What You Should Do When Meeting with a CEO

It’s always both thrilling and anxiety-inducing when you get to meet with your CEO. On the one hand, it’s an opportunity to impress them, show off your skills, and maybe even get some good career advice. 

On the other hand, if the meeting goes poorly, the CEO could regard you as unimpressive, dull, or far worse. 

With the right preparation, you can make your time with your CEO memorable in the right way. In his LinkedIn Learning course Selling to Executives, Mike Gamson gives detailed instructions on how to ace a meeting with an executive. While the course is intended for salespeople, Gamson’s advice can apply to any employee meeting with any high-ranking executive.

In his course, Gamson emphasizes the importance of properly preparing for the meeting — which we won’t cover here. Instead, we’ll focus on the 10 things you should do when the meeting has started to earn the executive’s trust and respect.

10 Things to Do When Meeting with the CEO

1. Start with short, relevant small talk

As with any conversation, a little small talk goes a long way to put both of you at ease and get you ready for a serious conversation. Try to do some research into the CEO beforehand to find a common interest and lead with that.

But don’t waste too much time with it.

“Start with the small talk on your way in,” Gamson says. “Don't take too long on the small talk. It's important. It's casual. Everyone's finding their places and sitting down. It's very natural. But don't let it extend too far. You're on a time clock, and it's yours to manage.”

2. Pick a spot at the table that’s worthy of you

A “seat at the table” isn’t just a metaphor. Your literal seat at the table matters when meeting with anyone, particularly an executive: You want a spot that puts you on the same level as them, as opposed to being inferior to them.

“Empower yourself with that seat choice,” Gamson says. “Make sure that you've got great eye contact with the executive and that you're in a position where you feel comfortable.”

3. Consider what you place in front of you (Spoiler: less is more)

When you first sit down for the meeting, think about what you put in front of you. What will the executive have in front of them?

Likely, very little. Do the same — when first sitting down, just sit, with nothing in front of you.

“Your job is to come across as a peer, not as a subordinate,” Gamson says. “So, if you put a laptop and a stack of presentations in front of you, which are your weapons to remember what to talk about, you're denigrating your position relative to them unnecessarily. Keep that stuff in your bag. If you need backup material and you need to show a presentation, you're ready. That's great. But don't start that way.”

4. Don’t apologize for being there

There’s a tendency when meeting with an executive to apologize for being there by saying something like, “Thank you for the time; I know how busy you are.”

Let’s try to avoid that next time.

“When you say that, what you're saying is ‘I'm not busy, my time's not valuable and yours is,’" Gamson says. “Completely unnecessary. Your time is valuable. You're an expert, and they need your expertise. They have a problem and you're going to solve it, and you're the best at what you do.”

Gamson says you can thank them for their time, but you don’t need to over-thank them or act like you are inconveniencing them.

5. Take control of the meeting

You want to be the person who moves the meeting from small talk to getting into the meat of the meeting. And that means clearly stating what the objective of the meeting is first.

“Don't let someone else around the table take that power away from you,” Gamson says. “Whoever sets the objective of the meeting is now in control of the meeting.”

6. Run the meeting like a conversation

Rather than thinking of the meeting as a pitch to the executive to approve what you want, think of it as a conversation. It’s two people talking and figuring out the best solution moving forward.

“As an executive, when I engage with a peer, no one's ever breaking out a presentation and walking through slide one through 26,” Gamson says. “We have a conversation. We engage with each other. We're thoughtfully engaged in a series of points and counterpoints, as you do with your colleagues.”

7. Use data and insights selectively

When meeting with a CEO, there’s a tendency to over prepare and bombard them with data. This can make it hard for the executive to determine which are your most important points.

“Pick one or two things that you think she might remember,” Gamson says. “Because remember, the value of the conversation is not what we put in; it's what they take out. It's all about that pull-through. And so if you overdo it on data points, there's just no way that they’re going to remember it all.”

8. Use a whiteboard, if possible

Let’s be real: PowerPoint presentations are often boring and always make you look subordinate to the person you are talking to. A good alternative is to use a whiteboard, which has the exact opposite effect.

“If you pick up a marker and you go to the whiteboard in a room with an executive, you are suddenly in charge,” Gamson says. “You are mimicking the dynamic between a teacher and a student, and you're the teacher. That's where you want to be.”

9. Manage the clock thoughtfully

You should have a call-to-action (CTA) when meeting with an executive. What you don’t want to do is spend so much time talking about the process that you bury that CTA in the last few minutes.

Instead, when there’s 10 minutes left in the conversation, get to the CTA.

“Remind them, ‘We've got about 10 minutes left, I want to make sure that I respect your time and that we meet the objectives that we set out together’," Gamson says. “Just that check-in is a great tool for bringing the conversation back in case it's drifted, because sometimes a conversation can drift naturally.”

10. Lockdown action items

This is the most important part — getting the buy-in you are looking for. The key here is having a very clear ask from the executive, which makes it easy for them to say yes.

“This is where it's so important you are able to gain the buy-in on what you were there to do,” Gamson says. “Make sure that you have a very specifically delineated set of things — not too many, one or two, three if you absolutely have to — that are going to happen next.”

The takeaway

You’ll see a theme here: an executive is just a person. And yet, often when we meet with them we get nervous and treat them differently, which undermines our position.

It’s natural to be nervous. But you can overcome that by following the 10 tips listed in this article. Doing so will earn you the respect of the executive and increase the chances of getting their buy-in.

Want to learn more? Be sure to check out Mike Gamson’s LinkedIn Learning course, Selling to Executives.