Social-Emotional Intelligence Tips for CEOs

Start developing SEI now if you have goals of becoming a CEO

With the new year coming up, I’ll remind you that I’ve always believed that goals are more powerful than resolutions. To me, resolutions have a negative connotation as they usually are black and white. There is no room for gray area, and eventually most resolutions hit a point of failure.

Goals are great because it is not a negative if we don’t achieve them. If we fall short, it means we still made progress, and just have to reevaluate and reset the parameters of the goal to continue to work towards it.

If you have a goal of becoming a CEO someday, this post is for you. I’ll share a big goal to set and work towards if this role is in your career plan. Part of my upcoming book Life Is Sales, publishing in 2025 (can’t wait!), will cover my personal journey to becoming a CEO and all of the learnings, ups and downs, twists and turns, and lessons learned along the way.

How do you become a CEO?

Someone asked me this question recently, and my response may not be what you would think.

There is certainly a lot of nuance and context that depends on industry, personal preferences, and many other factors. Being well-rounded in business, sales, marketing, finance, and other areas can help prepare you for the role of Chief Executive Officer. 

But my answer to this question was that to become a CEO, having SEI is critical.

In this day and age, leaders (and specifically transformational leaders) must possess a high level of awareness. There is no excuse not to; in fact, if you don’t have it, you probably won’t be getting the opportunity to be a transformational leader in the first place, at least not for anything meaningful. I believe that we are all leaders all of the time, but we need awareness to understand and choose where we are leading ourselves and others to. 

If we choose to become a CEO, we need this awareness as a leader. We need to understand that we are always creating culture, whether consciously or unconsciously. This culture is created from our words, actions, and habits. Many entrepreneurs do not realize that they are creating a culture of scarcity or a culture of reactivity by the way they are behaving (or not). Their unconscious feelings, habits, fears, hurts, and anger leak into the organization and create a negative culture. 

Giving and receiving affirmation

Becoming a CEO is hard and can be a lonely journey. We often feel that we need to put others before ourselves. And this may actually be true, but cannot be accomplished without putting ourselves first and taking care of ourselves. How can we give to others if we are empty and depleted? 

Affirmation is a huge concept to understand when it comes to leadership and one that took me a while to grasp. I needed to get my affirmation from areas outside of work, like my family, friends, hobbies, coaches, mentors, etc., so that I could come into the office ready to drip affirmation from my overflowing cup onto my employees and our customers.

Leaders cannot come to work hungry for affirmation. Otherwise, we are competing with our employees and customers for the affirmation that should go to them. A great step in setting oneself up for becoming a CEO is building a support system of friends, mentors, and coaches that can help affirm you when you need it.

Awareness of self

Self-care and a good support network are critical to becoming and being an effective leader and CEO. This self-care not only includes affirmation but also includes rest, vacation, recreation, exercise, and proper nutrition. We need all this to be “in good shape” for our company, employees, and clients. 

And even with all of this, we will still be surprised and sometimes thrown off. How do we recover and not make things worse? This is where awareness comes in. Can we accept that feelings (fear, hurt, anger, sadness and joy) are always going on inside of us, and none of them are a bad thing? Can we accept and process the information that is being fed to us internally, and still make a choice in terms of how we want to be and respond? 

Imagine a tornado of all of your feelings always whirling around inside of you, waiting for one feeling or another to become the major player based on what is happening around you. Can we be aware of this, regulate ourselves, and contain our emotional reactions? Can we choose how we want to be regardless of how we are feeling? Welcome to awareness and being an intentional leader. We need to maintain a strong purpose and intention to stay on track and use our emotional energies for good and for the desired outcomes. 

We are all leaders…

But where are we leading to? Now, we are back to the same question we started with. Can we be a conscious, transformational leader that people want to follow? Set a goal to start taking the necessary steps to become a CEO by developing SEI now.

My book, Life Is Sales, is filled with real-life stories and leadership lessons. It is set to be published in Spring 2025, so be on the lookout for it!

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