hub as everyday computing devices send and receive data from each other.

Learning and understanding how it works help you leverage this information to monitor essential data, access data in real-time, complete tasks quickly, and manage time better.

This data is important in decision making, too, whether you need to initiate a changing of roles or decide on more tasks to automate to improve productivity. 

Customer Success

Hubspot reports that growing companies are 21% more likely to prioritize customer success than peers with stalled growth. 

Athena member Harini Gokul, an executive at Amazon Web Services, offers some tips on building customer success:

“It starts with the customer and working backward from what the customer is looking to achieve. There are two key questions to ask:

1. Who is your customer’s customer?
2. How does your customer define success?

“Next, build customer success in your internal DNA and culture. That starts with ensuring every role in the organization understands how they tangibly contribute to customer success. If customer success is only the job of the customer success team, that is a recipe for failure.”

Customer success knowledge helps you anticipate customer wants and needs instead of waiting for trends to tell you what their pain points. This in turn helps you do more to make them happy, earn their loyalty, and ultimately grow your firm’s revenue.

2. Soft Skills

Modern C-suite leaders also need to be mindful of developing their soft skills. These skills are about how you work with people rather than the technical abilities that come with your tertiary training.

For the C-suite, these soft skills tend to be most important:

Strategic management

The goal of strategic management is to make your organization more competitive.

Strategic management goes beyond the day-to-day management of an organization. It involves setting long-term goals and objectives and developing a plan to achieve them. This plan takes into account the competitive environment, the internal organization, and the resources available.

Adaptability

Change is a guarantee. To succeed as a leader, your adaptability to change must be a guiding light for your team.

Flexibility to change means you’re able to adapt initial plans to accommodate new circumstances your organization faces. To some extent, it also calls for reassuring your teams that the change is necessary and will be good for everybody in the long term.

Conflict Resolution 

C-suite leaders should be able to resolve conflicts both within their team and with customers. Conflict resolution skills are important in managing customer-facing issues, as well as teamwork and team disputes internally. 

Leaders must be able to listen and understand both sides, mediate where necessary, and come up with solutions that satisfy all parties involved.

Empathy

Empathy is about putting yourself in another person’s place and feeling what they feel. It’s an essential people skill that allows you to interact positively with everyone you come across.

Athena Founder and CEO Coco Brown describes the importance of empathy for C-suite leaders:

“Emotional intelligence and the ability to ‘read a room’ have never been more critical. Leaders need to re-assess how they ‘show up’ for their team, physically (camera on, hands showing, on time, and no distractions), but also how they ‘show up’ from a policy and care perspective. The pandemic has proven that flexibility matters, healthcare is crucial—including mental health—and that we’re all humans, doing the best we can, often in strikingly different scenarios in our homes/offices…. Being tuned into the needs of the team, and the ability to drive connection can make or break the team—and it all begins at the very top. Tuned-in leaders who can prove they are human-first, caring, and willing to listen are the new high performers in the C-suite. ”

The more you can identify with someone else’s point of view, the easier it is for you to offer help or make a favorable decision.

Emotional Intelligence (EI, EQ)

An emotionally intelligent leader is able to recognize and understand their emotions and those of people around them, how that affects their behavior, and use that knowledge to influence others.

It calls for self-awareness, self-regulation, thinking before reacting, showing empathy, and solving problems in ways that work for everyone.

As Andrea Archibald, Athena member and board member of Tribal Planet puts it:

“…Emotional intelligence, from a psychological perspective, generally refers to one’s own self-awareness, one’s ability to regulate [one’s] own emotions. But also to empathize and be able to be perceptive of those around you, their emotional state, and how to respond to their emotional state appropriately—depending of course, on the setting. The ability to motivate others, and general social skills; they’re all important to effective leadership in the C-suite or at the board level, but [also] in our everyday lives.”

Communication

Effective communication skills allow you to clearly give and receive information.

It takes the audience into account to determine the right channel, timing, what to avoid, cultural differences that affect how a person receives and gives information, tone of voice, and other non-verbal cues.

You need to be concise, exude confidence and friendliness, and show respect during your interactions.

Remote Leadership

Leading remotely has become as commonplace as working remotely. But unlike what you need to lead when you’re with your teams, leading remotely requires a different calculus.

For instance, you need to communicate more to prevent workers from feeling isolated and demotivated. You also need to learn and adopt technologies that support effective communication regardless of time zones. Encouraging feedback on tasks is just as essential in being able to delegate them and foster team collaboration where necessary.

In a recent Virtual Salon, Athena member Katelin Holloway (founding partner at Seven Seven Six) discussed what it means to lead teams remotely. Importantly, remote work has shifted employee expectations and the need for leaders to look beyond the screen and what they “see” to check in on employees’ health, happiness, and safety in an entirely new way.

“The thing that you need to do right now is lead with empathy and compassion. So you need to think first about the health and safety of your family. Second, the health and safety of your organization. And that includes psychological safety,” Holloway shared. 

Holloway noted that communication is key—and that you cannot really over-communicate in this unprecedented time.

“Whatever you were doing before, double it when it comes to communication. So, if you were meeting for an all-hands meeting once a month, let’s make that twice a month—every two weeks,” she said. “If you were meeting weekly, continue to do your weekly Friday all-hands, and maybe have a little pulse check in order or open office hours for people to come together.”

Executive Presence

Executive presence is an ability to inspire confidence in your juniors that you’re capable of leading them, inspiring confidence in fellow executives that you’re reliable, and inspiring confidence in your bosses that you can achieve your goals. It determines the number and types of opportunities you’ll be selected for. 

To have a strong executive presence, you have to build on your communication and listening skills, cultivate networks, operate calmly under pressure, and always make a good first impression.

What C-Suite Executives Need From a CEO

Work relationships in the C-suite are symbiotic, and what one executive does affects the others. CEOs needs to exhibit the following traits to be impactful and respected among their C-suite teams.

1. Have emotional intelligence and be willing to listen

It’s essential for CEOs to have emotional intelligence so they can be aware of and manage their own emotions, as well as the emotions of those around them. This includes being able to have difficult conversations, provide constructive feedback, and resolve conflict effectively.

CEOs also need to be good listeners. This means not only hearing what others are saying, but also taking the time to understand their perspective and where they’re coming from. Active listening builds trust and respect, which are essential for maintaining healthy working relationships in the C-suite.

 2. Be Supportive of Employees

The CEO is the primary decision maker in the company, but that doesn’t mean they should be micromanaging everything. It’s important for CEOs to delegate authority and trust their team to do their jobs. This freeing up of time allows CEOs to focus on the bigger picture and work on long-term strategy. 

3. Be Willing to Hear Feedback

Hearing feedback—both positive and negative—is an important part of being a CEO. It can be difficult to hear criticism, but it’s essential in order to learn and grow. A good CEO will be coachable and willing to learn from others. 

4. Ditch Their Egos

An egotistical CEO is more concerned with being right than ensuring that the company succeeds. This single-minded focus often leads to poor decision-making that can negatively impact the business. 

The Bottom Line

The C-suite isn’t about getting applause for making it there but bringing transformation that trickles down to all who look up to you.

Ready to advance your learning and skills as an executive? Athena Alliance offers a executive development platform and proven community for women executives to reach their goals—in the C-suite, boardroom, and beyond. Learn more about Athena membership here.

Athena Alliance -

The Athena Alliance is a community that propels leaders to build impact—in the C-suite, in the boardroom, as an investor, as an entrepreneur, as a thought leader and beyond.