Your Communication Is Connected to Your Promotion
Tiffany Cheng
Mentoring quiet high performers with cross-cultural careers from middle management to executive roles. | 2x VP @ Volvo, Atlas Copco
We've all been there: someone with less experience and competence gets promoted before you, despite spending less time at your company. Or perhaps your manager hired a Vice President from outside for the role you have been hoping and working to get for a couple of years.
This can happen at every level of a company, but one of the hardest promotions to achieve is from Director to Vice President.
Personally, getting promoted from junior positions to manager, and then to Director, happened every one to two years. After I became Vice President, it became much easier to progress, as SVP and C-suite positions were offered to me often.
The most difficult part of my career was moving from middle management to senior executive. It took me eight years before I was promoted to Vice President at one of the Fortune 500 companies with over 100,000 employees globally.
In this video, I shared why that is and, more importantly, what it takes to become a Vice President.
Here is a quote from the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There:
“At the higher levels of organizational life, all of the leading players are technically skilled. Your people skills (or lack of them) become more pronounced the higher you go.”
People skills are not just about how well-liked you are. You may be a very collaborative person and have great relationships with your colleagues, but that does not mean you will get promoted to the executive level.
People skills at this level involve how gracefully you handle pressure, manage stakeholders, and make people feel during difficult conversations while still achieving results.
At the Vice President level, you need to be able to create the strategy and vision for your function or business, lead leaders, manage expectations up, down, and across, and deliver results. You must manage stakeholders across all levels of the organization.
I can share from experience that when I became Vice President, more of my time was spent managing stakeholders, politics, big personalities, and influencing decisions. Meanwhile, the Directors on my team focused on delivering outcomes, hitting KPIs, and implementing strategies.
As you progress in an organization and move up the ladder, your communication skills increasingly come under scrutiny. I have personally worked with nine Presidents at the two largest companies in Sweden by market cap, from regional levels to the global headquarters level. Their behaviors, words, and especially flaws are magnified.
The weaknesses you could get away with as a manager or director can be detrimental once you are in these top positions.
The reason is clear: your communication and behavior will now impact a large number of people—not just your teams, but external stakeholders like customers, investors, media, and business partners, especially during times of uncertainty and organizational change.
When companies are navigating challenging periods like downturns or underperformance, employees will analyze everything you say, how you say it, and even how you look after management meetings.
There are consequences to even the slightest shift in attitude.
Every communication from you matters because it is your main tool for making things happen through people.
I worked in a cyclical industry, and during one downturn, I was with a group of Operations executives planning factory visits around the world. At that time, we were clearly facing an overcapacity issue.
For every factory we visited, there was fear of closure or major downsizing and layoffs. Some factories were more worried than others. During these site visits, employees closely observed and interpreted the movements and meetings of the SVP of Operations.
I remember people complaining that he spent too much time with the management team and not enough time talking with people on site. He walked too fast and didn't stop to talk with people; he should have randomly picked a table to have lunch with, not just the executive team.
At higher levels, your ability to communicate, motivate, and inspire becomes more crucial than ever, especially under negative business environments. Even if you have had a bad day or received criticism from the board, how you communicate and present yourself will significantly impact the success of the organization.
Many directors receive feedback during their performance reviews indicating they need to develop "executive presence." They often have no clue what executive presence actually is. Even more interesting is that the person advising them to develop it often can't explain it either, saying only, "You'll know it when you see it."
Super actionable!
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Don't look overwhelmed
Appearing overwhelmed means you come across as overly stressed or somewhat worried, and this is an executive presence killer. I have seen this especially in many of my Asian clients and colleagues, including myself. When we are listening, focusing, or trying to concentrate, the look on our face can appear confused, overwhelmed, and lost—even if we are just concentrating.
I often ask them to look at themselves in video recordings. No matter what level you are, you should pay attention to how you look, even just from your facial expressions. When you are promoted to the executive level, you really cannot afford to appear frazzled because it can unsettle others.
C-suite executives need to communicate with calm and poise. They are present, and their attention is not scattered. When they are listening, they make you feel important by giving you their full attention. They make you feel understood by asking good questions and creating a safe and encouraging environment to speak up.
They do not let their mental noise or pressure from the top and a bad quarter distract them.
They walk into meetings ready to listen and ask good questions, being inclusive and able to make decisions with calmness and confidence.
This not only benefits themselves but also reassures the team about the direction they choose to pursue and invest in.
Know your self-worth
You need to have a sense of being worthy and self-validation.
As you climb to the top of the ladder, there are fewer leaders above you who can validate you and your ideas. In some cases, there may be no one to provide this validation; it's rather lonely at the top.
I've seen many directors trying very hard to please others, almost needing external validation to feel valued, which can cause them to lose their own sense of worth. Self-worth radiates from within. It is not the same as confidence, nor is it arrogance. It's your own sense of being worthy, of understanding why you are at the table, and why you represent your function in a cross-functional executive team.
