10
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The Dark Side of Executive Presence
Coaching Tips That Can Save Your Career
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STEVE JOBS WAS a man who believed utterly in himself and his vision of not just his company, Apple, but of technology’s place in the world. His resilience allowed him to power through devastating setbacks; after being fired by the company he founded, for example, he was hired back and led Apple to the top of the tech pyramid. Yet his incredibly high standards and demands for excellence, coupled with a famously volcanic temper, however much they spurred on acolytes, also led to such cringeworthy scenes as his blasting of an older employee at Whole Foods who didn’t make a smoothie to his satisfaction.
Similarly, Elon Musk has cultivated the reputation of genius, going so far as to name his company after the brilliant scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla. Along the way he has inspired many with his ventures into space and fantastical promises of using tech to transform society. Yet while he has made good on some of those promises—the high-end Tesla models, the SpaceX rockets—he’s also had some spectacular misses in his quest to shoot for the moon. Such setbacks are not unexpected for someone skating along the bleeding edge of tech, but Musk has also been unable to contain his very public frustrations with any criticisms of his work, which has, in turn, punctured the air of serenity and inevitability about his company’s success.
Such at-the-limit visionaries have been a part of human society for as long as there have been humans. But over 2,000 years ago, a wise old Greek named Aristotle warned about the dangers of such recklessness and counseled instead that excellence was to be found in that sweet spot between too much and too little. In our modern world, however, we don’t always pay attention to the shadows cast by always pushing to go farther and faster, We don’t always realize that what can raise us up can bring us down.
Creating an executive presence is all about raising yourself up, but you have to be smart about it: Every trait, behavior, and skill that you cultivate to establish yourself as a respected leader can create problems if not monitored closely. Especially when we’re under pressure, stressed, in the middle of a crisis, tired, or simply not self-aware, those same personality traits that constitute our strengths can take on a dark hue.
What Is the Dark Side of Personality?
There are a couple of different ways of understanding the dark side. One of the earliest comes from psychologists Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams, who delineate the “Dark Triad” of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, all traits that are almost wholly negative. More recently, Robert Hogan and Joyce Hogan developed the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), their 3-cluster/11-trait schema of the dark side of personality:
• Distancing. Excitable, skeptical, cautious, reserved, leisurely
• Seductive. Bold, mischievous, colorful, imaginative
• Ingratiating. Dutiful, diligent
Unlike the Dark Triad, the traits found in the HDS are not negative in and of themselves. They are dark because they are usually hidden, emerging only when people, usually due to stress, let down their guard.
This dark model can be contrasted to the “bright” model of the Big Five personality traits. The Big Five (also known as the five-factor model) are often referred to by the acronym OCEAN: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism/emotional stability. They can be understood as “bright” because they are apparent to others. Again, this doesn’t mean that these bright qualities are wholly positive, just that they are visible.
Beyond that, however, there’s not a lot of consensus about the dark side. Kaiser Leadership CEO Rob Kaiser observes that “dark-side traits can be seen as strengths in overdrive, with the potential to become weaknesses through overuse.” There is a general sense that a dark side could be a trait that is excessively or, more rarely, too little expressed. Professors Seth Spain, Peter Harms, and James Lebreton make another distinction: that between “nature” and “effects.” The traits in the Dark Triad, for example, may involve “malevolent intent” and thus be considered dark in nature, while others, such as those in the HDS, may not involve bad intent but may lead to bad or harmful outcomes—that is, have a “derailing” effect. “Harm of some kind,” as they put it, “is almost a necessary consequence of the label dark.”
In Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1, I introduced my own list of the traits and behaviors of executive presence, based on over 20 years of working with senior leaders and influenced by the Hogans’ research as well as other social scientific research. For the sake of convenience, it is repeated here as Figure 10.1.
Figure 10.1 The Traits of Executive Presence
In this chapter, we’ll look at the potential dark sides of these traits and behaviors, which are more about effects than intentions. Most of the people I work with have a sense of integrity that makes them want both to do well in their jobs and to become better people. In other words, it isn’t that they’re malicious, but that they lack the awareness to see when their strengths have become weaknesses that limit their executive presence. For instance, someone who is expressive and engaging and makes a strong first impression may end up dominating meetings and showboating in group situations. Similarly, someone whose executive presence includes self-confidence, competitiveness, and a willingness to take risks may start ignoring negative feedback and try to win at all costs. Research has shown that people with the ability to self-monitor and to regulate such dark turns of successful behaviors will advance in their careers faster and more consistently than those who lack these abilities.
