The Mystery of ‘Executive Presence'
Ticonderoga Learning & Talent Newsletter
What's in this month's Newsletter?
Jobs and Talent
The Mystery of ‘Executive Presence’
Professional & Personal Updates
Jobs and Talent
Talent Management Lead - National Basketball Association - NYC
Reporting to the Head of Talent and Engagement, the Talent Management Lead will be responsible for the creation and deployment of progressive talent management strategies designed to advance, support and retain employees. The incumbent will develop and implement plans and solutions to achieve strategic business initiatives by assessing talent readiness through mechanisms such as: talent profiles, talent reviews and assessments and leadership investment planning. Through a lens of inclusion and user-centric approaches, the incumbent will provide thought partnership and best practices to identify, cultivate and develop emerging talent within the organization to meet the future needs of the league.
Associate Director/Director of Coaching - ExecOnline - Anywhere
ExecOnline is looking for an ambitious Associate Director/Director of ExecOnline Coaching to offer premiere Leadership Coaching and Coach-Delivered Project Feedback to ExecOnline participants. You will also become an instrumental part of the ExecOnline Coaching team by assisting in the development and implementation of new ExecOnline Coaching frameworks, methodologies, and processes with an emphasis on scale and quality. This role is ideal for someone who has experience with leadership development frameworks and processes and wants to bring their experience to a fast-growing startup that is redefining the Learning & Development space.
The Mystery of Executive Presence
Google Executive Presence and you’ll find a lot of definitions that point to some sort of “it factor”. A murky combination of communication skills, poise in group situations, and natural charisma.
A Forbes article describes it as: “[...] your ability to inspire confidence — inspiring confidence in your subordinates that you’re the leader they want to follow, inspiring confidence among peers that you’re capable and reliable and, most importantly, inspiring confidence among senior leaders that you have the potential for great achievements.”
LinkedIn offers a course on developing executive presence that defines it as a combination of “self-confidence (how you act), self-expression (how you talk), and self-presentation (how you look)”.
Some random website called iThrive31 offers a similar, decent three-component model: Impression (How are you being perceived?), Expression (How are you communicating?), and Inner-Pression (How are you showing up?). After spending a whopping four minutes on the website, it’s still not clear to me that there’s any meaningful difference between Impression and Inner-Pression, but I digress.
So what exactly is Executive Presence? Well, I don’t really know.
I take it to be some sort of feeling one inspires in senior executives that they belong in the room with them. It probably falls into the Justice Potter “I know it when I see it” category of workplace characteristics. And therein lies the first problem: It’s terribly vague.
In the past two years, I’ve had six different conversations with would-be coaching clients explicitly about improving executive presence that have been nearly identical:
Them: “I’m told I need to work on my executive presence.”
Me: “Okay, so what aspects of executive presence do you want to work on?”
Them: “I don’t know, exactly…. Just how I ‘show up’ I guess?”
It’s hard to improve a notion. So naturally, the first step is to go and get more specific feedback about which behaviors would help performance. Here’s some of what we’ve heard:
Directing effective meetings and conversations
Adjusting conversational altitude for senior audiences
Being more succinct and to-the-point in emails and in person
Marshaling collaboration from non-direct reports and other teams
Energizing toward group goals
Notice anything here?
These are all generally useful leadership behaviors. So it’s possible (read: likely) that executive presence is code for “directive leadership skills”.
But okay, sure. That’s not a bad thing to develop. What’s the big deal?
Well, what if I told you that all six clients were women?
My tiny n=6 sample is woefully anecdotal…. But it’s curious that only women have approached me about an explicit need to develop their executive presence.
I say that because while I’ve also been approached by male clients who want help improving similar capabilities, they never approach me having learned they lack executive presence. Instead, they cite a need to develop “leadership skills” or “to be more authoritative”. One even told me his manager said that he needed a coach to help him develop a “more commanding presence and own the room”.
Executive presence seems to be a coded term for directive leadership behaviors which is applied predominantly to women. The problem is that when these behaviors are framed as executive presence, it is framed as something they (women) lack which is holding them back. Whereas, when framed simply as leadership skills, the starting point is that they (men) can develop these skills.
The framing of executive presence positions leadership skills as a deficiency rather than an opportunity. A framing that’s predominantly directed toward women.
The full title of that LinkedIn course I mentioned earlier? It’s actually “Executive Presence: Tips for Women”. Gemma Toner, Founder and CEO of Tone Networks, leads her article on executive presence arguing how “critical it is to develop presence, especially for women.” A SHRM article on the topic opens with the statement “Executive presence (EP) is the mysterious X-factor that often determines whether talented women rise to the top ranks of leadership.” (Sidenote: Executive Presence gets its own initials now?!)
Women do face more obstacles than men rising to the top ranks of leadership and it is true that developing this executive presence will help them break those barriers. The perception of our competence affects whether others follow us – and one is only a leader if they are followed. But we risk further perpetuating the historical, cultural biases that hold the glass ceiling in place if we don’t call out the terming of executive presence for what it generally is: a code phrase geared toward women depicting a lack of male-heteronormative authoritative behavior.
So moving forward, let’s start referencing the specific behaviors and skills that amalgamate to form this mysterious concept of executive presence so that we minimize framing them as something women lack.
Professional & Personal News
Charlotte is 18 months old today and I just can’t believe it. She has new words every day and seems to really enjoy exploring the expanding world around her. Her new favorite activity is getting breakfast at a local diner. She sits in the high chair playing with crayons and splenda packets, just watching all the people come and go. It’s objectively cute. She also has developed a useful habit where every morning she insists on going down to our basement, turning on the television, and saying “ball!” – demanding we put on the previous night’s NBA highlights. I can’t say I mind this one. And hey, she slept past 6am one time this month! Progress!
I’m currently in Eugene, OR, to watch the US Track & Field Olympic Trials. I’ve got a handful of friends competing and am hopeful to give some shoutouts to a few newsletter readers who may be newly-minted Olympians by the time next month’s newsletter arrives. Fingers crossed!
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Stay safe, get vaccinated! Be compassionate and intentional.