Hone Your Executive Presence

Struggling with Career Derailers? - Part 6

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

Executive Presence

The further you progress in your career, the stronger the likelihood that you will encounter advice about your Executive Presence. One woman I know was a direct report to the CFO and first encountered this advice when she expressed her interest in succeeding him upon his retirement. She was more or less told that she didn’t have what it takes to interact with the Executive Team and Board. She realized that what she was being told was that she didn’t speak their language. She spoke primarily the language of her finance profession.

Hang on! It’s going to be a wild ride as I explain what this means and take you beyond mere reliance on the flawed conventional advice women receive about cultivating executive presence.

To do that, we have to differentiate between:

• Personal Presence

• Professional Presence

• Executive Presence

So, let’s go.

Personal Presence

There has been little critical thinking behind most of the books and articles about executive presence that are directed toward you. The resultant conventional advice is important, but incomplete. I say this because, according to my recent research, around 96% of the advice given to women on how to develop executive presence would also apply to actors, motivational speakers, preachers, politicians, teachers and others who stand before the public. This basic advice includes:

• How to Be: candid, sincere, confident, calm, passionate charismatic, thoughtful, courageous, warm etc.

• How to Speak: deep voice, succinct, avoid qualifiers

• Non-Verbals: posture, eye contact, gestures, facial expressions

• Audience Engagement: engage others with respect, know your audience.

• and my all time favorite (sarcasm font) How to Appear: get a makeover, look polished

Because this advice is basic and applies across professions, it cannot and will not help you develop executive presence. Instead, following this advice can best be considered a way to develop a level of personal presence. This advice is useful because it will help you comfortably and credibly stand in the spotlight while looking worthy of it.

Professional Presence

As you’ve grown in your career, you have tapped into and enhanced your personal presence. But to progress beyond career-start and emerging leadership roles, you have also had to focus on being a credible representative of your profession.

For example you have had to learn to authoritatively speak the language of engineering or HR or manufacturing, etc. In other words, you have developed your professional presence.

Professional/technical content or messaging will differentiate you from a preacher, teacher or politician. While someone might use their personal presence to preach about the bible, teach quantum physics, or gain our vote; you need the language of your profession to be able to make a case for:

• Using one material over another,

• Why one vendor’s HRIS will best meet the organization’s needs, or

• The current challenges with Agile.

You can think of this as adding technical/professional messaging to the non-verbal, non-content verbals and audience guidance that are elements of personal presence.

Further, as you advance you develop a comfort with inserting yourself into professional/technical discussions with colleagues, defending your position, challenging and/or building on those of others, and speaking at professional conferences. This ability to comfortably draw and hold attention (while speaking with professional credibility) becomes a make-or break element of professional presence and beyond.

Executive Presence

What, then, differentiates executive presence from professional presence?

Here we come to the importance of Business Savvv, The Missing 33% and the ability to speak the Language of Power (this is the language of financial and non-financial outcomes.)

Executive presence requires that you looks beyond your profession to the overall business and cultivate the ability to deliver a business-savvy message. This deep connection to and ability to discuss the business, its key financial and non-financial metrics, the external forces and inner activities at play are what confer that elusive - and often unhelpfully defined - gravitas that is described as a key element of executive presence.

Based on what’s been discussed, here’s a definition you can use to measure against and probe more deeply if you’ve received the frequently given advice, “You need executive presence” or “You need to improve your executive presence.”

Executive presence is the ability to comfortably draw and hold attention while delivering a business-savvy message.

This definition incorporates all the key elements of personal and professional presence with the required focus on messaging that speaks to the overall business, its financial and non-financial targets, its strategy and all the related elements of the strategy.

Your Career Progression

Working toward greater Executive Presence is an analog process, not a digital one. You can’t not have it one day and have it the next.

As discussed you will need a baseline of all of the attributes of personal presence, the confidence built from speaking the language of your profession and the refinement that arises from your Business Savvy and ability to consistently deliver business savvy messages.

And while it’s never too early to take stock of how you’re doing and whether your presence is appropriate to your level, it could be too late. I’m sorry to say that it was for the woman I mentioned above. After many years reporting to the CFO, her financial acumen was firmly established in the minds of the executive team and the board, but also firmly established was her inability to speak to strategy and even to use basic business terms common in the industry. However, all is not lost. She will be able to use her deepened business savvy to present with executive presence as she interviews with other organizations.

What’s a Woman to Do?

1. Think about and take action on these questions:

• Where in my journey am I - working on personal, professional or executive presence? Is that where I should be?

• How strong is my personal presence? Is it good enough (perfection is impossible) or do I need work on my ability to be, speak, use non-verbals, etc?

• How comfortable am I drawing attention to myself before I speak?

• How comfortable am I holding attention on myself as I speak?

• How effectively do I communicate a business-savvy message (about the business, its financial story, its strategy) using language related to cash, growth, return and customer/consumer metrics?

In the final analysis - whether you are seen is having executive presence rests in the eyes of the beholder. Some people will never see or only grudgingly see a woman as having executive presence. The most you can do is to work on the elements and to seek feedback from trusted others.

2. Ask your manager or others:

• How adequate is my personal presence? Do I need work on my ability to speak up, use non-verbals, etc?

• How specifically could I do a better job of drawing attention before I speak?

• How specifically could I do a better job of holding attention (for women, this usually means be more succinct)?

• How can I improve my ability to deliver a business-savvy message?

Remember, don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. Get “good enough.”

3. Be Business Savvy:

In this series we’ve been focusing on how to turn career derailers into career enablers and navigate each day with more ease, confidence and calm. The single common thread is the evidence that in EVERY instance greater Business Savvy will make a positive difference.

If along the way you’ve come to realize that you need more Business Savvy, start your journey here…

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I’m Susan Colantuono, best known for my TED Talk, “The Career Advice You Probably Didn’t Get.”

I’ve devoted most of my working life to supporting the career advancement of women.

Now my work is exclusively focused on offering women tools for developing and demonstrating Business Savvy - the business, financial and strategic acumen we need to succeed and to close The Missing 33% of the career success equation for women.

That includes offering my groundbreaking course in a self-paced version (with coaching support) right here at Be Business Savvy. Check it out!

You will find additional useful and actionable content in my books and other online resources:

• No Ceiling, No Walls ebook

• No Ceiling, No Walls soft cover

• Make the Most of Mentoring soft cover

• Coaching Executive Women (occasional) newsletter

Lead ON!

Susan