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The Keys to Executive Presence

One of the most pivotal workplace relationships is the one we have with ourselves. When we believe we are worthy, then we act as if we are worthy and achieve unbelievable results through what has been called “executive presence,” or that air of leadership that pervades our personal brand and follows us wherever we go.

In other words, executive presence is how we show up, the image we present, and how effectively we communicate. Many people talk about executive presence, but they don’t all agree on its definition. The Center for Talent Innovation did some groundbreaking research on this topic. The study breaks executive presence into three main components:

• Gravitas. This is the unspoken “weight” you carry around with you evoking leadership qualities and inspiring others to follow you. Gravitas is the kind of seriousness that lets others know you mean business and that you expect the same of them.
• Communication. How we communicate is not just about the way we speak to others, but what we say. Are we truthful, diplomatic, and thoughtful, or simply tossing off bumper-sticker platitudes we’ve read on our favorite leadership blog? People like to know you’re authentic and true to your word, and nothing conveys it like an open line of communication that gives as good as it gets.
• Appearance. This is not just your physical appearance, of course, but also the important, higher-level issue of how you “appear” to others as you circulate around the office. It’s how you comport yourself at meetings and the general, overall image you present as you go about your day. Do you wonder about your appearance? If not, you should. And even if you do, you may want to look past your mirror at the way you act as well as how you look.

At the Half The Sky Leadership Institute, we try to help women understand how they “show up” at the workplace—that is, how to craft their own individual executive presence. Make no mistake: This is not about being the best salesperson but about becoming confident in your skills and learning to deliver. It’s about showing up as a leader in a way that meets the expectations of others. And a key part of that is being comfortable with this presence and having it work for you.

Ellen East, chief communications officer of Time Warner Cable, explains, “I think confidence boils down to being comfortable in your own skin, and I don’t think that manifests itself in women in any one way, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. I think a lot of women find confidence in dressing appropriately for the event or the occasion. In kind of making sure they aren’t going to stand out. And other women find confidence in making sure that they do stand out. They’ll wear the brightest dress in the room, or have the crazy hairstyle, or whatever. And I think that’s terrific, that women have reached a point that they can express themselves and feel confidence looking the way they want to look.”

Executive presence is not about presenting a false front or polishing your facade until it shines, but carefully cultivating your self-image to achieve your full potential. In terms of influencing, this is where you have to flex your muscle, your power, and your understanding of the key strengths you already have—and need to develop.

The Power of Presentations

You can be quite a powerful leader in your own right, but … do people know it? Part of executive presence is communicating in such a way that you are heard as well as recognized. Every leader, over time, builds a successful brand—but not by accident.

Various aspects of leadership include the ability to build relationships, garner resources, and complete tasks. But, at least for women, one little known secret about successful leadership is the ability to do things to help people know who you are. Branding is about visibility. It’s about making sure that others know what you look like and how you “show up.” In other words, your personal brand is how you display your executive presence to individuals as well as to groups.

Speaking—actual speech patterns, tone of voice, and credibility—matter more than you may think. Take it from Natalie Nixon, principal of the consulting agency Figure 8 Thinking, director of the strategic design MBA program at Philadelphia University, and a facilitator at the Half The Sky Leadership Institute. When it comes to speaking with confidence during presentations, Natalie says, “This is one of the things that I find myself counseling my senior-level fashion management students whom I teach at an undergraduate level. They tend to be mainly women and they also tend to speak with that ‘up speak’ at the end of their sentences, where it sounds like they have a question every time they say something. I always remind them that you can’t go into industries speaking that way if you want to be taken seriously. You have to make declarative statements and speak in sentences that end with a period.”

Part and parcel of that presence is how you “present,” at meetings, during conference calls, and in both formal and informal presentations where you’re called upon to provide succinct information in a meaningful and understandable way. I can’t stress enough how critical this skill is, not only to executive presence but to leadership as well.

In a variety of ways, in dozens of applications, you have to be able to rapidly synthesize an idea, present it to a group of people, and provide feedback. If you are uncomfortable with speaking in public, joining Toastmasters or practicing skills with your boss or another mentor are critical for achieving success.

Dressing for the Job You Want

There is no denying that one of the critical factors of executive presence is dressing for the part. Of course, your knowledge, performance, skill set, and energy all contribute greatly to your executive presence. But unfortunately, women are judged on how we dress. Think of wardrobe as the key to the door that gets you into the right room.

