How to develop your executive presence
Are you struggling to get noticed by your organization’s succession planners? Hoping for a promotion but plateaued at your level? You might be surprised how your words and actions are holding you back. Here are a few secrets to enhancing your executive presence.
Pay attention to how you look
You need to look like a leader. I’m not talking about plastic surgery here, but take a look in the mirror; what does your ensemble say about you? If the first things that come to mind are scruffy, harried, or disheveled, you’re sending the signal that you don’t care about yourself; and if you don’t care about yourself, why should anyone else.
Alternatively, if you’re wearing your Sunday best in a culture that tends toward jeans and flannel, you’re also getting it all wrong. Your blue suit is telling people that you’re managing impressions—and that is not cool.
Look at the people who are more senior than you. How do they show up? Take your cues from them.
How much space do you take up?
You need to take up space in the room. When you walk into a room, do people notice, or do you quietly slip in and find the least assuming spot at the table? It’s important to walk into a room demonstrating confidence with your head held up.
Arrive in time to find a seat at the table that gives you good eye lines to your teammates and your team leader. Make sure your body language is open and confident: if you tend to cross your arms or make yourself smaller, concentrate on putting your arms on the arm rests. Make eye contact with people as they speak—it makes a world of difference.
How do you come across?
You need to speak with weight. What you say needs to inspire confidence in those around you. Avoid sharing opinions and instead, share a point of view—a series of observations with a “so what” attached. Speak in crisp and concise headlines and pause before providing additional detail so that your point has time to land with your audience.
Where possible, use strong words such as “I have observed” rather than “I think” and avoid the wiggle words such as “maybe,” “somewhat,” “might,” and “sort of” that signal your discomfort and uncertainty. Enlist a teammate to jot down a few notes to help you key in on areas you could improve.
Stand your ground
Executive presence is also about holding your own. Not only do you need to add new ideas to the discussion, but you also need to at least occasionally disagree with the perspectives or recommendations of others. When you disagree, state your case firmly and politely. Always demonstrate your openness by ending your point with a question. “I heard you say that our oil & gas customers are the most profitable. When I have analyzed profitability including soft dollar costs, oil & gas looks much less attractive. What do we want to include in our calculations?”
Who do you interact with?
You need to be visible. It is unlikely that you will be promoted if you are an unknown quantity to those senior to you. Start finding opportunities to interact with them. Use the casual time on the way into or out of meetings to chat with people you wouldn’t normally be exposed to. Ask their impressions of the discussion, share an interesting tidbit from the news, or just engage with them socially—human to human.
If you could magically look down on yourself at work, what would you see? A calm, confident, collected person who is going places or someone who is struggling to make an impact even at your present level? Systematically stretch yourself in these 5 areas and you’ll start to notice that you get noticed.
Updated for 2022: What are you saying?
Executive Skills Coach Richard Di Britannia offers some further insights for developing your language for executive presence:
Use the Language of Leadership. Executives are leaders in their field and their presence is bolstered by the language they use. A visionary leader can often think in timeframes far beyond the average of employees and because of that, they use the ‘Language of Leadership’ which outlines their vision. The ‘Language of Leadership’ isn’t simply telling people what to do, how to do it or coercing others to follow them by force. Instead, it’s the outlining of a set of forward-thinking, well considered actions which if taken have the potential to shift the company towards a fundamentally different future. It also involves asking questions which get people to think in positive possibilities, rather than past negatives.
Consider these three styles of leadership language:
Weak Leadership: Looking to the past: “Our product is struggling due to last quarter’s performance.” Although this is a statement of fact, it offers no action statement, solution or explanation for the poor performance.
Average Leadership: Looking only at the present: “We need to grow our product performance or else we will have another failure next quarter. Does anyone have any ideas?” This is once again a statement of fact, but despite it offering an action statement it offers no future goal, it also fails to outline what caused the failure. Asking for advice is beneficial, but a leader should never ask others where they are going.
Strong Leadership: Outlining a well-considered vision and requesting for forward-thinking input: “We are going change our marketing strategy to focus on Instagram, because our Twitter campaign taught us static images are no longer popular. With Instagram we’ll use ten-second videos, because they allow us also monitor customer retention. This ensures our marketing department will be able to change the videos daily, rather than waiting for the results of a static image campaign at the end of each week. Following this plan will also allow us to quickly learn which products we need to focus on and which need to be further developed, saving large amounts of money marketing products which are no longer popular. We can reinvest the funds from any unprofitable marketing campaigns into the R&D team who will create new products to be finished by the end of the next quarter, allowing us to launch successful products which have an established product consciousness. My question for you is how can we improve this plan and who are the best people in your teams to work on doing so? I want you to be honest and I need numbers before we leave the room, please.”
This final example offers an action statement, a clear set of instructions, evaluations of what to expect and a plan for the future. It also shows the Executive has considered various scenarios which rely upon delegating responsibilities to other departments who will be given a clear set of actions to follow. The Executive then asks for input rather than foolishly following their own uninspected plan, by ensuring their staff look towards the future by asking “How can we improve this”, rather than getting them stuck in a mindset of failure by asking “What problems do you see with this?”. The invitation for honesty shows the executive is willing to listen and the request for an immediate recommendation of the best people under a strict timeframe ensures the strategy is acted on immediately, preventing any delay.
The ‘Language of Leadership’ is therefore an especially powerful tool which allows you not only to lead your team, but also bring your leadership vision into reality.
Further Reading
Checklist for Effective Business Communication
When your Team needs a New Leader