How to Meet and Connect with Your Senior Leaders
What do you talk about? How can you add value to them? How do you position yourself as a rising leader in the company?
(“A Moment Before Devouring Half of a Banana Slug”, Teddy the Corgi, Redwood Regional Park, California)
Client: I want to build relationships with my VP / C-level executive and other VPs across the company who are not directly involved in my day-to-day projects. How do I go about doing so? What do I say to them?
It’s important to make yourself known to senior leadership at the company if you want to move up. Making sure they are aware of your skillset and the impact of your work while building a mutually beneficial relationship is important to building credibility and influence. However, if you don’t interact with senior leaders regularly in your work, this can feel unnatural and intimidating. Why would they want to take time out of their busy schedule to meet with you? What’s in it for them? In this post, I will cover step-by-step how to build a relationship with your executive leadership team.
The Reach Out
The first step of the relationship begins with you initiating a meeting. The best approach depends on the size of the organization, the formality of the culture, and the proximity of your work to that leader. At smaller, more casual workplaces, or if your work is closely tied to that leader’s goals, the reach out can be more direct. At large companies with many layers where there’s sensitivity around hierarchy, or if your work is fairly distant from the leader’s day-to-day work, a more formal approach is better.
Types of outreach
More informal: Send an email to the leader requesting time to meet.
“Hi [Name of leader], my name is Yue. I am a PM working on xyz. We’ve been in a few meetings together but have not connected 1:1. I would love to grab 30 minutes in the next few weeks to get to know each other, get feedback on project xyz that just launched, and any thoughts you may have on the strategy for xyz.
The important points to cover are:
Call out any previous interaction you may have had with this leader. It could be a group meeting, an all-hands where they presented and you attended, or something you’d heard about them. The goal is to find shared experience (even if they may not have noticed you) or at minimum a reason why you’re interested in speaking with them.
State what you are looking for: e.g. 30 30-minute meeting, a breakfast, walk, or coffee break
State why you’re looking to connect. Simply making an introduction likely isn’t enough. It’s important to help them understand why they should get to know you (more on this below).
Give it a time (e.g. in the next few weeks, at this conference we’re both attending) so that the executive has a starting point.
If the executive has an assistant or admin, please cc that person as well.
More formal: Introduction through a mutual colleague
On the other end of the spectrum, a formal way to meet a leader is through an official introduction. This involves someone who can vouch for you who also knows this leader, and is willing to make a double opt-in introduction. This may take a few intermediate connections and asks to get to someone who can make this introduction. The further someone is from your work, the more valuable it is to have someone make a formal introduction so that your request is accepted. The double opt-in would start with the Mutual Connection sending the executive an email like the following (without you on the chain):
Hi [Executive], I’d like to introduce you to Yue Zhao, PM of XYZ. She recently helmed project A, which led to significant increases in revenue. She is a rising leader at the company and would like to share and discuss her thinking on XYZ with you. Would you be open to a 30-minute conversation?
If the executive responds positively, then your Mutual Connection can send a separate follow-up email connecting you and the executive.
Tip: If the executive sponsors a certain employee group, club, or community, or is planning to attend an event near you, don’t pass up the opportunity to say a quick hi. You may not be able to have a full conversation, but it will give you a “previous interaction” from which you can ask for 1:1 time in the future.
Why should they get to know you?
In a prior post, I wrote about how building influence is about figuring out how you can help someone. The same concept holds for getting an introduction to someone who is not involved in your day-to-day work. Consider how you can help this leader. Here are some starting points:
Share a problem you see and want to solve, where solving the problem would also benefit them. Perhaps it’s a process between your teams that needs to be improved. Or a customer problem you are passionate about solving. Or a skillset gap that is slowing down the teams.
Discuss a strategy or project you are working on that will affect them or their team. If you are leading teams, you are likely working on high-level strategies for your area. Enlist them as a thought partner and get feedback on how your proposed strategy may affect their work.
Offer (to do) research that is relevant to their work. All great leaders want to get “closer to the customer” and have an insatiable interest in good data and insights. Share interesting learnings from your teams. Loop them in on research or data analyses your team is conducting, and offer to help answer some of their questions as well.
Let them know that they have a skill you admire and that you want to learn from them. Think about something this leader is particularly good at, and reach out with a compliment and desire to learn from them. At a minimum, they will remember the kind words. You can do this regardless of whether you’re asking for an introduction. Everyone loves positive words of appreciation.
Offer your “on the ground” perspective of how things are going: Leaders often have difficulty getting the “truth” of what is happening from their team. You can help them stay up to date on the day-to-day challenges of getting work done. There may be a process your teams have adopted that’s working well, or a certain collaboration tool you now love. Share these learnings!
Nailing the timing
There isn’t a “best” time to reach out. But there are bad times.
Consider avoiding company planning season, close to quarterly board updates, or around performance review cycles. These are times when executives are particularly busy.
Avoid sending these emails on Fridays (or weekends), when people want to get out of the office.
Look for times when the executive may have just finished a major project (e.g. a rebrand, a large product launch, landing a key new customer account) or when the seasonality of the business may be in your favor.
If your company has a natural hiring cycle (e.g. many people start in September), those tend to be good times. Executives will often set aside time devoted to onboarding and meeting new people, like you (even though you’re not a new hire).
What to do if you’re ignored or refused
Even with the best intentions and plans, sometimes your ask to connect is ignored or they respond that they’re too busy to meet. This is okay. It does not mean you did something wrong. Like any good salesperson, you should plan to try again at a better time and/or with a different pitch after a month or two break. Try to time it to when you are starting a new project that may be more relevant, or when you have a new insight to share. This “change” will help keep the ask fresh and relevant.
That’s it. Don’t overthink it. Remember your value add to the organization, muster up that confidence, and reach out to make that connection!