In the latest installment of The Power of Your Personal Brand Series, we’re talking about a topic ALL of our clients who want to be successful leaders deep dive into: Executive Presence. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!
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The Power of Your Personal Brand Series: Developing Your Executive Presence
We just launched our new book! You can grab The Power of Your Personal Brand: A Playbook for Struggling Middle Managers Who Want to Do Big Things on Amazon or at ForthRight-People.com
In the latest installment of The Power of Your Personal Brand Series, we’re talking about a topic ALL of our clients who want to be successful leaders deep dive into: Executive Presence. This becomes an important topic as people transition from a doer to a manager. It requires earning respect in different ways and growing your credibility as a leader. Let’s explore how to develop your Executive Presence. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- Reframing executive presence as an outcome, not a model
- Anne’s cautionary story: pushing expertise too early during a Super Bowl campaign
- The “game slows down” analogy (Ken Griffey Jr.)
- A strategic leader entering a non-strategic culture, having to earn trust before pushing change
- How the mission statement evolves in stages
And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.
Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:
Show Notes
- The Power of Your Personal Brand Series: Developing Your Executive Presence
- [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [00:55] Executive Presence as one of the most searched leadership topics, especially in the doer-to-manager transition
- [01:51] Reframing Executive Presence as an outcome, not a model
- [04:15] Executive Presence is the outcome of fully activating your Personal Brand to build trust and respect
- [06:30] First lever: situational awareness and response
- [10:13] Pulling forward dormant Characteristics when your default style doesn’t fit the situation
- [12:37] Leaning on others for feedback and grace while you build that situational awareness
- [13:35] Second lever: curiosity
- [18:15] Third lever: accountability
- [21:06] April’s client example: a strategic leader entering a non-strategic culture, having to earn trust before pushing change
- [27:09] Using your Personal Mission Statement (“I want to be known for…”) as a guiding light
- [29:30] How the mission statement evolves in stages
- [33:48] Anne’s cautionary story: pushing expertise too early during a Super Bowl campaign
- [35:44] Fourth point: Executive Presence flexes
- [39:24] The “game slows down” analogy (Ken Griffey Jr.)
- [40:17] Anne’s example: shifting from facilitator to more forceful when a strategic planning session goes off the rails
- [42:31] April’s example: balancing rapport-building with delivering tough coaching feedback clients need to hear
- [46:21] Recap: Executive Presence is an outcome built through situational awareness, curiosity, accountability, and a flexible Personal Mission Statement
- Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
What is Strategic Counsel?
Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.
Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.
00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I’m Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to continue our series, The Power of Your Personal Brand. This series is based on our new book, The Power of Your Personal Brand, a playbook for struggling middle managers who want to do big things. So today we’re going to talk about a topic that’s important to a lot of successful leaders. If not all of them, it’s one of the most highly searched topics, and that’s how to develop your executive presence.
00:55
Yes, and this becomes an important topic as people transition from being a doer to a manager. It coincides with a change in expectation of value evaluators who we talk about a lot, those people that have a say in where you’re going, who now expect that you’re not only a purveyor of quality work, but you are enabling a team to be as well while helping to guide and shape the business.
01:21
So this requires earning respect in different ways and growing your credibility as a leader. This is a tall order if you didn’t pick up on that already, which is why how do I achieve executive presence is one of the most highly searched topics as Anson. Yep. And so this is definitely a struggle most successful leaders said they have endured, especially when they see executive presence as a model, not an outcome. So what do I mean by this? Well, let’s jump into how to develop your executive presence.
01:51
So first, as I just mentioned, executive presence is an outcome, not a model. So the fundamental place where many aspiring leaders get stuck is thinking that your executive presence is intrinsically tied to a specific leadership style. So we get these questions all the time and a lot of people will search this topic for this exact response, which is what are the common traits to have for executive presence? Like how do these executive leaders show up to have this executive presence?
