Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers

New
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2 Days

·

Cohort-based Course

Sell your ideas, manage up, gain buy-in, and increase your impact. Sharpen your skills via hands-on exercises, deep dives, scripts, and more

This course is popular

56 people enrolled last week.

2x founder backed by:

a16z
First Round

Course overview

Strong communication is a force multiplier

Update: The September and October cohorts are now full. I’ve opened a new December cohort, which is now open for enrollment. This will be the last opportunity to do the course in 2024. Hope to see you in class.

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If you're a high performer, you likely got to where you are because of your raw talent and ability to execute.


Now that your scope has grown, though, your ability to increase impact depends on how well you influence other people--often without formal authority. In other words, you need people to do what you want them to do--enthusiastically and collaboratively.


Unfortunately, no one teaches us how to do this beyond a basic level.


So your day-to-day involves avoidable back-and-forth, friction, pushback, apathy, random questions, skepticism, or confusion about areas you believe are important.


But it doesn't have to be this way.


You and your team can move faster. You can quickly understand each other. You can worry less about cajoling skeptics. You can spend less time figuring out how to say what you want to say. You can accomplish more of what you want--and have more fun in the process.


To get to the next level, you can't simply "do" more yourself. You must extend your impact beyond your own work. You must get genuine cooperation and true buy-in from those around you. This is what you will learn to do in this course.


WHAT TO EXPECT:


This is a highly-interactive course with in-depth discussion, Q&A, examples, case studies, exercises, and tactics you can apply immediately. There are 9 hours of live instruction with lots of examples & practice, all live on Zoom taught personally by Wes. We will focus on both the "why" and tactical pieces around the "how."


The skills you need to become more effective CANNOT be solved through brute force. In these 2 days, you will come away with new tools.


Course content

• How to be direct (without seeming like a jerk)

• How to stay calm and perform well in high-stakes real-time conversations

• How to sharpen your ability to prevent/overcome skepticism

• How to frame 90% around your recipient and maximize buy-in

• How to work with (not against) human nature

• How to delegate while maintaining high standards

• How to get headcount, cross-functional support, and budget by pitching the right way

• How to articulate your POV when clarity can make or break the outcome

• How to instill a sense of urgency so your ideas are heard and acted on quickly

• How to communicate your plans and priorities so you build alignment

• How to diagnose the question-behind-the-question so folks are satisfied by your responses


The course also includes:

• Review and reflection

• Verbatim scripts for tricky work scenarios

• Real-life case studies and examples

• Hands-on exercises

• Frameworks to help you structure your written and verbal communication

• Bonus: 2 Q&A sessions

• Plus: Homework to put concepts into practice (optional)

• All Zoom workshops are live, taught by Wes


The goal isn't simply to learn the concepts--it's to internalize them. If you put effort into the course, you will make a major leap ahead.


If you follow my writing, the course builds on concepts I’ve written about--we will discuss important nuances, edge cases, and examples, with the opportunity to put these lessons into practice. I've designed this course specifically so you begin to build your intuition and muscle memory.


All the sessions will be recorded so you can refer back to the material.


WHO WILL BENEFIT MOST FROM THIS COURSE:


Folks who will get the most from this course tend to be the following:

- You care about quality, rigor, and setting a high bar for yourself and others

- You are ambitious and you want to sharpen your ability to execute

- You are on a lean team punching above your weight class

- You are self-aware, open-minded, and intellectually honest


I'm looking forward to bringing together a thoughtful group of operators and leaders. The October cohort already has students from Spotify, Uber, TikTok, Wealthsimple, Stitch Fix, Zillow, Expedia, HelloFresh, etc who are enrolled and ready to learn alongside you.


WHO THIS IS NOT FOR:


- This is not for you if you are looking for 1:1 coaching, but I will do plenty of Q&A and ask for volunteers to submit your situations/examples to discuss as a group.

- This is not for you if you believe there's nothing more for you to learn about sharpening your communication.

