Softly does it to reach CEO level

As an executive coach working with marketers, Lucy Handley’s feature (’How marketers can climb to CEO level’, MW 11 August) echoes a lot of the advice my team and I give to clients in coaching sessions.

One of the points raised about surrounding yourself with people who know more than you is crucial. At the higher levels, it’s less about your technical skills as a marketer and more about the ’soft skills’ such as leadership, management, communication and being able to influence others, as well as commercial awareness. If senior marketers insist on being bogged down in nitty gritty and the need to know everything, it’s near impossible to be as commercial and strategic as they need to be.

Hannah McNamara, via online

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