Bringing Light to the Dark Side of Executive Presence
Below is an elaboration of the figure above, focusing both on how the various traits and behaviors within each cluster can positively influence others’ perceptions of your executive presence and on how, if overdone, they can diminish that presence. To help you stay on the bright rather than the dark side of executive presence, I’ve included quick coaching tips for each trait.
Communication
That all aspects of communication are pivotal to one’s leadership luster is hardly a surprise. Conversely, failure to monitor communication behavior closely can send matters off the rails and damage one’s reputation in an instant.
Mastering difficult conversations, which I’ve discussed in some detail throughout this book, is an executive presence trait that can distinguish you from colleagues who avoid emotional encounters and thus leave critical issues unresolved. However, even as you proactively engage others in such conversations, there are minefields to avoid. When you strive to provide helpful feedback in these fraught exchanges, for instance, if you are overly sensitive to a colleague’s feelings, you may end up not delivering the full meaning of the information he needs to improve. Or on the flip side, you might be so eager to give someone every bit of feedback that you drown her in a sea of information, rendering your efforts equally ineffectual.
There’s also the possibility that trying to cushion the blow of bad news ends up leaving the other person feeling manipulated. One employee told Ask a Manager columnist Alison Green that putting the meat of criticism between two slices of compliments (otherwise known as a “crap sandwich”) can be insulting, “like when you have to give a dog a pill and you hide it in a piece of cheese to trick them into swallowing. I always feel like there’s some kind of mild deceit going on, and I’m put off by the feeling that the person didn’t respect me enough to just talk to me instead of trying to ‘handle’ me.”
COACHING TIP Keep the desired outcome of a difficult conversation in mind, i.e., the reason why you’re having the conversation in the first place. Not wanting to hurt people’s feelings is a good intention, but rarely is it the objective that will move you closer to the conversation’s goals.
Engaging others is a helpful executive presence trait in both short- and long-term interactions. Being outgoing, charming, and friendly can make you stand out and is especially useful when meeting people for the first time. One study observes, predictably, that those low on charisma are also low on perceived leadership ability. However, a less predictable observation from the study was that those who are highly charismatic are also seen as less effective. Those with low charisma “were seen as less effective because they were not sufficiently strategic, while high-charisma leaders were seen as less effective because they were weak on operational behavior,” according to the study’s coauthor Filip De Fruyt, PhD, of Ghent University. The sweet spot, as that old Greek man observed, is between too much and too little charisma.
If you are too engaging, you also could be deemed as too much of a politician or as someone who is overly ingratiating in order to gain favor with people, especially the influential. This perception can potentially put people on guard in encounters with you and close you off from developing authentic relationships.
COACHING TIP Be genuine in your interactions and make people you engage with feel as if they are the only person in the room. Observe their comfort level with your attention and know when to move on, to leave them wanting more of you.
Telling strategic stories is another key executive presence trait, because stories are powerful ways to clarify, teach, inspire, motivate, and engage. Jack Welch, Tony Hsieh, and Sheryl Sandberg are examples of leaders who impart important lessons through stories. When overused, however, storytelling can look like a shtick and distract from your message. Not every situation requires a story, and responding with one when your boss wants a recommendation or an answer to a specific question can make you seem long-winded and unable to get to the point. There’s also the danger of a good story gone trite—reciting the same anecdote so often that people roll their eyes when you begin, “Did I ever tell you about that time I was trapped in the elevator with a client . . . ?”
COACHING TIP As discussed elsewhere in this book, storytelling to maximize your executive presence should have a strategic purpose—a specific objective for a specific audience. If you find yourself regularly regaling people with your tales around the water cooler, dial it back and save your best stories for when it matters.
Inspiring and persuading is what charismatic leaders do to drive engagement and motivate people to achieve a common goal. It can also degenerate into empty rhetoric and overpromising, not to mention burnout and backlash by followers. Both Jobs and Musk cultivated devoted followers, inspiring workers to throw themselves into their work and push themselves beyond what they thought possible. This devotion, however, often came at a price. Verinder Syal, a former Quaker Oats executive and one-time admirer of Jobs, was repelled by how absolute he was. As he admitted in a Wired retrospective of the man, “Jobs was like dynamite. Dynamite clears paths, but it also destroys everything around it.”
