How Can I Communicate With Senior Managers?

Many IT workers don’t need to speak with senior management. It’s not part of their role, and there tend to be other managers who are in charge of communicating between the senior managers and the other staff in the team.

In some cases, though, there may come a time where you, as an IT professional will need to talk to senior managers at your job. This could be for a number of reasons. You could be asked to present something to a senior manager (or even more daunting - several senior managers!). You might need to include information to an email to get sent to someone at a senior level. Or it may be a variety of other parts of your job.

For the purposes of this particular article, I refer to senior management as someone who is involved with making key decisions in your organization, and is at least two levels above you on the organizational chart. So, your boss’s boss, at least. While they may not have a senior or executive title, they do have a different area of duty and it can seem daunting to need to speak to them. Here are a few steps you can take to really succeed.

Don’t Panic When Communicating With Senior Management

Senior managers get made in the prime of their career from thin air and are automatically awesome at everything they do.

I’m kidding, by the way.

Senior managers are senior because they have the experience doing roles at more junior levels or other parts of an organization. They've been in your situation before. They've given presentations and offered information to other managers before they got to their position. So, they understand what it’s like to be where you are. For this reason, you shouldn’t panic. Don’t think too much about what may go wrong whenever you speak to others. Try to relax. Give attention to what you’re trying to say or communicate to them, and just say it.

Don’t Go Into Too Much Detail

It’s very tempting for us IT professionals to describe the details of what is asked of us to senior managers. We presume it’s relevant, it’s important, and it matters to what’s being mentioned. Leaving it out would be crazy!

Before we go into too much detail, we should try to look at it from their side. They more than likely don’t want the details. Their time is precious and they don’t want to know the specifics. They have an interest in different areas of the organization and are not usually worried about technical areas.

If you need to give an update to a senior manager on a critical system outage, they would likely be curious about specific things like the expected resolution time, who’s looking at the issue right now, and who to contact for more information.

They probably don’t have to know about server logs and possible causes. At a later stage, they may, if some form of review is done. However this is just one example. The point here is that we need to understand which facts are important and which isn’t.

Know What You’re Talking About

Depending on the manager you’re meeting with, they can be pretty picky. In fact, senior managers frequently have other managers that they report to and are accountable to. Because of this anything you tell them is likely to be forwarded to their manager. This is important to know, because if the incorrect facts are communicated or if it’s uncertain, there may be problems.

Be sure to know what you’re talking about when communicating with senior managers. If you’re unclear, don’t hesitate to say so. It’s better to be uncertain about something, and say so, than to select a response or a solution which may be incorrect. They're going to make decisions or take actions depending on what you tell them, so as long as it’s accurate, it will be OK. Make sure to tell them your conce
s if it isn’t accurate.

For example, if we use the same circumstance as above where there is an outage - an exte
al team tells you the hardware will arrive and be set up in four hours, but you’re uncertain it can be done that quickly. Management then request an update. It’s a good idea to mention the four hour resolution, but additionally mention your conce
s that it may not be accurate, and why. This would allow the managers to take necessary action.

Learning how to communicate with senior managers seems to be an overwhelming experience, but it doesn’t need to be. Once you’re able to focus and ensure you’re communicating the correct information, it's going to be a lot easier!