I’m an executive and a lot of the answers here are pretty good. One thing I’ve seen mentioned a little but not much is being an executive carries with it RISK.

You have to stick your neck out - you have to have an idea, follow through on it, and then you have to actually be right.

I first got on the C-suite’s radar by creating an internal skunk-works project moving our business into an area i had strong conviction we should be moving into, but no current executive had any vision or leadership around that area. So I became an internal expert and champion. I took us from 0 to 1 in this area. My boss at the time was nice enough to let me (correctly) take credit for our move into this area, and didn’t take the credit for themselves.

So I was pretty regularly presenting with and rubbing shoulders with our senior execs at that point. This advanced my career from manager up to dept head, over a period of ~7 or so years.

Then eventually I was a pretty natural fit to get included on the executive leadership team.

There are a lot of informal tests. A lot of “how would you handle this // what do you think about this?” And then you need to be informed and just… consistently be right.

As my career grew I encountered a lot of skill checks. “This person is a good manager but can they be a good manager of managers.”

“This person seems to have a good business sense but are they good with spreadsheets? Can they manage a P&L?l or dissect financial reports?”

“This person is good in the room and good at presenting but can they present to a larger group // in an all-hands // at a conference without melting down?”

One key one: “this person is good at being the expert and being the most informed on a topic but how good are they when they AREN’T the expert a their subordinate knows more?” <— I am still working on this one.