A common example is seen in supporting functions like IT, legal, human resources, and sometimes even supply chain and manufacturing. When leaders from these functions are in the room, it often feels like they are less important because they believe that marketing, finance, or sales have a stronger voice in cross-functional teams. They see their role as merely executing decisions made by others, not being part of the decision-making process. This lack of self-worth can be detrimental.
In cross-functional leadership teams, there is a reason for you to be there. For example, I used to work in communications, which is not always considered a business-critical function. For a long time, I didn't see myself as worthy of being there, feeling that if I missed a meeting, no one would notice. This was a lack of self-worth, and I’ve shared how I overcame it here
If you feel this way, think about how your team would feel if you became a Vice President leading a manufacturing site or the CTO leading a team of 2,000 to 3,000 engineers. If you, as their leader, do not see your own worth, how can you lead?
Communicate with intention
Communicating with intention is not about making more effort or putting more time and work into it. It is not about trying harder. Intention is very different from effort.
We often see directors and managers put a lot of effort into getting the data right, building the business case, structuring their logic, and telling the story well.
At an executive level, communication focuses on resonating. This is the difference between watching an amateur play golf on the weekends and a champion like Tiger Woods. The amateur does not have the skills to win at the same level, no matter how hard they try, how many hours they spend practicing, or how positive their attitude is.
High-level communication resonates, inspires, and influences people's minds. This is true leadership communication. On the other hand, communicating with uncertainty, doubt, and indecision is common among many middle managers, who often struggle to fully believe in what they are saying or telling others to do.
For example, when I was working in marketing and communication and leading a team of directors, often they would come to me asking for budget approval. They would propose an idea and say, "This campaign will cost us €100,000. I think it would increase our sales revenue and help the dealers get visibility and support them in selling. But it is not a must we spend this much. If you think this is too much, maybe we can work on something similar ourselves or spend less."
You can see that they have so many uncertainties when they ask for what they want. Just by hearing their words, they have already decided that this may or may not work, so it may or may not be important to get the full investment they wanted for the project.
Communicate to make resistance and conflict evaporate
You need to communicate with everyone so effectively that you have the ability to make resistance and conflict disappear.
The reason this is so important is that when you are at the top, all the problems coming to your table are the kind of issues that all team members are unable to resolve.
Normally, they involve conflicts, misalignment, and difficulties in dealing with stakeholders.
By the time these problems reach your table, no one below you has been able to handle them. It will be up to you to resolve them. I believe if you watch my videos, you can probably relate—conflict is never solely a result of the issue itself; it always arises from communication and how well you understand human nature and your stakeholders. As you climb up in the organization, you deal with stakeholders at all levels, complex issues, multiple perspectives, and constraints from reality.
It becomes crucial that you can manage all of them simultaneously; otherwise, it could harm your organization, performance, customers, and your talents. One of the leaders I worked for, an SVP, was very successful in his career. He told me his ultimate goal was for the organization to see that whenever they placed him in any business problem, it got solved, and he could get everyone to collaborate.
You want to demonstrate that conflicts and resistance do not happen when you are present, and when they do, you can de-escalate them and move things forward.
Make deep human connections
Your ability to forge deep connections and build rapport with anyone determines how much trust you will earn. There's a world of difference between talking and truly connecting, and this difference can significantly impact your career. Getting others to open up, knowing when to ask questions, when to listen, and when to speak, and what topics to discuss all play a significant role in this.
Many directors told me their frustration, saying, "I have monthly meetings with our SVP, and I definitely have visibility and exposure to higher management. But I'm not getting promoted to vice president. Even when my boss left, I wasn't considered for the interim position. Why is that?"
Obviously, the problem is not just about visibility. While you may have opportunities to interact with those who have the decision-making power to appoint the next vice president, what truly matters is your ability to form deeper connections with them.
The biggest mistake many directors make is assuming that the amount of time spent with executives, the number of interactions had, or the performance delivered will automatically lead to the next promotion. However, staying at this surface level is not enough. There's a big difference between mere interaction and establishing meaningful connections that build trust and instill belief in you.
It is impossible to provide generic advice that fits every situation because each of you has a unique case. When we work together in my coaching program, we develop a customized structure, even scripts, that fit your specific working environment, stakeholders, background, and personal brand. This strategy enables you to transform networking meetings into job interviews and conversations with management into promotions.
If you are serious about advancing your career to the senior executive level and want to ensure that your next move is fulfilling, submit your application to the 1% Academy program.
Once your application is accepted, you will have a free strategy call with either me or one of my team members.
On the call, you can learn how to:
We will discuss your current career status, your goals, and evaluate if you are a good fit for the program.