Three Hardest Things for an Executive To Do:

An executive is a manager with a Vice President's title or higher. This person has fought the corporate wars fro 10 or 20 years. The person has succeeded through building high performance teams to develop new products, develop new markets, and 'make the numbers.

People were essential to the executive's success. Most conversations were direct and focused on deliverables. The communications were transactional.

As an executive moves up the corporate ladder, this person must communicate differently. The person now has an enterprise point of view. This person must now speak the language of:

Messaging.
Inducers.
Consequencers.

Many executives don't excel at this because this requires a higher order skill level, than simply communicating person-to-person. It implies the ability to nuance, filter, and intuit. I means moving from a transactional mode to an enterprise point of view. Tough to do. Few do it well.