02:21
And so a lot of them will say confidence and being articulate, decisive, savvy, charismatic. They have a level of gravitas. These are all really great qualities and we all know people who exhibit these qualities, but I think we can all say that that doesn’t necessarily make a successful leader. Like probably no leaders who have these and do very well and leaders who don’t. And this is because this list was defined in an era where
02:50
expectations of leaders were really, really different. So this is like when leaders ruled from a corner office where you were expected to make all the decisions on all the things when business deals were still primarily done over dinners and 18 holes of golf, which I know some of those are still like prevalent. They still go on and they’re still very effective. So I’m not like saying that we should throw all of that out, but I am saying that that is a time when a lot of these attributes became firmly entrenched as being, Hey, these are the
03:18
the attributes you need to have in order to have executive presence. But now we’re in a totally different time place. I mean, we have a totally different expectations from the people who work for us. Now we’re expected to be one of the people. We’re expected to create psychologically safe environments for talent to thrive. We’re supposed to now, actually we’re required now to make decisions collaboratively because there’s so many resources and sources that need to be considered.
03:47
And this is where a lot of times now businesses initiate and sometimes close digitally. So sometimes you don’t even meet your customer a lot of times or your client or your consumer face to face. Everything is done digitally. So there’s no way a single model can accommodate this wide range of business and people needs, which means executive presence can’t really be defined by a model. So we need to have a new way of thinking about it. And that new way is that
04:15
it’s the outcome of how the leader shows up. So really when the leader shows up in a way that the experience of them meets the expectations of the value evaluators, executive presence is achieved. And what defines the way we show up and experience of us? Well, I mean, this is a personal brand episode. So you’re probably like, yeah, we know this one, we know this one. And you would be right if you said personal brand. So.
04:41
How mean April really defined executive presence as the outcome of building trust and respect through fully and intentionally activating your personal brand. So April, that was a lot to get us kicked off. What do you have to say about that? Well, I mean, I think it’s another one of those interesting things, right? Because people are looking for a quote unquote formula or a model, like you said, right? Like tell me how to do it and I’ll go do it. And
05:09
In a previous episode, you made me talk about fake it till you make it. And I feel like that applies here as well. Trying to think about it like a formula or a model actually will not allow you to discover or live into, shall we say, as an outcome, your executive presence. It’ll just distract.
05:32
because you’ll do things like mirroring what other people do, or like you said, trying to identify with these traits of leaders that we’ve all known in life, which I would agree with you, sometimes these common traits are really great, and sometimes they don’t show up all that great, right? And so I think the really important thing here is to have patience, to know that it’s gonna take work. We’ve told you your personal brand takes work as well. It’s no different for executive presence or really anything that you wanna do well with intention.
06:01
you have to put the work in. And so I think this first point is really about embracing and understanding what executive presence actually is, what it looks like, and then working through your personal brand in order to get there. Yeah, I think that’s really, really well said. And really, it is a bit of a mindset shift, right? Because it is like one of those things that when we talk about the leaders we admire most is the characteristics we pull out and the characteristics we
06:30
wish maybe we had in ourselves. And we’re to get to this in the next point about why that this should be like such a relief for all of you. But if you could just kind of like settle into this episode, knowing that there’s a mindset shift that needs to occur here, that there isn’t a set of qualifications and there isn’t a set of traits that quote unquote make up the executive presence, then you have space.
06:58
for actually then pondering the next point is then, which I’m sure you guys are asking, is like, okay, well then how do you build executive presence, right? And so you build executive presence through situational awareness and response, curiosity and accountability. We’re gonna break them down and we’re gonna talk about each one with some examples. So you guys can kind of see how these come to life.
07:23
So situational awareness and response. So said differently, this is to understand what kind of leader your people and business needs to be successful. That is the key. That is what is the key change shift mindset, like swap here that you need to really embrace is that we show up a lot of times and we wanted to find our leadership style. And we think that leadership style should be blanketed in every way that we lead, but really successful leaders.
07:50
understand the point and I’ll say it again, is that they understand the kind of leader that their people and their business needs and they’d show up as that kind of leader. Right? So what you do then is once you understand again, that’s the situational awareness. You go back in to the self-awareness part and you audit your characteristics. So we talk, you know, your trades, your values, your beliefs, your points of view to determine which one should be activated through your appearance and behaviors and actions in order to have the biggest impact here.
