There is a direct link between ‘presence’ and effectiveness, when it comes to being a leader. Jacqui Harper offers insight and advice as to how you can develop executive presence, influence how colleagues and clients perceive you, and enhance your success
Executive presence matters to a lot of people. A subject search on Google gives 263 million results and Business Schools around the world have programmes teaching it. But corporations desperately want more of it from their leaders so it’s consistently one of the top reasons for hiring an executive coach.
Why is executive presence (EP) the focus of so much attention? What exactly is it? Why is it so important to current and aspiring business leaders – and what’s the best way to get it?
What is executive presence?
Some have it and some don’t, but it’s a lot easier to recognise EP than to explain it.
I define EP as how people experience us: what they see, what they hear and what they feel about us after every call, every meeting, every email. EP is created through the three sensory channels of sight, sound and feeling. Focusing on feelings delivers the biggest win when developing EP so that’s what I want to address here.
Why is EP important to every leader?
It is difficult to be a successful leader without EP. Having EP gives an almost unfair advantage. It’s perhaps irrational and maybe a bit unfair but having EP positively influences how you are perceived by colleagues and future employers. It suggests that you are an effective and successful leader. Obviously this perception needs to be backed up quickly with substance or things will soon end in tears.
There’s another connection between EP and leadership effectiveness. Consider the top leadership skills. More than 300,000 participants did just that. Research by US consultants Zenger/Folkman surveyed participants from various industries and at different stages in their leadership journey: from relatively junior leaders to CEOs. They all shared the view that there are seven skills essential for all leaders:
- Inspires others
- Displays integrity
- Solves problems
- Drives results
- Communicates powerfully
- Collaborates
- Builds relationships
It is remarkable to note that EP enhances all of these skills. That’s why EP is so important to leadership success. To start or kick-start your EP, focus on feelings. Two tools that can help are the presence audit and using emotional objectives.
The presence audit
‘Former US President Barack Obama or Apple Founder Steve Jobs?’
When teaching EP at INSEAD, I start with the question: who’s your favourite speaker and why. The most popular speaker is either Barack Obama or Steve Jobs. Last week, unusually, it was Christine Lagarde, the former MD of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). When participants say why they like Barack Obama they often say it’s because he’s authentic; they admire Steve Jobs for his passion; Christine Lagarde is praised for being articulate.
Authentic, passionate and articulate: these are characteristics of EP. The process of developing EP starts with clarity on the exact qualities of EP that will serve you. The presence audit gathers that information.
It’s the shortest audit in the world and it consists of just three words. These words represent how you’d like colleagues, employers and clients to describe you. The words need to represent the essence of you, the best of you and shape how people feel about you.
Consider recent meetings or calls – what was your presence like?
List single-word adjectives on a piece of paper that describe your presence. Also include words that people attending those meetings or calls might use to describe you. Then, in your mind’s eye, see your future self. When you are at your best what single words describe your presence? Write down everything.
As you look at the descriptive words which three are the most significant? Embody them. For example, when writing emails make sure your tone and language reflects the words in the presence audit. When speaking on the phone adapt your manner to the presence audit. As you prepare for presentations ensure the content and delivery reflects the description in your presence audit.
The audit is a useful guide to help you make choices to influence how people feel about you. It’s also useful for getting feedback. For example, after a meeting or presentation you can ask people how came across compared to your presence audit.
My presence audit
I was given a presence audit by a client. After I hosted a conference in the city of Leeds in The UK she wrote a note to thank me and described me as ‘assured, business-like and warm’.
I was pleased with these words. Assured and business-like were important qualities for the high-powered business audience I was addressing.
But I was particularly happy to see she included the word ‘warm’. It indicated that I had made a personal connection to the audience of over three hundred people. I have brainstormed many words for my presence audit and I find that I am really happy to use the ones generated by my client. Because I am picky with words I have used synonyms for assured and business-like.
I have replaced assured with confident and business-like with professional so the presence audit for how I want to show up in virtually any business situation is:
- Confident
- Professional
- Warm
Emotional objectives
An emotional objective simply identifies how you want people to feel when communicating. Do you want them to feel excited, uncomfortable, reassured, curious, reflective or encouraged?
One exercise I do when teaching is to show participants the list of human feelings below. I ask them to reflect on my introduction to class and guess which feelings I wanted them to feel.
Glad, happy, delighted, joyful, elated, thrilled, comfortable, excited, positive, impressed, hopeful, expectant, relieved, satisfied, certain, able, confident, powerful, curious, good, inspired, assured, eager, enthusiastic, concerned, challenged, uncomfortable, nervous, thoughtful, cheerful, great, empathy, annoyed, shocked, unhappy, pride, compassion, sympathy, interested, awe.
The second part of the exercise is to explore how emotional objectives are delivered. The answers of my participants typically focus on body language, the message or my voice because those are the primary delivery mechanisms for emotional objectives.
Enthusiastic. Comfortable. Excited. Interested. Participants frequently cite these as my intended feelings. Then they tell me it comes from the sound of my voice or the emotion in my voice.
The sound of a leader’s voice is a key component of EP. According to 2014 article by Phil McAleer, Alexander Todorov, and Pascal Belin entitled ‘How Do You Say ‘Hello’? Personality Impressions from Brief Novel Voices’, a voice that is vocally attractive makes us trust and like the speaker more according to research. EP requires vocal competence, that is, a voice with expression, range and clarity.
Developing the voice is easy and delivers great benefits. I often wonder why leaders don’t pay greater attention to their voice. My advice is to record yourself speaking and listen critically. Does the sound of your voice reflect the qualities in your presence audit? Does your voice help deliver emotional objectives?
If the answer is no try the following:
- Learn diaphragm breathing to give your voice more power (there are lots of videos and guides on the internet).
- Pause more when speaking – a lot more. It improves comprehension of your message and enables emotional impact.
- Make 10% more effort with articulation. Because poor articulation is so common in business conversations people who articulate well always stand out.
- Regularly read aloud news stories, poems or tongue twisters to improve clarity of speech.
It’s never too early to develop EP and it will serve you well on your leadership journey.
Jacqui Harper is the author of Executive Presentations, was a finalist in the Business Book Awards 2019. She is a visiting professor at INSEAD and an executive coach. A member of the Professional Speaking Association, Jacqui is a popular conference speaker and host. She was previously a TV news anchor for the BBC and chat show host.