Similarly, Musk has been called out for overpromising. He’s missed deadline after deadline for the delivery of “car of the future” Tesla Model 3. The postponements led the New York Post (which is not known for its subtlety) to claim that “Elon Musk is a total fraud” and that his company is “best known for blowing deadlines and consistently falling short on production.” And his recent declarations on underground hyperloops have led some to snark that what Musk was inventing was a less efficient subway.
While few people ever reach the stratospheric success of a Jobs or Musk, the risks of losing perspective in inspiring others play out regularly in meeting rooms and boardrooms worldwide. I’ve coached many senior leaders who failed to deliver on their lofty projections and whose inspiring visions failed to materialize. Helping them regain credibility and the trust of boards and employees after those colossal letdowns takes time and effort, but by learning to balance their ability to inspire with realistic optimism and humility, they can continue to play important leadership roles in innovative organizations.
COACHING TIP When you paint an inspiring picture of the future, make sure that you caution about the risks as well. Also keep in mind that the more detailed and specific your vision, the more that people will hold your feet to the fire to deliver. So leave yourself some wiggle room: Temper your enthusiasm with a dose of reality, and underline the caveat that things could also go the other way. You’ll preserve your credibility and lose none of the excitement your vision incites.
Competence
Without evidence of competence, executive presence can only be temporary. No matter where you are on the organizational chart, your colleagues expect you to contribute value and deliver results. How you deliver on those expectations, however, can determine whether you gain their respect or simply collect a paycheck.
Having intellect and expertise is necessary for gaining the respect of leaders and followers alike. In terms of your executive presence, intellect and expertise are foundational qualities that others will value long after the sheen of your positive first impressions has worn off. But these qualities don’t always boost your leadership presence, especially when everyone else is just as smart as you are. One danger is relying on intellect and expertise to the exclusion of building genuine relationships. “My work should just speak for itself” is a complaint I’ve heard from many brilliant professionals who have been dropped from a short list of contenders for leadership positions. That complaint rings hollow. Because in a place where being smart is not a rare quality, but social intelligence is, it is the lack of that latter, in-demand quality that can diminish one’s executive presence.
Another danger is wielding intellect and expertise as a weapon against people you perceive to be less experienced, credentialed, and, well, smart. Acting like a know-it-all or snob is unlikely to gain you friends, at least not genuine ones. Nonetheless, just like that brilliant surgeon whose arrogance leads others to whisper about his “God complex,” many managers also have an off-putting belief in their own infallibility, even though they do not wear scrubs to work.
Finally, don’t let your stellar expertise in a particular field prompt you to claim authority in all fields. Your specific talent may have a halo effect, spurring some of us to deem you an all-around expert, but the likelier effect is snickering behind your back. Take astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, for instance. The widely beloved science commentator is regularly roasted in social media for his pedestrian remarks about the social sciences and humanities. For those of us who aren’t famous astrophysicists, it is even more crucial to understand that our skills and talents in one area may not translate well into others.
COACHING TIP Understand how your intellect and expertise can help you project a credible executive presence, but be sure to learn what other qualities are valued in your environment. Smarts and credentials are often the ticket that gets you into the game, but once you’re in, you have to develop other competencies that demonstrate your fitness for leadership.
Delivering results is a metric by which most corporate citizens are measured. And if you want to move up in an organization, being known as someone who “gets stuff done” will go far toward raising your executive presence.
The dark side emerges when results become the only thing that matters. Arguing that “the end justifies the means,” for instance, indicates not only a lack of maturity and judgment, but a callous disregard for the people affected by those “means.” When personal drive and a bias for action morph into ruthless ambition, you have strayed from the productive side of executive presence. Whether as a leader or individual contributor on your way up, you’ll need strong personal relationships to support you through the challenges ahead. Most people have a strong intuitive sense of what’s ethical and fair, and alienating them in the name of delivering on objectives is shortsighted. As I’ve noted in Chapter 1, three questions always on people’s minds are What’s happening? What’s going to happen next? And how am I being treated? The answer to that last question can make all the difference in how you’re perceived as a leader.
COACHING TIP Leaders achieve great outcomes through others—not on their own. Make sure you keep your finger on the pulse of people’s satisfaction, engagement, and even happiness at work. By communicating frequently, listening regularly, and satisfying both the basic and the higher-level needs of those around you, you’ll meet your targets with the support of your team and with your executive presence intact.
