I Need My Team To…

Two C-Suite Leaders. One Common Gap. If you aspire to the next level, this is the conversation you need to hear.

“I need my people to think more strategically across the enterprise. I need them to stop waiting to be told.”

I hear this from nearly every CEO and C-Level Executive I work with. They tell me they have smart, talented executives who stay in their own lane, and as a result, those leaders never fully understand the business they’re helping to run.

If you want to understand the criteria most executive leaders use when hiring and promoting…

Then read on…

The Hidden Hiring Criteria

When C-Level leaders evaluate whom to hire or promote, performance at a certain level is already assumed — it’s not the differentiator. What they’re looking for beyond performance is something far fewer people possess. Which explains why top roles are hard to get and why strong high-performers keep getting passed over. They’re looking for three things:

1.  Business Intelligence and Acumen. Do you demonstrate thinking that spans the entire business not just expertise in your function or role? 

2.  Strategic Thinking and Intelligence. Can you see around corners? Can you manage the complexity of today’s market, build the vision, and drive the organization forward not just your division?

3.  Executive Emotional Intelligence. This goes beyond self-awareness. This is how you bring people together your maturity, your resilience, and your ability to inspire and influence others into action. Are you self-motivated?

If you want to be chosen for what’s next, you need to understand what they’re really looking for — and why so many high performers miss it completely.

Two Executives. One Common Gap.

A couple of my favorite clients are in two completely different businesses. One is the CEO of a construction company. The other is an EVP at a global tech company. Both are navigating explosive growth. Both are scaling fast. Both have a bold 7-10 year vision, and they are determined to execute.

Different industries. Different pressures. The same frustration underneath the composure.

“I need leaders who bring me the answer — not the problem.”

What They’re Really Looking For

The EVP wants his senior leaders to stop framing problems as operational issues and start framing them as enterprise decisions. In a world where every project touches capital allocation, global expansion, and investor expectations, the inability to speak that language isn’t just a development gap ... it’s a resource risk.

If you can’t frame the problem strategically, you can’t get the resources to solve it. And when you can’t deliver at that level, you are not a succession candidate.

The CEO needs something equally urgent. He needs his leaders to hold themselves and their direct reports ... accountable and make the call. To push back. To decide. Not wait for permission. Not defer upward. Own it.

Both want real partners, not people waiting to be told what to do next.

The Gap: What the Data Reveals

I developed the 5Q Executive Skills Assessment™ to measure exactly this. It tracks five domains: Business Intelligence, Strategic Intelligence, Executive Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Intelligence, and Learning Intelligence.

What makes it powerful isn’t the scores. It’s the gap ... the distance between how leaders see themselves and how the executive team that decides whom to promote and hire actually experience them.

When I put the data in front of each leader, the reaction was identical .. they weren’t surprised. Yet, they were surprised. Seeing it in black and white stopped it from being a feeling and made it a fact. And facts demand a decision.

The Strategic and Learning Intelligence Gap C-Level leaders, don’t see enough strategic thinking from their direct reports. The close second: the Learning Intelligence gap.

High-performing leaders believe they are adapting and growing at a pace their bosses simply don’t experience. This isn’t arrogance. It’s a feedback vacuum. When capable people don’t receive specific feedback, coaching, mentoring, and development, they self-assess upward ... every time.

What is your gap?

Your gaps are the distance between how you see yourself and how the decision-makers above you experience you. 

And this is the most dangerous blind spot in your career. It doesn’t matter how strong your results are if the people deciding your future aren’t experiencing you as executive. 

Competence doesn’t get you the seat. Strategic framing does. Demonstrating that you can knock down silos and build bridges does.

Competence is only part of the equation.  Strategic framing provides the solutions executive leadership is looking for.

Why This Matters When Interviewing or Upleveling Your Career

Every promotion and hiring decision at the SVP, EVP, and C-Level is filtered through exactly these three questions:

1.     Do they have the competence to do the role?

2. Does this person think strategically across the enterprise?

3.    And do they bring the answer — or the problem?

The leaders who get chosen have already answered all three, sometimes even before the interview begins. It can be demonstrated on their LinkedIn, how their resume frames impact not activity, and how they walk into a room and position their thinking. If your profile reads like a job description, you are signaling the wrong level.

The leaders who create distinction make the decision-maker feel from the very first interaction that they are already operating at the next level. Not auditioning for it. They speak enterprise without being asked. They demonstrate ownership without being prompted. That combination of strategic framing and visible ownership is what creates gravitas, builds executive presence, and makes one candidate the obvious choice while equally qualified people remain the best-kept secret in the room.

Three Steps to Close the Gap — Starting Now

Whether you’re a VP, SVP, or EVP looking to rise to the next level, these three moves will help position you as the executive hiring teams are looking for... 

Step 1: Stop Speaking the Language of Your Function.

Every time you frame your work in operational terms, tasks completed, problems solved, projects delivered, you are speaking the language of a mid-to senior-level manager. Enterprise leaders speak in impact, risk, and strategic implications. They answer the question the CEO is actually asking: “How does what you’re doing move us forward?”

This week: take the most important thing you’re working on and reframe it in enterprise terms. Not what you did. What it means. Practice it out loud before your next senior conversation.

Step 2: Find Out What You’re Not Seeing About Yourself.

The most dangerous career position isn’t underperforming. It’s overestimating. Both leadership teams were operating in a feedback vacuum ... believing they were growing at a pace their leaders simply did not experience. You cannot close a gap you don’t know exists.

This week: identify one person above you whose opinion matters and ask them directly — “What is one thing I could do differently that would make me more effective at the next level?” Then listen. Don’t defend. Don’t explain. Just listen.

Step 3: Make the Decision That Is Yours to Make.

Both leaders named the same pattern: senior people deferring decisions upward that were squarely within their own scope. Every time you ask for permission on a call that is already yours, you are signaling you are not ready for more. Succession goes to the leader who holds the standard without being told to.

This week: identify one decision you have been deferring upward that is actually yours. Make it. Own it. Report the outcome ... don’t ask for approval of it.

Life & Leadership: The Pattern Doesn’t Stop at the Office Door

Here is what 35 years of working with leaders has taught me. The same patterns that make you invisible at work make you invisible in life.

Waiting to be chosen. Framing your value in terms of what you do rather than who you are, and the value only you bring. Staying in your lane when the opportunity is in the open field.

And here is the gift inside that truth: when you do the work to become more visible, more decisive, more strategically present as a leader, you don’t just change your career trajectory. You change how you show up in every room you walk into.

You stop auditioning. You stop performing. You start being.

That is the real prize. Not the title. Not the compensation. The version of yourself that walks into a room and already knows they belong there.

Own your strengths. Own your wisdom. Own the seat that is already yours.

Two leaders. Two industries. One truth that runs through all of it.

Succession isn’t given. The next role isn’t handed to the hardest worker in the room. It goes to the leader who is experienced ... consistently, visibly, unmistakably ... as the obvious choice.

If you want to become the obvious and logical choice:

👉 Join me for the Build Your Executive Edge Masterclass: https://bit.ly/LINsltrP6

It's live. it's free to attend.

Susan Robertson is an Executive Coach and Leadership Strategist with 35+ years working directly with CEOs and C-Level teams. She is the Founder of Linceis Conscious Business Group. |

www.lcbgroup.com