Research shows that depending on your work environment, your appearance can help you get opportunities, and it can help you miss out on them too. Never underestimate its importance. Remember, books, seminars, articles, and workshops exist solely to discuss appearance—what and what not to wear.

Again, not every organization is the same. Some companies thrive on diversity; they welcome employees with unconventional appearances. Still, in most corporate environments, the onus is on women to look, act, and dress a certain way. This requires many of us to make compromises.

I know I am judged because I am a larger woman. I have to be aware of how I am dressed when I show up. The same goes for younger women or even petite women who may be judged because of their appearance. Women who dress in a manner that is considered provocative are judged harshly as well. Clothes that are too tight or too short may make an impression that distracts people from what you want to say about yourself. Many of the women who come through Half The Sky programs find that after they improve their outward appearance, people begin to treat them differently.

The key is finding a look that works both for you and the environment you work in. Once you hit on an appearance that is both comfortable and appropriate for the workplace, you can then concentrate on the perhaps bigger issues that go hand in hand with your appearance to create a strong, brand-conscious executive presence. Body language, posture, eye contact, a firm handshake, and energy—these factors all affect our brand. Maybe they shouldn’t matter, but they do.

How you dress and carry yourself communicates a message to your company, your clients, and your peers about how you feel. Dressing for the job you want and being appropriate for your environment signals to others you are confident in yourself. As a size 20, I often say, “If you can’t hide it, decorate it.” Create an image that enhances and communicates your best self.

Each of us has a brand in the workplace that’s part and parcel of our professional reputation. In every encounter, scenario, presentation, task force, and team meeting, this brand is being formed and reformed, reinforced, and reevaluated. It all leads to one thing: your executive presence.

Making an Appearance:
Executive Presence, Gravitas, and You

You have a workplace presence, whether or not you know it, understand it, or acknowledge it. According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the author of Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success (HarperBusiness, 2014), “Executive presence will not earn you promotion after promotion, but lack of executive presence will impede your ability to get as far as you want to go. Quite simply,” she adds, “promotions are not just functions of ability, values, or the numbers you hit, but also rest critically on how you are perceived.”

Gravitas alone won’t make you a leader, nor will communication or appearance if they exist in isolation. But together, all three create an executive presence that’s hard to ignore and even harder to deny. Since we’ve already addressed gravitas, let’s move down the list to appearance and discuss how the way you look affects your rate of success.

As I’ve said, it’s important to dress appropriately for the environment in which you work. I don’t care what’s written in the employee manual. Every company has a dress code—written or unwritten—and it might not be readily apparent until you’re actually working there.

Take note and study what the other woman leaders are wearing, what looks best, and who is the best dressed. Determine how you can best merge your personal style with the workplace dress code.

When it comes to appearance, here are the kinds of things that can trip women up:

• Skirts, pants, or tops that are too tight, too loose, or otherwise inappropriate
• Bra straps or panty lines showing
• Clothes that are too provocative or revealing
• Heels that are great for a club but not appropriate for the work environment
• Hairstyles or hair colors that are too flamboyant and/or too conservative

I don’t want to make it sound like appearance is the most important factor. In fact, none of these factors alone—influence, skills, ability to present, appearance, or grit—can on its own define your personal brand. Here’s the thing: If you don’t get your appearance right, it’s a distraction, and nobody will listen to what you have to say. Think of your appearance as the keys to the car. You won’t go anywhere if the keys don’t fit.

However, the more appropriate your appearance is for the workplace, the less of an issue it becomes. If your personal brand boils down to your being “the blonde with the short skirts,” then yes, that factor is dominating how people perceive you. And it probably won’t reflect well on how you communicate or show up.

Showing Up in Style

Make no mistake: You are judged on your appearance. At 56 years of age, I am, by all standards, overweight and a size 18–20. At one time in my career, I weighed more than 380 pounds and was a size 4X.

No matter what my weight, however, I worked really hard to dress well, and I was always well groomed. I also wore the best clothes I could afford and did whatever it took to make myself as stylish and polished as possible, because I knew when I walked into the room the first thing that people were going to think was “fat.” The other perceptions people have about plus-size women tend to include “stupid,” “sloppy,” “lazy,” and “incompetent.” None of these perceptions are positive.