Acting decisively is another cornerstone to success, just as it is to the perception of executive presence. One study published in Harvard Business Review noted that “high-performing CEOs do not necessarily stand out for making great decisions all the time; rather, they stand out for being more decisive. They make decisions earlier, faster, and with greater conviction.” According to the research, even leaders who make decisions that turn out to be wrong but can later be corrected are viewed more favorably than leaders who hesitate or make no decision at all.
So when does acting decisively become a weakness rather than a strength? The study’s authors note that successful leaders also know when not to decide. It is “too easy,” in the words of former Arrow Electronics CEO Stephen Kaufman, to “get caught up in a volley of decision-making.” In other words, you might end up prizing quick decision making over the quality of the decision itself, often in a situation that doesn’t demand an immediate response. There’s also the possibility that you become stubbornly resistant to new information after having made a decision. As Tony Stark, author and chief executive of The Energy Project, puts it, “Decisiveness overused eventually congeals into certainty.”
It’s also important—especially for leaders new to an organization—to recognize the culture’s dominant decision-making style. “Move fast and break things” might work as a motto for a Silicon Valley start-up, but in a culture that expects “decision by consensus” and predictable outcomes, that motto can prompt a reputational crisis. In some corporate cultures, making decisions quickly and revising as needed is a valued trait, while in others, it might be seen as reckless and “shooting from the hip.”
Finally, by being overly quick to decide, you may deprive others of the chance to practice their decision-making skills, especially if you’re in a leadership role that involves coaching and mentoring. Delegating some decision making will also free you up to focus on other aspects of the job.
COACHING TIP Familiarize yourself with the decision-making styles that your organization values. While acting decisively is widely valued as a core leadership trait, strike a balance by knowing when more time for deliberation and information gathering makes sense and would improve the outcome. You can also use your skills to empower others to practice decisiveness by starting with low-stakes decisions and working their way up from there.
Personal Brand
A personal brand is your aspirational idea of how you’d like to be seen by others. It’s something that you have some control over and that can help you convey the executive presence you need in order to influence those around you.
Having status and reputation is the root of executive presence, at least initially. A stellar educational background, significant professional and personal achievements, and a network of influential allies and mentors, as well as endorsements and testimonials from prestigious clients, can all open doors and inspire respect in those you meet on your career path. And while building your reputation is essential to maintaining your executive presence, the flip side is that you may be seen as spending too much time and effort on attending to how you are viewed by others. Are you always the first to volunteer for the most difficult assignments? Is your voice usually the loudest in meetings? Do you appear to have the answer to every question? Does it seem you’re a card-carrying member of the in-crowd at work and that each anecdote you share prominently features your hallowed alma mater or internship at Google?
By being too invested in the image you’ve so carefully created, you may also, unconsciously perhaps, try to protect this image at all costs, loathe to admit mistakes and unwilling to accept constructive feedback when a course correction is required.
COACHING TIP The higher your status and the loftier your accomplishments, the less you need to harp on them to promote your executive presence. It’s a balancing act that kicks in once everyone is aware of your status and reputation, after which you should err on the side of humility and give others the chance to shine. Because humility is also a highly valued leadership trait, blending it with your achievements is a powerful booster of your executive presence.
Projecting calm under pressure is a quality that followers and bosses alike expect from a leader. During a crisis or in times of uncertainty, we look to our leaders to reassure us that all will be well and that someone is in control and has a plan. On a smaller scale, the daily occurrence of presentations in boardrooms, which exerts a more ordinary kind of pressure, often identifies those who have executive presence and those who don’t. At a minimum, we expect our leaders to keep it together, sans the palpable fear that grips so many in such a setting. On more than one such occasion, I’ve witnessed leaders having a meltdown where clear thinking and succinct answers to questions were expected. Those are career-defining moments where emotion regulation is a major asset.
So when can this asset become a liability? When it is perceived as disengagement, for one. I’ve had clients whose detached affect made them seem uninterested or even incapable of creating genuine emotional connections with colleagues. For leaders this apparent indifference is particularly problematic, because followers must feel that a leader cares about them and is enthusiastic about the future into which they are to follow him or her. Absent that, the troops at the front lines may feel they are on their own. The same applies to meetings and presentations, where appropriate passion can work wonders in how your message is received. You can’t convey urgency if you use the same voice you use when you drop off your dry cleaning. Whether you’re sharing good news or bad, whether you’re asking for something or selling something, your audience needs to feel that you care personally about the outcome, or the spark won’t transfer.