- This is not for you if you want a slower-paced course over several weeks. This is a 2-day intensive designed for busy operators who want to avoid task-switching and want an immersive experience. You will be drinking from the firehose. My goal is to help you drastically improve your competence and confidence in a condensed period of time. Then, you will go back to work and build on this foundation with continued practice.

Who is this course for

01

Senior individual contributors (ICs). Marketing leads, PMs, engineers, program managers, UX designers, etc. Minimum 3+ years of experience.

02

People managers (team leads, directors, VPs) and leaders. You run a team and have to balance managing up, down, sideways to drive outcomes.

03

Teams who want shared language / expectations on how to communicate with each other & better persuade stakeholders outside your own team.

What you’ll get out of this course

Present to your CEO to maximize highly-visible moments

You might only have a few minutes of your leadership team's attention. We will review tactics for how to move fast, frame the conversation upfront, handle unexpected questions, prevent "insecure vibes," etc. Get senior leaders to seek (and truly listen to) your input.

Managing up in day-to-day interactions

The more senior you become, the more you'll need to manage up. Hint: It's not about sending a weekly recap of your contributions. We will review real examples and practice how to reduce cognitive load for your manager, share your rationale, focus on the punchline, and more.

Frame your ideas and give the right amount of context in any situation

How do you get buy-in with less back and forth? How do you know the right level of detail (and which details) to share? How can you be more concise w/o sacrificing context? We will dissect these nuances and you will have a chance to rewrite examples to put lessons into practice.

Combine and "stack" techniques to get people to care about what you care about

Real-world scenarios are often messy, with conflicting data points. Some principles are even at odds. How do you decide what to do? I will share a set of foundational principles, show how to apply them, and you will practice balancing trade-offs in mock simulations.

Write more efficiently to achieve your goals

Writing a useful, compelling strategy doc/Slack message/email/DM always takes longer than you expect. After the course, you will be able to write faster and more easily. You will practice rewriting a before-and-after example, and have the opportunity to edit your own work.

Delegate while maintaining high standards

This isn't the 1950s: You can't throw a mug and demand obedience (thank goodness). Whether you have formal authority or not, you can't rely on "because I said so." You will do hands-on exercises on how to explain projects, give high-quality direct feedback, etc.

Influence up, down, and sideways to get things done

Some principles (like reducing cognitive load) apply regardless of your audience--while other situations require you to understand power dynamics, leverage, etc. We will practice "reading" situations and subtext with more accuracy so you can make better decisions.

Get enthusiastic buy-in and collaboration from colleagues outside your team

You may have trust with your team, but how do you advocate for ideas with other teams? We will discuss frameworks to tackle this, including exercises to practice the OARB framework to appeal to self-interest, etc. Includes role-playing in the safe sandbox of the course.

This course includes

5 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

1 in-depth lesson

Direct access to instructor

1 project to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Course syllabus

Expand all modules
  • Week 1

    Dec 5—Dec 6

    Events

    • Dec

      5

      Day 1: Executive Communication and Influence with Wes Kao

      Thu, Dec 5, 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM UTC

    • Dec

      5

      Day 1: Bonus AMA with Wes Kao (optional)

      Thu, Dec 5, 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM UTC

    • Dec

      6

      Day 2: Executive Communication and Influence with Wes Kao

      Fri, Dec 6, 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM UTC

    • Dec

      6

      Day 2: Bonus AMA with Wes Kao (optional)

      Fri, Dec 6, 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM UTC

    Modules

    • Course Day 1

    • Course Day 2

What people are saying about Wes

        "Wes dissects the you-know-it-when-you-see-it finesse and framing that separates good communication from great communication. Highly recommend learning from her--one of my favorites for insightful, practical advice with lots of concrete examples to learn from and apply."
Caitlin Hudon

Caitlin Hudon

Data Scientist @ Figma
        “I've learned so much from Wes: how to influence, write better, communicate with my manager, and more. She shows real, practical examples which lead to "aha" moments of how I could have been doing things 10x better—things I wish I knew years earlier. I highly recommend learning from Wes if you get the chance."
Jordan Cutler