Now, my health is important to me and I have worked hard to lose weight and shape up over the years. But I still have a long way to go. I share that with you because these were some of the barriers I had to push out of my way each and every time I walked into a room. I had to enter with my head held high, my shoulders back, making eye contact and with an executive presence that matched or exceeded that of everyone else there. I had to have the full package—communication, appearance, and gravitas—despite what I looked like. I had to cross that barrier with every single person who met me for the first time.

In our program at Half The Sky, we have women who come in who do not look like executives. Their internal competence and their external appearance are incongruent. It affects their overall presence and weakens their brand—not because they are being unfairly judged but because their appearance is part of the message they’re sending. If it’s unprofessional, it says, “If I am not taking care of myself, then I am not going to take care of your company, either.”

We also see women who are uncomfortable with their body type. They appear, for lack of a better term, “sloppy.” In one case, after our second session, once we felt a little more comfortable with each other, I asked a woman about her clothing. She told me that she was “not feeling very good” about herself.

Politely but firmly, I told her she didn’t look polished or put together and I worried about whether or not people would engage with her. She took the words to heart, went out, invested in some new clothes, and, the next time I saw her, looked like a completely different person. She told me that her boss mentioned how good she looked and she asked him why he hadn’t said anything to her about her appearance before. He replied that “he didn’t know how to mention” it to her. This example just goes to show that people are quietly judging you even if they don’t say so.

One thing I try to share with the women I work with is that when you feel good about yourself, appearance becomes a habit, not a special event. In other words, you don’t just dress nicely when the big boss is coming, but you look forward to looking professional in every circumstance because you know the value of your personal brand. For better or worse, how you look affects how you show up, so it’s important to show up in a way that is both professional and appropriate for you.

How to Shine Your Own Light: Five Tips for Showing Up Strong

I have a client—we’ll call her Terry—who perfectly embodies this unwillingness to self-promote, often at her own expense. For instance, every time Terry gets in front of her board of directors, she plummets. One reason is that she doesn’t really have strong relationships with the board, so she goes in cold and gets more and more uncomfortable as the meeting progresses. Any criticism, either real or perceived, makes her feel under attack and she is instantly on the defensive.

As a result, she really doesn’t show up well at these meetings. She is also what you would call a “direct” leader, and we all know how men—particularly groups of men—respond to that! She often wondered if she should adjust her style for these meetings, but we dug deeper to see if there was anything that she was overlooking in terms of results.

Ultimately, Terry realized she wasn’t collecting enough metrics when she was preparing for these meetings. If the CFO drilled down on something she wasn’t prepared for, her default reaction was to get flustered and emotional.

Terry did her homework, demanding more accurate and timely information, and she was able to provide the board with the data members wanted. Now that she’s better prepared, she’s cooler, calmer, and more collected before, during, and after these board meetings. We also worked to adjust her personal brand at these meetings and elsewhere in the organization. We talked about her leadership style in the context of a lamp with a dimmer switch: Sometimes, depending on your environment, you don’t need the 100-watt bulb. You can use the dimmer switch to raise and lower your energy and power as needed.

If you or someone you know is struggling with workplace brand, consider my Five Tips for Showing Up Strong:

1. Put together a package that’s right for the environment. There is no blank template I can give you for putting together a smart, sophisticated, professional package that will wow your workplace. That’s basically because, now more than ever, the workplace dynamic is shifting. While one corporate culture may, in fact, covet the smart, sophisticated look, another (say at an advertising agency, computer game company, or software startup) may embrace funky, spiky hair and tattoos. What I can tell you is that, while you can never go wrong being yourself, it also never hurts to fit into the environment—within reason. The package does matter. Having a strong executive presence and appearance is what helps you get a seat at the table. Not focusing on this sends negative messages to leaders and clients and will keep you from getting to the next level.

2. Build your network. Building a strong network is important in order to develop relationships with people at all levels of the organization. This gives you a “safety net” of people who can give you deadlines, deliverables, and guardrails around what does and doesn’t work in the organization. Some might call that mentoring, but this is a less formal and more populated form of getting exposure and learning at the same time.

3. Conduct an internal audit. It’s also important to know your strengths, so you can capitalize on them, but also having a strong sense of your lack of ability or skills in certain areas so that you can shore those things up. You can build confidence by exploring what your skills are via an honest, sincere, and thorough internal audit. Develop those skills, one by one, until you have more confidence around them—and in general.