And while cooler heads may prevail in times of crisis, they may also be underresponding to urgent situations. By focusing so much on keeping everyone calm and steady, you may gloss over or fail to recognize how dire a situation really is. One notorious example is that of Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who announced a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center that “I am glad to reassure the people of New York . . . that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink.” This was, tragically, not true, and almost certainly led those in and around Ground Zero to forgo live-saving respirators. While Todd Whitman has apologized for her error, over 1,000 people have since died as a result of exposure to toxins in and around the site.
Fortunately, most of our workplace emergencies are less grim, involving the loss of time or productivity rather than lives. But automatically responding with “no problem” to real problems can frustrate your colleagues with your perceived ignorance or indifference.
COACHING TIP Adjust your emotions to the needs of the situation. If you’re generally calm under pressure, you’re starting from a good place. Analyze each situation to see if, to effectively convey your message, people need your enthusiasm, compassion, reassurance, inspiration, or a hint of your frustration and even anger. Showing your colleagues that you are emotionally engaged can open the door to collaboration and the proactive sharing of information, which otherwise may be closed to you.
Possessing a compelling physical appearance is cited as an integral element of executive presence in every survey published on the subject. It’s also a highly visible aspect of our personal brand. And while we have limited control over physical attributes such as height, size, and physiognomy, we do have significant influence over the rest of our appearance. In fact, by “looking the part” we often demonstrate good judgment and allow others to imagine us in a leadership position. Marian Wright Edelman, the civil rights activist and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, recalls her attendance at a meeting with rural Mississippians “who heard there was a Black lady lawyer in town . . . and who came to look for and at me.” However, “When they saw me in blue jeans and an old sweatshirt, they were crestfallen,” she said. “I never wore jeans in public again in Mississippi.”
A caution when it comes to appearance: While you might like to express your personality, the organizational culture in which you operate would often prefer that you downplay it to show you fit in. This is a tricky area; my thoughts are based not only on my personal judgment and observations of countless corporate cultures over the past two decades, but also on comments I’ve received from leaders about the effect of appearance on their colleagues’ prospects for advancement. Often, especially in more conservative environments, excessive grooming or over-the-top couture may put you on HR’s short list of uncomfortable conversations to be had. For example, clothing that is too tight or revealing, no matter how attractive, is sure to put your executive presence, and cultural appropriateness, into question. One of my architectural clients wears a large amount of jewelry; that habit put her in the crosshairs of her ultraconservative boss, the 100-year-old company’s first female president, whose unassuming style contrasted sharply with her “flashier” colleague’s. Be wary of hairstyles and facial hair, too; one hirsute 30-something financial manager at a software firm where I conducted a leadership program asked me what I thought of beards. What surprised me wasn’t his question, but the quick sideward glance and smirk he cast in the direction of his boss. The boss’s eye roll and audible sigh left little doubt what he thought of this trend among millennials and gen Z men. In the same vein, I could spill some ink on the subject of tattoos, but I think you’re onto my point. What’s acceptable or even celebrated in one organizational culture is frowned upon in another. What’s more, being seen as someone who appears to spend extraordinary effort and time on his or her appearance can, rightly or wrongly, lead others to believe your priorities are not aligned with organizational values.
COACHING TIP Learn what’s valued and accepted in your organization and what would push the boundaries of the collective comfort zone. You then have a choice: authentic self-expression with the risk of an informal organizational narrative excluding you from certain opportunities; conformity, where you mostly fall in line and show your rebellion in the form of red socks; or some middle ground, where your brilliance allows you to push the envelope in a way that’s not just tolerated, but seen as an integral part of your unique personal brand.
Projecting confidence is a critical component of executive presence. It’s the driveshaft that makes all the other parts work. Without it, you wouldn’t credibly project calm under pressure, you wouldn’t be able to speak truth to power, you wouldn’t be able to manage conflict or hold others accountable, and you wouldn’t be able to engage and inspire people.
Too much confidence, however, or, more accurately, arrogance, recklessness, and overcertainty, can derail promising careers.
Professionals with highly specialized knowledge or an exalted status—certain types of lawyers, for example—have been particularly known to indulge in these delusions of grandeur. Not that other professions are immune, mind you. Accomplished business leaders at any level of management can fall prey to an inflated sense of self, especially those who surround themselves with sycophants who insulate the leaders from corrective feedback. The annals of leadership are packed with stories of highly intelligent people who bought their own press and subsequently failed, spectacularly, at their jobs. The signs are clear to everyone but them: They overestimate their abilities, competencies, and importance. They fail to acknowledge their limitations. They take risks without considering the consequences. They reject input and negative feedback, and they refuse to take responsibility for their mistakes, choosing instead to blame others. Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Weinstein Company, was so overconfident in his status as the linchpin of so many Hollywood careers that he behaved abhorrently for years, until the #MeToo movement toppled him.