08:20
So when you meet your people in the business where they are, that’s how you start building that respect, that leadership. And when you consistently do that, you build trust. And that’s where your executive presence really starts to then take root, is that people start to kind of see you in this way that is important in order to be able to solve for what the business and the people need. This is a tricky one for people to get their head around. I, you know, when I was reviewing this and thinking about breaking this down into a way that’s
08:50
helpful for people. think the thing to remember here is the outside, inside approach to this, right? So we talk very much about our perspective and what we do as a business is we build leaders from the inside out, right? That’s still true. But I think being able to collect that data to get a grounding in the situational awareness first,
09:15
is so important because otherwise you have nothing to start from or work from in order to decide what that response is going to be. And I think that without the situational awareness, even the most well-intentioned people are driving blind, shall we say. Yeah, that’s true. And really figuring out what is the best opportunity for me to shine in this situation, which means
09:44
showing up the way I am proud of, but also a way that can be received by others. And so you have to understand the situation you’re entering into before you do anything else in order to have a shot at a successful executive presence. I think that makes a lot of sense. mean, and that’s what’s so important is that this situational awareness leaves clues, right? It clues you in into what is important in order for you to be able to be effective in this new situation, right?
10:13
And I think a lot of times people will say then, well, this situation requires me to be more passive and I’m just not a passive person. I can’t do that. So what we would say here is maybe you can’t, maybe this is going to be some level of non-negotiable that you’re just like, it’s just too contrary to who I am. Put that aside for just a second and go into your characteristics and think about, well, if it’s not passive, that doesn’t really fit.
10:42
What are the other characteristics that helped me bridge the gap between what is authentic to me, my personal brand and what this experience requires of me. And I’m sure you’re going to find other ones. Maybe there would be some why they want you to be more passive because they want you to be a better listener or they want to the situation requires you to do more processing and you’re more decision oriented. really
11:08
take the diagnosis and really kind of go deep and kind of be like, okay, what do I have here that can work in this situation? Nine times out of 10, you’re able to pull something forward that is going to be effective in the situation. may be dormant. You may not have exercised it in a very long time, but it’s there and it’s something you can get on board with and be like, okay, yes, I can be a listener in this situation. I’m not going to be passive. I still might have some things to say or whatever you, how you’re going to find passive, but I can be a better listener and then I can,
11:38
delay maybe my response or my feedback to a time that’s a little bit more appropriate for to do that. So of course I’m like fabricating this example out of thin air in your situation may be different, but hopefully your brain is starting to think about, okay, yeah, there is a situation here where I feel like I’m supposed to be this, but I I’m not feeling like that fits. Okay, now I can go back and I can reconsider what other things I can peel forward that are going to be helpful here. Well, and I think too,
12:08
At the very least, as you’re working through that process and trying to figure out, like you said, it might be Dorman or you might not have thought about it for a long time, whatever it is, you can leverage the people around you to get there. And what I mean by that is doing the audit to get your situational awareness is not doing it by yourself. You can ask people, right? I I remember when I took the disc assessment at one of the companies I worked for, I was the only D in the whole organization.
12:37
And everyone already knew, I mean, it was a laughing matter at that point. They’re like, shocker. And I was actually had coffee with one of my former coworkers this morning and I was talking about directness and he was like, yeah, you never would have thought, right? But anyway, all of that to say, it became a matter of figuring out as the only in that situation, not turning it off because it actually was good for the organization, right? But it was
13:06
building the relationships first before I flexed too much into a space that the organization and individuals couldn’t hear or understand, and asking for feedback and help along the way. And so I think that’s just something here where it’s like, you might have to do some deep reflection and investigating. Alongside that, you can ask for grace and patience and insight from the people that are around you. And support. If somebody has that in spades and you
13:35
rely on them to maybe close that gap as well. So, all right. So situational awareness and response. Next way you build executive presence is through curiosity. All right. Now that we’ve classified executive presence as an outcome, it leads to two really important facts, which again, I said, and I alluded to that this should be relief. So first executive presence is no longer a question if you have it or you don’t.
14:05
which means is something you can refine and optimize to generate the intended impact. All right, what do I mean by this? It means that if you don’t have these specific characteristics that we listed, that doesn’t mean you can’t have executive presence, which is a lot of where people go. They go, if I don’t have this, then therefore I can never have executive presence. So therefore I can never be an executive, therefore I can never be a leader. And then it just kind of spirals from there. So that is no longer the case. Now you know that it’s going to be a
14:35
characteristics recipe that is going to create this experience of you for what is needed in this situation in order to be effective. As April said, you can start to like build that. You can start to like cultivate that. You can start to practice that. But the whole key here is you have to be curious about the feedback that you’re getting. Right. We said, and we see this a lot is that the reactions people have to you is feedback. It’s data on your behaviors and actions.
