This is Module 4, executive presence and why it matters. When you saw the title of that, did you wonder, doesn't it sound like something that should be in a leadership class? I am going to tell you it is extremely important to understand the impact that you have on others. I would say that executive presence is one way to try and define that impact. Executive presence, hopefully, you've read the readings. Two of them were short. The third one was about 10 pages. I want you to keep that in mind as we go through this material, and you begin to think about your strengths, think about your personality type, and then go back and look at the elements of executive presence in that third reading by Bates. You will find a lot of very good tips and descriptions of what excellent executive presence looks like. Executive presence is a skill. It's not a trait, which is beautiful, because that means that you can cultivate it and you can build it, and you can build it uniquely to you and the way you want to show up. Executive presence is the qualities of leadership that enable leaders to inspire confidence in themselves, in their teams, to inspire commitment from the organization, and to get discretionary effort from the workforce. Let's start. I like this quote from Sheryl Sandberg, "Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." There's a bit of wisdom that goes around in senior executive circles and that is you will never be in the room when the most important discussions about your career take place. As openings come up and as opportunities show up for you, the conversation happens without you there, most of the time. What is there is your reputation and the impression that people have of you, the impact you have on others, basically, your executive presence. Your job as a leader is absolutely to maximize the effort of others. We talked about talent management. You are responsible for bringing the best talent in and then to retain and develop it, coach, be able to communicate, remove barriers, especially when you are no longer the smartest person in the room. Build trust, build teams, build relationships, think strategically, balance stakeholders equity needs, ensure accountability, and deliver results. All of these things have a play in executive presence. Why is executive presence so important? This idea of leadership, it's not a science per se. It's not something that you can read some books, take a test, and then become a leader. It is something that you have to want to do. It's also a social as well as an organizational phenomenon. How you affect others has a direct effect on the impact you have. How you show up, your attitude, the degree of cynicism you bring to a situation, your humility, your honesty, your integrity, your ethics. The entire organization wants you to have an executive presence. The people that you lead, the leaders above you, the executive management above them, and stakeholders. Everyone wants you to inspire confidence and commitment. One of the ways that you can do that is by having a very effective executive presence. What is executive presence? Well, here are a bunch of terms. We're going to go through a lot of this. We'll start in the upper left-hand corner, self-awareness. Little bit of a kin to emotional intelligence may be self-managing. If you remember, that was a trait of leadership that we talked about early on. Being engaged, being present, being engaging, be someone that people want to talk to. That usually means you're a good listener more than you are a good talker. Cultural and social intelligence. You understand how to deal with certain situations when there are some delicate situations, either culturally or socially. Posture and appearance. Looking the part. Showing respect for those that you are interacting with. Clarity and conciseness. As you heard in the video that preceded this lesson, being able to say something very concisely and not repeat yourself is a trait of, first of all, respecting your audience knowing that you've said at once, that they've heard you and they want to hear more that you want to say. You don't have to repeat yourself. Composure and gravitas. This is an important one, and we'll spend a lot of time on that. Then confidence and decisiveness. There are multiple perspectives on executive presence and if you were to go onto the Internet, you could read quite a bit about them. Many scholars, coaches, consultants tried to define the attributes of executive presence. I've picked two models for us to talk about today. One is coming from the Center for Talent Innovation, and the other is coming from a consultant firm named Bates. Bates is probably the best-known in this space. But what I like about showing you two of them is they use different words. They sometimes mean the same thing. But in one case or another case, this is going to resonate with you. You might totally get what the Center for Talent Innovation is saying, or you may not and the Bates model might resonate with you better. I just wanted to be able to show you both to give you a full view of what these folks believe our executive presence. Let's start with the Center for Talent Innovation. They say it's really a mixture of three different things. It's communication, how you speak, gravitas, how you act, and appearance, how you look interestingly enough. But look at gravitas. It is far and away the most important element of their model. Then communication. Very far down the list is appearance. Again, I don't want you to be turned off by that idea. Think of appearance as respecting the audience that you are communicating with. Don't let your appearance be a distraction. Let's look at gravitas because this in their model the most important. It's the projection of credibility, assertiveness, and the confidence to convey a clear message. These blue and pink lines are the percentage of that particular element for both men and women. But you can see the top two are confidence poised grace under fire, decisiveness, and showing teeth. Meaning, you can command a room. This idea of grace under fire is very interesting because when you think about executive presence, leaders are often put in difficult situations, usually in front of an audience of some kind. How you handle your emotions, how you handle your communication, how you listen, and then how you respond, everybody is watching you. They want to have confidence that you know how to solve a problem or you know how to answer a question and if you don't have the answer to the question, you know how to get the answer. Because the whole point here is displaying a level of confidence in your ability to lead. The second is communication. The first element under communication is speaking style, concise and compelling. Words matter. Think about the words that you use. The ability to command a room. It's what you say, when you say it, how you say it, and to whom you say it. Another interesting part of communication is reading an audience or a complicated situation and then adjusting your behavior and acting accordingly. Have you ever been in front of a room talking about a complex subject, something that you know quite a bit about and it's clear very quickly that your audience is either uninterested or does not understand it? Do you continue to drone on because you perfectly understand it, or do you immediately sense that you need to change your tactics? You need to change the way you're communicating because you have lost your audience at that point, or they are uninterested. Being able to read an audience is a very good way of displaying executive presence. Then finally, in this case, appearance. A lot of people call it looking the part. But think about it in this way, by taking the time to look and feel your best, it shows consideration and respect to the people that you're interacting with. Now, let's look at the Bates model. They also use three terms. The first one is character. By that, they mean the core of who we are from our values, our ethics or essential beliefs. It is the most foundational level of a leader as a person. It is your authenticity, your genuineness, your integrity, the concern that you show others, and in situations your humility, as well as your restraint, especially emotionally when you might be dealing with conflict. The second is substance. This idea of substance is a set of qualities that you are developing over time and they show up in your late teen years and as you become an adult, and it is your maturity, your capacity to integrate and bring your character and your virtues in play as a leader. This is bringing your practical wisdom to the table, your confidence in the ability for you to lead in this situation, your composure, your emotional stability, your resonance, and your vision. Then finally, style. It is those iterative timely dialogical aspects of communication that drive execution and performance. It's the way we get work done through others. Appearance. Do we respect the others that we interact with? One great way to think about this is if you ever have to deal with the military and you are a technical individual giving a presentation. The military folks will show up in uniform and they will be very well-dressed. To show respect for them and the fact that you are interacting, giving them data, your appearance is important in that case. Plus you don't want your appearance to be a distraction. Style is also your intentionality. Are your intentions clear and do you state them if you need to? Your inclusiveness. How do you take on a diverse team and then make the environment around that inclusive? Interactivity. Are you approachable? Can you interact with your teams and communicate? Your assertiveness. Isn't that interesting that assertiveness comes under style, but assertiveness and how you uniquely handle that is your style. People will say, that's their style, that's their style of communication. When you think about your leadership strengths and your personality type, they will affect and influence these elements of executive presence. What I want you to do is after this lesson, there's one more video for you to watch, and it is about presence on a virtual platform. Basically, your presence on a video platform. Since more and more business is being done online and you are going to be sitting in front of a computer and a camera. There's a couple of really good tips on this idea of virtual presence and how you come across. Then there will be one practice quiz question and then we'll move on to a leadership learning scenario.