COACHING TIP Surround yourself with people whom you trust to be straightforward and honest and who aren’t depending on you for income or support. Check with them regularly to learn about your perceived strengths and weaknesses and to get ideas on how to improve and grow. Practice showing humility and admit when you don’t have all the answers. The higher you sit, the more that vulnerability makes you appear appealingly human, enhancing your status rather than detracting from it.
Having interpersonal integrity is a powerful trait that concerns your behaviors toward others. At its most basic, it involves your ability to remember who people are, what they do, and what conversations you may have had with them. One leader at a manufacturing plant who was in one of my workshops seemed to be having a rough day, and I asked if I could help with anything. Through tears she told me that her cat was in the hospital and might be suffering from kidney failure. I said I was sorry; having a 20-year-old cat myself, as well as two 17-year-old dachshunds, all of whom are like children to me, I added that I hoped the cat would recover quickly. Three months later I returned to the company for another workshop and ran into the leader with the cat. When I asked, she said her beloved pet had passed on. Two days later the firm’s HR leader stopped me in the hallway to say how much it meant to her colleague that I remembered our conversation months earlier. Having interpersonal integrity means you care about the people you work with and show it in your interactions with them.
But you can lose your perspective on this quality by placing inordinate weight on maintaining harmony and protecting people’s feelings, and doing so at the expense of holding people accountable and having the tough conversations in which leaders frequently need to engage. I’ve seen many leaders who let close relationships and personal feelings for someone interfere with doing what’s right for the business. To be sure, I’m not advocating that you’re all business, but rather that you maintain a balance between being an inclusive leader who acknowledges people’s contributions and shows concern for their well-being and one who can spell out business expectations and hold people to them. This potent blend of leadership styles can earn you the respect and the engagement of employees and spare you from being labeled a “pushover.”
COACHING TIP Practicing self-awareness will help you perceive if your interpersonal integrity at work is in balance. Some questions to ask yourself include: Do people seem to feel comfortable sharing their personal issues with me? Do these conversations dominate our individual interactions? Do people try to take advantage of my kindness and compassion? Do I have trouble getting results from people? Do I impose consequences when people don’t follow through on their commitments, or do I seem to be having the same conversations over and over without getting results?
Courage
Holding people accountable is a trait every leader should master in order to do what a leader does—achieve important outcomes through others. It starts with creating clarity around expectations and capabilities and gaining agreement on milestones and definitions of success. It includes providing regular feedback so people know where they stand in terms of their performance. And it requires the courage to levy consequences when expectations aren’t met and results are continually lacking. Leaders who follow through on holding people accountable—they are in the minority according to research—can count on the fact that their executive presence benefits from their resolve.
A drawback emerges, however, when leaders push too hard on any of the stages of “holding people accountable.” Leaders and followers are well advised to partner in the process, rather than having the former simply imposing expectations, timelines, and success metrics on the latter. On the surface, such partnering may look like micromanaging and create the impression that the leader is “rigid,” a “stickler for rules,” or a “taskmaster,” but enlightened leaders know the value of providing their teams with just the right mix of direction, autonomy, support, and appropriate check-ins.
COACHING TIP When you’re setting expectations, get input from your team. Are your goals realistic? Timelines reasonable? Success metrics fair? Does each team member have the capabilities and resources he or she needs to deliver? How often should you check in with each other to gauge progress? What should the feedback process look like? Discussing these issues up front ensures that everyone is on the same page and that unwelcome surprises are minimized.
Speaking truth to power is yet another quality that surveys on executive presence have found to be a key trait of successful managers. This characteristic requires a strong moral core and the courage to stand up for what you believe, especially when speaking to senior leaders.
That said, there is a dark side even to this quality. One version can emerge when you stray from doing what’s right to being self-righteous. This may happen when you don’t trust the moral compass of your colleagues or when you view those with perspectives different from yours as inferior or clueless. As a result, instead of engaging them, you end up ignoring or even punishing them, as well as jumping to conclusions and missing out on insights that can alter your understanding of the situation. In return, your colleagues may mistrust you. You might think you’re being rigorous, but they just see you as rigid.
