The Essential Skills of CS Leader

Human centric, technical, operational, excellence

Last week, one of our CSM Market Leaders asked me for a job description with key skills for a CS Leader.  Here are my thoughts applying to CS Leaders: execs and non-execs.

Let’s rally around this framework.

1.    Human Centric Leadership

I thought about calling this “soft skills”, but then I wrote the skills and realized that there is nothing “soft” about them.  Customer Success is a people business that requires you to lead putting the individual at the center of the decision (client, partner, employee). It’s valuing and respecting what’s important to that individual. It acknowledges where they are struggling and figuring out how to support them so they can do their best work.

Human centric leadership with clients and partners is about active listening to their business and technology problems and finding solutions. It’s advocating for new capabilities, even when the product backlog is too long. It’s being honest with clients when current approaches won’t lead to success and where they are falling behind. It’s challenging them to try new technologies even when others are pushing the status quo... and doing all of this authentically and from the heart.

Human Centric leadership with employees means you are instilling followership. That’s likely because you have a strong POV that they believe in. You are empathetic, inspirational, instill psychology safety, provide environments for teams to do their best work, challenge them, and provide ongoing coaching and feedback.

Human centric leadership is personal. It’s celebrating moments that matter like promotions, work anniversary, milestone achievement, or something amazing that happened in their life (wedding, graduation, having a baby, certification, etc ). If you haven’t read the Power of Moments, put it on your Goodreads list now!

2.    Technical Skills

I have a strong POV that CS Leaders need to be technical. It’s less about the degree (although helpful), and more about extensive, practical experience in technology. This could be building products, demoing/POXs, teaching, selling, and using your technology. I believe this is important for 3 reasons: credibility, experience what your clients and team experience, and having relatable questions and problem-solving strategies.

Some of the best CS Leaders I’ve worked have experience in Product Management, Technical Sales, Delivery/Technical Consulting, and/or Support. Ok so what’s this polymath point? A polymath is someone who knows about a broad range of subjects. When technical leaders start integrating lessons from history, philosophy, literature, art, I believe magical things start to happen.  We start leading with more range, pulling out lessons from history so we can repeat what works and stop what doesn’t.

I can’t leave this section without stating that CS Leaders need to be integrating Gen AI into the way their CSMs work.

3.    Operational Skills

Human centric and technical skills are great, but if you can’t execute and deliver results, we have a problem. CS Leaders must have some operational excellence where they operationalize adoption practices at scale, have financial metrics that can be tracked back to their CSMs, and can apply mental models for speed and scale.

4.    Excellence

Underpinning all of this is excellence.  Establish high standards for yourself and for your team. Empower your team with agency and accountability. Excellence is how you prepare, compete, and handle adversity. Excellence requires you to do the work – everyday, even when you don’t want to, and when no one is watching.  

I’m sure these skills will evolve as technology and the CSM profession evolves, but this is what I believe is important for today’s CS Leader. I’d love to hear what you believe the essential skills of a CS Leader.

Continued Success,

Janine

P.S. Below are books that may help build skills in these areas. There are more for sure! I’d love to see what you are reading to build your essential CSM leader skills.

Instills follower-ship

Psychological Safety

Vulnerable

Radical Candor

Coach

Diverse and Inclusive

Mental Models

Business Models

Financial Models

Communication

Operationalizing / hiring

Scale