Building executive presence
“Kausern, you lack executive presence.”
When my coach shared this insight with me, everything suddenly made sense. No wonder at industry networking events attendees hardly noticed my presence, and a few would yawn through my session when I presented.
My coach continued, “You’re a very competent person. You have this inner confidence that is attractive, you’re just not projecting it externally. That’s why you don’t stand out.”
My coach is right. You see, I’m a reserved person in nature and whenever I’m in the presence of strangers or people I barely know, I’ll clam up and act awkwardly.
After that coaching session, I began my journey to hone my executive presence. And here’s what I’ve learned so far.
“Executive presence” is the impact a leader creates in their environment. When a leader with strong executive presence speaks, people listen and feel inspired. Leaders with executive presence can command the room. They speak with conviction, confidence, and certainty, and can influence people at all levels. Note: Don’t confuse executive presence with the person who has the loudest voice in the room.
I came across this TEDx video on YouTube (Demystifying Executive Presence | Kshitij Sharma | TEDxManSagarLake) which further reinforced my coach’s advice. Most of us have this mindset of, “Let my work speak for itself. Why should I brag about it?", but according to Kshitij, that solid competence is insufficient. We also have to change our mindsets to comfortably project our work to the world without guilt. Failing to do so will potentially cause us to lose a lot of opportunities.
Our reluctance to share our accomplishments is probably rooted in a false belief system from early childhood where such actions were labelled as bragging or in Malaysia, “action la now”. So when Kshitij introduced this Executive Presence Framework (image above), it gave me a lot of clarity and confidence. Here’s how to read it:
Mild Presence quadrant (top left)
If we have high Internal Growth ie. confident with our competence, but low External Projection ie. not talking about our good work, we have Mild Presence. (I’m in this quadrant!)
Loud Presence quadrant (bottom right)
If our Internal Growth is low ie. our growth has stagnated, but our External Projection is high ie. we talk too much, we have Loud Presence. Leaders in this quadrant are known as all talk, no substance. Now, that is bragging.
Executive Presence quadrant (top right)
If we focus on growing ourselves and learn to be comfortable in letting the world know about it, we’ll start to develop a more powerful executive presence.
I’m learning to be more comfortable in projecting my competence and inner confidence externally to the world, without bragging. And I’m starting to see some success because every interaction is becoming easier and more fun.
If you’re on this same journey as me, let's inspire and support each other to develop our executive presence so that we can become more influential in our respective fields! ●