A simpler but no less harmful sign that you have taken a dark turn in speaking truth to power is that colleagues see you as belligerent and tactless. It’s important to speak up to authority when you see wrongdoing or when you find your values being tested, but it is also prudent to do it diplomatically, so that your message gets through.
COACHING TIP Practice taking perspectives different from your own. Engage your leaders in dialogue with genuine curiosity and the intention to learn. Choose your words carefully and explain your position by pointing to shared values that may be compromised by certain plans. After saying your piece, you always have a choice—fall in line with your boss’s decision, no matter how much it goes against your grain, or pack your bags and move on, dignity and executive presence intact.
Political Savvy
If you understand who the influencers in an organization are and how to influence them, either directly or indirectly, to meet your various objectives, you are politically savvy. Rejecting organizational politics as “evil,” “juvenile,” or “so high school,” on the other hand, is naïve and unlikely to serve you in the long run. That’s because you really can’t escape the relational dynamics that dominate the organizational beehive, no matter how “flat” the organization purports to be. Hierarchies are always in place—social or otherwise—and as Bob Hogan has correctly observed, it isn’t necessarily the best leaders who occupy the top ranks in an organization, but rather the winners of intense political tournaments. To keep from being a perpetual loser in those contests, cultivate at least some degree of political savvy.
A Cornell business professor, Samuel Bacharach, defines such savvy as “the ability to understand what you can and cannot control, when to take action, who is going to resist your agenda, and whom you need on your side. It’s about knowing how to map the political terrain and get others on your side, as well as lead coalitions.”
Networking and building alliances is one strategy that can serve you well in your quest to become politically savvy. Networking furnishes you with critical information about who has power and who doesn’t, whom to trust, whom to stay away from, and to whom you need to turn to get things done. You’ll also need to network to create a strong set of allies, mentors, and sponsors, all of whom can keep you in the loop on important organizational developments, help you navigate obstacles, and help you accomplish goals when your competitors inevitably seek the same rewards and resources that you are after.
It may be easier to imagine this trait taking a dark turn than some of the others, considering that “politicking” often has a pejorative meaning. It certainly is possible to spend too much time on these relationships. An ambitious manager can become so fixated on expanding her network that she neglects to tend to the work itself. Instead of helping her team succeed, she’s primarily focused on her personal success.
Another risk in overplaying the networking card is that you’re seen as a “politician” in the sense of someone who attends to his base and sponsors while neglecting the needs of others who don’t seem as important to his career progress. In the same vein, you may be asking too much of your network without providing enough in return, which could make it look like you are simply using people to get ahead.
COACHING TIP Create a stakeholder map that allows you to see who is in your network and with whom you need to establish better relationships that benefit not just you, but also others inside and outside your organization. Connecting people with each other can go a long way in positioning your executive presence in the most positive light.
Managing up is another element of political savvy that contributes to your executive presence. Depending on your vantage point, managing up can mean a number of things—from working around your boss’s idiosyncrasies to get her support, to soothing the nerves of skeptical board members, to negotiating your way around those with more power than you. In the best-case scenario, as Alison Green notes, “It’s about working with your boss in a way that will produce the best possible results for the organization, while at the same time decreasing your own stress level.”
In managing up, however, you risk falling into a number of reputational traps. Being seen as a suck-up is one of them. Your colleagues will notice any excessive attempts at your ingratiating yourself with the boss and will likely punish you for it with derision and gossip. Your behavior won’t be lost on your boss either, and while she may enjoy your obsequiousness, she won’t respect you much for it. And if that weren’t bad enough, a study from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan found that unrestrained flattery toward one’s boss can cause the flatterer to feel resentment toward the higher-up, as the insincere act harms the flatterer’s self-esteem. That’s because most of us would feel better about getting ahead on our own merits and the value of our work, as opposed to gratuitous flattery. Further compounding the issue is the fact that this self-manufactured resentment causes the flatterer to potentially harm the boss’s social influence by undermining her with others.
Another reputational trap arises when you are so invested in your superior’s success that you set aside your own needs. In effect, you adopt your boss’s priorities as your own, neglecting your own priorities and the solidifying of your own personal brand. While it can be a smart strategic move to hitch yourself to a rising star, the downside is that you become a part of the entourage, not the star yourself.
Another danger of managing up: becoming so adept at maneuvering around a superior’s foibles that you end up manipulating him. Anyone who’s ever worked for someone else has had the experience of massaging unpleasant information into something less distasteful or deploying strategic vagueness as a means of reassurance. Used with discretion, such tactics are generally harmless to your reputation, but if they become your go-to methods for dealing with superiors, you’ll end up looking dodgy in your dealings. Even if your boss doesn’t catch on, your colleagues will likely notice how comfortable you are manipulating him. And they may just end up wondering how honest you are in your relationships with them.