4. Know your tolerance for risk. It’s important to know how comfortable you are with risk so that you can gradually start moving beyond your comfort zone. Risk taking is important because not only does it build your confidence; it also helps you grow as a leader. In many of my speaking engagements, I show a video of a young girl on top of a mountain. She asks her ski instructor how far it is down. She is obviously terrified at the top of the mountain, and as she skis down you hear her screaming. But when she gets to the bottom, you see her shadow posed as if to say, “Oh, that was nothing!”

5. Recognize that fear is a liar. As you build your confidence, you can step outside your comfort zone and accomplish things you never thought were possible. When we don’t take risks, we allow our fear to paralyze us. Fear is a liar. It robs us of opportunity, of advancement, and, above all, of confidence. Taking risks helps us to combat and, eventually, master the negative self-talk that keeps so many women right where they are. Dawn Callahan, CMO of Boingo Wireless, whom we met in the Introduction, tells us, “One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that everybody feels terrified. And so when you realize that, ‘Oh my God, everybody is in the exact same scenario,’ it really takes the power out of it.”

Obviously, if these things were all you had to do to build confidence, I’d be concluding this book rather than just warming up! But these tips are a great “starter kit” for working on your confidence right here, right now.

Counting on Communication

In addition to gravitas and appearance, two other factors that affect your executive presence are your written and verbal communications. Ask yourself: How well do you convey your messages across multiple platforms, including in person, on conference calls, one-on-one, and in groups? Also, are you able to synthesize information effectively, accurately, and concisely? Basically, are you someone who is able to articulate an idea to others? While appearance and gravitas are prime leadership real estate, don’t neglect communication in your climb to the top.

One of the biggest gaps for people as they try to move up in their careers is their ability to present and speak. In our program, we help women to become better presenters. The training touches on everything from the materials that they use to their physical presentations. One critical focus is voice. How you use your voice matters significantly.

When you speak in a particularly high-pitched voice, you begin to irritate others and lose your credibility. It doesn’t matter what you’re saying; if folks can hear only a certain tone, you are no longer communicating effectively. Sometimes what we say is perfectly credible, but how we say it loses credibility through the pitch of our voice or an impatient, snide, or rude tone.

If your voice runs high when presenting, or it sounds like you’re asking questions when you’re actually making a statement, consider picturing a period at the end of each sentence. If you’re too loud or too soft, moderate your tone so that it sounds more even-keeled. If you’re speaking too fast, slow it down. If you put an “um” between sentences, learn to stop. All of these affectations impact your presentation. As we’ve found in our program, these small adjustments can work wonders.

Lily Kelly-Radford of LEAP Leadership, whom we met earlier, explains, “It is important for women not to give their power away by the use of voice inflection. Women will often singsong their comments, and they will likely, in the earlier stages of their career, use an uptick in their voice tone at the end of a sentence, which almost poses it as a question. A voice punctuates just like grammar, and a sentence has punctuation. It’s a period at the end.”

If you don’t think of yourself as an effective communicator, or if you have received feedback along those lines, consider taping yourself and listening to how you actually sound. Then, if you find it as grating as everyone else seems to, try to make some adjustments. When nervous, we often sound different than when we’re relaxed, so it may simply be an issue of feeling more comfortable with the material, or even ourselves, that helps to conquer our pitch problems.

Also, watch how you comport yourself when communicating, whether one-on-one or in groups. Consider whether or not your body language is appropriate for the situation. When in doubt, record yourself or have a trusted friend or mentor record you. Seeing ourselves as others see us can help us present more effectively.

Our brands are affected by how we present ourselves. One way to have more executive presence is not to be overly apologetic. It’s certainly appropriate to own up to our mistakes every so often, but … all the time? A lot of women dismiss their abilities in small ways that send a big message: “This may be a stupid question, but …” or “This might not be important, but …”

When a woman leads off with this sort of negative disclaimer, which is often an unconscious habit, it affects how people view her opinions and suggestions. Instead of stating something confidently and owning it, this person has effectively negated her own idea. Now no one has to give it any credence. Basically, she dug a hole and threw her own suggestion deep down inside—and now she’s wondering why no one considers it seriously!

