What is Executive Presence?

Recently a number of senior professionals have contacted me who had been told they need, or who consider they lack, executive presence. They were all in senior positions with considerable experience and expertise. In one case someone had even been advised that he wouldn’t be promoted to the board unless he could exhibit some of these ‘executive’ behaviours. Now you’d think they’d all want this elixir of success. However, apart from the inevitable frustration and confusion about what executive presence is, there was an underlying suspicion. One person said it all sounded a bit ‘fake’ and another gave the impression that it betrayed his background and would feel and look artificial.

If you google executive presence, there’s a huge amount of data. Research has been carried out at the highest levels. Both academic institutions and training companies give very valid and insightful sets of criteria of what executive presence is. Why should this, however, make someone want to become a clone of external definitions created by groups of people they may or may not identify with?

What is 'Executive Presence'?

So perhaps the question isn’t what are the physical, mental and emotional attributes of executive presence but what’s your version of executive presence? Or in the case of one of my suspicious clients above we dropped ‘executive’ altogether and went for plain, old presence.

How do you communicate in a professional environment, being yourself, with the skills to meet your outcomes? It doesn’t need me to tell you that people are infinitely fascinating, quirky and uncategorisable and any coaching or training that fails to encompass this is doing us all a disservice.

In spite of the vast array of information defining executive presence there’s very little that details the process whereby you actually embody this mystique. Professionals are left wondering how they transfer all this theoretical knowledge into their own behaviours, thoughts and feelings. So bearing all this in mind this blog will focus on the following:

1. Acquiring a more organic, real and personal executive presence

2. The process you move through to develop executive presence

3. The obstacles you might face in developing executive presence

Executive Presence - how do I get started?

That depends on the professional world you have to negotiate and the skills you need to do this successfully. In an ideal world, I’d start with the following question:

• What situations throw you off balance?

By this I mean: what are the situations that you feel uncomfortable in? How does this discomfort affect your communication and your performance? How do you react to the pressure that you’re feeling?

By making a list of all those areas you feel less than comfortable with, we begin to analyse where your communication is letting you down. We look at your reactions, your default behaviours and we look at how you’d like to respond.

• Resources to stablise

If you aren’t responding in the way you would like in specific scenarios, you’ll first need skills to maintain your physiological and emotional balance and mental coherence. When that has been acquired we can then move onto what behaviours and communication choices you would prefer to have.

• Implementation

Having identified behaviours that need modifying, the main body of the coaching is to implement new behaviours so they become second nature. in that you don’t even have to think about them. This is where it gets interesting…….

• “But that’s not me!”

The last stage is where the discomfort of behavioural change may show itself. Behaviours are very much connected to your sense of self - to your identity. Your identity has moulded itself over many years and its raison d’être is to protect you and keep you safe. When you change how you interact with the world, you are standing on new territory and it can feel uncomfortable on both a mental and emotional level.

Executive Presence – the behaviours

Some behaviours that we might associate with executive presence you’ll already have, some behaviours you won’t. Some behaviours you’ll use successfully in one situation and they’ll desert you in another. But generally these are the areas we’ll look at:

• Presence

When you walk into a room do people notice? Do you look comfortable standing in front of an audience? Do you look relaxed talking to the exec? When you say nothing do people look to you for the answer? Do you command a space?

• Voice

When you speak do people listen? Can your voice be heard effortlessly by everyone in the room? When you say something does your voice express your intention? Do you use lower and higher vocal registers? Is your voice stable in all situations? Does your voice have ‘weight’ and ‘authority’?

• Credibility

Do you show a set of behaviours that can be associated with credibility? Do you have a stillness that draws focus and compels people to listen to your words? Is your content clear and concise? Can you hold silence? Is your communication both logical and strategic?

• Emotion

Can you engage people emotionally? Can you bring out the best in people not because they feel they have to deliver but because they want to? Can you make people feel like they belong and want to belong in your organisation? Showing a department you appreciate what they’ve achieved sounds hollow and redundant without emotion. Creating an environment where people feel involved and included is impossible without emotion. Logic alone won’t cut it.

• Flexibility

1. Flexibility in how you communicate so you can adapt your style to whoever you’re talking to.
2. Flexibility in how you receive another person’s response and deal with it in an optimum way.
3. Flexibility in your mind-set in terms of problem-solving, strategising and improvising.

• Grace Under Fire

Composure, poise, a calm demeanour, call it what you will, being unflappable is an essential.

1. When the seas are choppy a leader will still respond, they don’t panic and react.
2. You maintain mental clarity in all situations that allows you to continue to see the big picture. You can then calmly assess the root causes of problems rather than hone in on symptoms and create quick fixes.
3. Senior leaders are often asked to present, deliver bad news, deal with crises, inspire and motivate groups and talk with authority about subjects they may not know that much about with little or no preparation. If you haven’t developed the art of mental and emotional calmness, you may find improvising in this way stressful.

• Vision

Can you create a vision everyone wants to be a part of? Can you create a common goal that everyone wants to work towards together? Can you create a collective and emotional sense of ‘we’ rather than an authoritarian sense of ’I’m telling you’. And can you communicate that to everyone no matter where they work within your organisation?

• Logic

Most of the people I work with are comfortable communicating with logic. However, is your language clear and do you stress key facts and figures so people can follow your thoughts? Is your pace measured with pauses so people can take in information piece by piece? Do you have clarity of word?

• Influencing

Influencing is the ability to use language, body language, timing and permission in a way that sits comfortably with your audience. It allows you to get a 'Yes' without it being a battle of wills or maintaining an assertive position of logic driven force. Influencing is an elegant way of engaging your audience to move with you to achieve your outcomes.

• Mindset

Everyone has a mind that prefers a certain way of processing information about the world. This can create a bias in how we see reality and therefore how we approach and solve problems. Creating a mindset that works at an optimum allows us to see more possibilities, wider horizons and think outside the box for solutions. A leadership mindset is one that works towards reducing its natural limitations whether those limitations be based around beliefs, information processing, communication or anything else.

How do you get Executive Presence?

Your are the raw material and you are already fine. We may look at your posture. We look at the way you carry yourself. We begin to change your breathing pattern. We look at how you move and how you occupy space: how much space you actually take up when communication, gesturing, being.

If you’re presenting on zoom to a large audience, for example, are you proficient using this virtual environment so that you appear on camera at your best? Can you use the camera frame so that you come across as natural and impactful?

You’ll have exercises to do after each coaching session to create the mind/body link to resourceful behaviours. The exercises may be around presence, they may be around the voice or anything else we’re working on. We apply these skills to every day activities at work. We then see how they stand up to pressure in more high risk situations The whole point is eventually not to have to think about what you’re doing! Executive presence will be your version - not mine or anybody else’s.

Executive Presence Coaching – the results

People will find it hard to really say how you’ve changed. Your voice is still your own but perhaps a little more so. Your presence is turned up. You’re more visible, more noticeable but without effort. You become someone people listen to when you speak.

You own your personal and positional power and this aligns to your experience, expertise and identity. You look, sound and feel both different and the same. Different in that you’re empowered, the same in the fact that you're still your natural self. Your executive presence imbues your communication. You communication is part of who you are as a leader.

Next Steps

If you're looking for executive presence and think you’d benefit from this type of coaching please contact me here to arrange a 30 minute zoom call free of charge. We’ll discuss what specifically you need help with and if this kind of coaching’s right for you.

For coaching packages that focus on executive presence go here.

For courses that focus on executive presence go here.

for women's courses that focus on executive presence go here.