COACHING TIP Check your moral compass as you manage up. Being supportive of your boss and even your boss’s boss can benefit you as much as it does them; however, if it feels like you’re compromising your values or you find that other colleagues perceive you in a way that puts your good reputation at risk, take a step back to evaluate your strategy. Get feedback from people you trust to pinpoint any issues and uncover potential blindspots. From there you can revise your managing up strategy for a more positive impact that simultaneously aligns with your values and aspirational career goals.
Generating buy-in and support, the topic to which I devoted Chapter 5, is essential to executive presence. You can’t develop such presence without motivating people to follow your lead. In fact, this ability is the cornerstone of corporate success: What is a leader without a following? True, anyone with a title and some firepower can intimidate people into compliance, but to get the genuine support of stakeholders at all levels, you must be able to generate buy-in.
While that’s easier said than done, overdoing it can lower your executive presence quotient by a few points. For instance, in your effort to get everyone on board with a change you’re driving, you may not notice that you’re browbeating people into acceptance “for their own good,” rather than acknowledging and responding thoughtfully to explicit and implicit concerns.
You may also become so focused on pushing for change that you end up doing most of the heavy lifting yourself, rather than enlisting other influencers to support you in communicating key points to various stakeholder groups. The Lone Ranger may look good on TV, but in a corporate environment he just looks sad.
Finally, by pointing to shared values as leverage in your quest to bring people around to your way of thinking, you’ve got it only half right. It is their values to which you must appeal, the alignment of which with yours holds the real key to sustained support and real buy-in.
COACHING TIP Talk to many different individuals and listen more than you talk. The reasons for resistance to a new idea may seem straightforward but may, in fact, be a Frankenstein’s monster of fears and concerns, stitched together by old alliances, conflicting interests, and a perceived loss of status. Uncovering them and responding to resistance with compassion and substance can open hearts and minds more easily than eloquent rhetoric and lofty promises.
Dealing with the Dark Side and Developing Judgment
The mythical hero Ulysses wanted to hear the song of the Sirens, but he knew that all who heard it would dive into the sea to their deaths. Recognizing that he, too, was vulnerable, he asked his men to plug their own ears, then bind him to a mast to prevent him from going overboard as they sailed past that deadly chorus.
An avid adventurer and risk taker, Ulysses was accustomed to pushing beyond the horizons, but he also had the self-awareness to know that his great passion to experience what few other men had could lead to his doom.
So how do you avoid slipping over to the dark side of your executive presence?
You can start by acknowledging to yourself that no one is immune to the emergence of that dark side. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes our strengths become our weaknesses. Especially in times of pressure or stress, but also when we simply let our guard down and fail to self-monitor, we are more likely to exhibit behaviors that could damage our reputations and even derail our careers.
To avoid these dangers, increase your self-awareness and start self-monitoring. Keep track of your behavior during both good times and bad, and study the results. Keep a daily work log in which you jot down a few notes of what happened and how you handled it. If you know that your stress increases as a deadline looms or as the date approaches for a presentation, engage in the emotion-regulation strategies discussed in Chapter 3. And if you have a trusted colleague who’d agree to give you a heads-up when you appear to lose control, lean on your colleague for support.
To get a handle on your reputation and learn about potential blind spots that may weaken your executive presence, seek feedback from others. Chapter 2 explores the 360-degree feedback process; by asking bosses, peers, and people who work for you about their observations on your strengths and weaknesses, you can get a good panorama of perspectives. (Best to allow them to do this anonymously to get the unvarnished truth, rather than a sugar-coated version.)
The point of gathering all this feedback is to increase and maintain your self-awareness. But this gathering won’t do much good for you if you don’t change problematic behavior based on what you learn. This may seem obvious, but I’ve seen too many careers derailed where leaders simply sat on the feedback or took only nominal corrective action.
If the required changes seem overwhelming to achieve on your own or if you don’t know where to start, check with the development professionals in your organization for guidance or engage an executive coach. When it comes to developing a positive executive presence, the worst you can do is nothing.
In Chapter 11 you’ll learn to see yourself as a developing personal brand. You’ll understand the foundational qualities that underlie strong brands and learn how to leverage this knowledge into an action plan for acquiring an executive presence that resonates.