Lily Kelly-Radford explains, “Because confidence is a little more complicated and involves a lot of variables, I don’t think some of those variables can be faked, but I do believe others can be faked. I think you can sort of practice assertiveness. I think you can practice posture, which is part of what exudes confidence. I think you can practice pacing until it becomes natural. And I think you can practice certain speaking skills, as well as certain elements of appearance. But, beyond that, the portion of confidence that can’t be faked would be the gravitas, which often comes with facing certain things that are difficult for you and working through them, as well as some level of experience that people often feel they don’t have.”

So strengthening your executive presence would include checking your appearance as well as making sure you’re showing the style that matches the leadership position to which you’re aspiring. What are the prevalent styles in the organization? If it’s conservative, for example, you have to be cognizant of that and, to some extent, mirror it in how you look, talk, and act.

This may not be your personal style every day, but some compromise is necessary to fit your personal brand into the organizational style. Personally, I don’t wear suits, but I do wear colors that both blend into the office flow and mark my personal style.

You have to be aware of what the workplace considers appropriate. Again, it might not be your own personal style, but see how you can blend styles to fit in while feeling comfortable and true to yourself. If you’re a younger woman, in particular, you are better served by seeing how others dress first and erring on the side of caution. Then, as you grow more comfortable with the appropriate work style, you can begin to add your own style, accessories, or flair to it. But do so gradually.

One woman I worked with—an attractive, fit blonde in her 30s—used to dress older than her age. For a long time she wouldn’t even show off her arms in the workplace. It turned out that her leader was very conservative. Now, however, she is in a new and different environment where she has much more creative freedom—and she is still user-appropriate. She wears more colors and often arrives at work in a sleeveless dress with a suit jacket. In the summer, she exposes her arms. She’s still very conservative—perhaps a holdover from her previous job—but she’s more stylish in her new environment. She just had to adapt.

And so do you.

The Takeaway

Executive presence is both a state of mind and a state of being. The whole world can see how we look, how we communicate, and how we act. But internally, our confidence tends to determine all of those factors.

When it comes to executive presence, Sara King says, “We really have to grow and diversify our experiences. At the same time, continuing to own and develop an expertise and to not let go of that says you create even more value.”

It’s as though there’s a magic formula that increases as we exhibit more confidence. Putting on your version of a power suit, standing straight, looking people in the eye, having a strong handshake—all of these behaviors tell the world that you have your “mojo” going. The more confident I am—the more I raise my hand, the more conversations I join, and the more people who see me doing it—the more opportunities I will have. That’s why executive presence is such a powerful branding tool: With it, you all but scream leadership potential.

Without it, most people won’t hear you at all.

One of the things I try to tell people, women in particular, is that you can’t fake executive presence. As Sophia A. Nelson says, “I don’t agree with ‘Fake it till you make it.’ It is an old mantra. It is one that particularly women like to throw around. And faking it is really part of the problem for us as women, because most of the time that’s exactly what we do. We’re inauthentic, we wear a mask, lying not only to others, but very much to ourselves.”

Over the course of our careers, we will be held to some very real standards. It’s not a matter of “you either have it, or you don’t,” because as we’ve seen in this chapter, with confidence, with accomplishments, and with persistence, you can steadily gain executive presence. But along the way, not everything is a “fake it till you make it” issue. You must act authentically, in a way that feels comfortable for you, and yet puts your best foot forward.

According to the Girl Scouts’ Natalye Paquin, “No one likes a phony. People will kind of smoke you out when you’re not being authentic. And it’s really taxing, and it draws on your energy if you just can’t be yourself. And so I would say just be your authentic self, because that’s the person who you know, who will be with you in the long run. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t grow, or that you have to stay the same. I’m not suggesting that at all. But, you know, you either grow or die. But just be true to who you are.”

Your outward appearance does affect how people respond to you, and first impressions (good and bad) can be powerful. Why not make sure you are appropriate and authentic? You can be who you are and still have a polished, professional, and pulled-together manner. I know that when I meet people they are expecting a CEO-level executive. A local client of mine told me that she was always impressed by how I looked when she bumped into me around Philadelphia.

If that means systematically improving your wardrobe, do it. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to wear clothes that advertise your brand in a positive and confident way. Many stores offer free shopper/stylist services, or you might consider asking for the assistance of someone in your network who always looks great. Feeling comfortable in your own skin and losing the critical voice we often use when we talk about ourselves goes a long way in exuding a positive executive presence.