Jordan Cutler

Senior Software Engineer @ Pinterest
        "Finally - someone who beautifully articulates the ‘holy shit’ moments I get when working with high performers. Every article l've read from Wes Kao seems to perfectly articulate some of the golden nuggets of advice l've had passed down to me throughout my career - and none of it is the generic stuff you usually see online."
Kevin Ha

Kevin Ha

Director, Sales Analysis & Insights @ Sephora
        “Wes’ frameworks generate great discussions with my team. I really enjoyed the pieces about managing up and about how work requests aren't favors. Thanks for consistently sharing such valuable insights--I've learned a lot.”
Amanda Butler

Amanda Butler

Senior Manager, Documentation @ Unity
        "Wes’ content is the most helpful, practical, concise advice I've ever seen on so many topics and norms that are often unspoken. Recently in a situation at work, leaning on her frameworks helped me compartmentalize, do the right thing, and come out better for it."
Katey Basye

Katey Basye

Staff Product Designer @ ServiceNow

Meet your instructor

Wes Kao

Wes Kao

Wes Kao is an entrepreneur, marketer, coach, and advisor who writes at newsletter.weskao.com. She is co-founder of Maven, an edtech company that raised $25M from First Round and Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, she co-founded the altMBA with bestselling author Seth Godin. Her writing via newsletter, Twitter, and LinkedIn reaches 290,000+ readers each week.


Now, she coaches and teaches operators/leaders in tech. Current and previous clients include Greg Shove (CEO of Section), Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief (co-founder/CEO of Morning Brew), Suzy Batiz (founder/CEO of Poo~Pourri), etc, among other talented individuals, including director and VP-level operators at companies like Chanel, State National, Braze, Vercel, etc, and at startups funded by Sequoia, Accel, Bessemer, SV Angel, Kleiner Perkins, etc.

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers

Cohort 3

$700

Dates

Dec 5—6, 2024

Payment Deadline

Dec 5, 2024
Get reimbursed

Bulk purchases

Course schedule

9 hours of live class + bonus materials

  • Wednesday, December 4

    6:00 - 6:45pm Eastern Time [OPTIONAL]

    3:00 - 3:45pm Pacific Time

    6:00 - 6:45pm Eastern Time

    11:00 - 11:45pm British Standard Time


    Optional meet & greet. Get to know your fellow students.

  • Thursday, December 5

    12:00 - 3:30pm Eastern Time

    9:00 - 12:30pm Pacific Time

    12:00 - 3:30pm Eastern Time

    5:00 - 8:30pm British Standard Time


    We'll spend the majority of time on the live workshop (including time to ask questions throughout). Afterward, there will be an optional 1 hour Q&A. Recording will be available.

  • Friday, December 6

    12:00 - 3:30pm Eastern Time

    9:00 - 12:30pm Pacific Time

    12:00 - 3:30pm Eastern Time

    5:00 - 8:30pm British Standard Time


    Get ready for an action-packed second day. Afterward, there will be an optional 1 hour Q&A. Recording will be available.

  • Live workshops, Q&A, group discussion, exercises, real-life examples

    This course will be interactive, so get ready to chime into Zoom chat, unmute to share, etc. Live workshop sessions will be video recorded and made available to watch/rewatch at your own pace. If you can't attend the full time or need to hop off, you can catch up later.

  • Submit your homework for live review in class

    OPTIONAL

    Do you want feedback on a piece of communication? You'll have the opportunity to submit your homework for a live teardown. (You can redact before submitting.) I'll pick to share the most useful ones with the class.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers

Cohort 3

$700

Dates

Dec 5—6, 2024

Payment Deadline

Dec 5, 2024
Get reimbursed

Bulk purchases

If you're a fan of Wes Kao's Newsletter, we will go even deeper to practice these concepts in the course

If you're a fan of Wes Kao's Newsletter, we will go even deeper to practice these concepts in the course

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I can’t make a live session?

I work full-time, what is the expected time commitment?

What’s the refund policy?

Are the live sessions recorded?

I have a question about the course. How can I get in touch with Wes?

$700

2 Days