15:05
It’s not feedback and data on your personal brand characteristics. They’re reacting to how you’re showing up. So if you can look at that and you’d be like, well, that’s interesting. When I showed up like this, I got this response. I got closed arms. got denial to want to do anything. I didn’t get anybody to really raise their hand or maybe like there was no discussion and you think you expect otherwise or you know that if
15:32
it required something different, a different outcome in that situation. Be curious as to what was my role in that? How did I act or how did I behave? Um, well, maybe something with my appearance that, that helped people show up that way and had people react that way. And then you can start then to refine, you can start to test and learn. Yeah. I think the idea of curiosity is a really good lens to, as you’re doing this work, because by nature,
16:02
it puts you in the perspective of a positive place of just being inquisitive and learning. Right. And so I think if you can say, okay, it’s no longer a question if I have it or I don’t, and it’s something I can refine and optimize to get the intended impact. The next thing is to say, okay, well, how am going to go and do that? Well,
16:25
I’m gonna have to have an open mind. I’m gonna have to receive the things that are around me. I’m gonna have to be open to the fact that what got me here isn’t gonna get me there in this situation. And if I really ultimately want to figure out executive presence, I’m gonna have to extend myself into a place of curiosity, which is not always comfortable or easy, but should be thought of as
16:53
openness, I’m going to figure it out, I’m going to have the ability to find mine and embrace it. Yeah. I mean, that’s really important because it does take a little bit of the taking everything personally out of it. Yes. Yeah. Were you thinking about like workshopping yourself a little bit? And that’s really what this is all about. Again, it’s the self-awareness of understanding that these situations are going to be a little bit.
17:20
different or every situation is going to be a little bit different. And so I have to be aware of how I am showing up because my objective is to show up consistently and not by acting or behaving in a certain way, but by having the experience of me being consistent. Yes. So it’s a, it’s a higher level. So let me get to the next point. And then I think I’m going to try to tie them all three together, but I know April, you have a good example to share on this.
17:49
account. So the third way you build executive presence is through accountability. Now, the hardest fact for leaders to accept is that they don’t decide they have executive presence. Others do that. It’s their perception and their reality. And I mean, even though we’d like to be like, yep, I’ve checked the box, I have executive presence. That is not a decision you get to make. It’s other people that get to decide.
18:15
Yes, I want to trust this person. Yes, I’m willing to follow this person. Yes, I feel like this person has my best interest. Yes, I believe in the vision that this person has. All these things we think executive presence represents. You earn that. So that is the big why here. And that’s why you have to have accountability for. You have to own what executive presence looks like in the situation you’re in, because you don’t get to just say you have it.
18:44
even if you can adopt all the quote unquote traditional characteristics that seemed to, know, that everybody traditionally has said makes up and somebody a leader has executive presence, it’s situational and you have to earn it in that situation. Yeah. And I mean, this is the hardest part, right? Every single time we tell someone and they hear it for the first time that other people’s perception is their reality. Yup. There is always a reaction to it.
19:12
especially for the control freaks of the world of which I’m recovering. So I think that it is a complete mindset shift to really own that and understand that and embrace it because if you don’t, you’re never going to get there. Yeah. And I think that’s really, really important. You know, so when you pull all those three things together and you’re thinking about the fact that, you know, the situational awareness and response, you’re using your personal brand, you’re being curious about the feedback, you’re being accountable, the fact that you own this.
19:40
it all starts to then coalesce into a presence you have that you can’t really define them by characteristics. Yes, this is what I’m getting to. It’s above and beyond. It’s like it’s very nebulous. It’s a but it’s a feeling that people have. And again, everybody’s going to have different criteria that you’re checking the box on and you’re to have to be very intentional about what that criteria is and how it matters to those people. But ultimately, what you want people to do is you want people to believe in you. You want to be able to lead the people.
20:10
And that can look very different amongst the people that you are, are getting their perceptions. You’re trying to really mold their perceptions of you. So don’t think that, okay, I’ve nailed, I don’t know, being vulnerable and thinking that that meets like every single criteria. There might be different elements of your characteristics and enemy people forward in different situations in order to be able to have that executive presence.
20:38
that makes people feel that they can follow you, that they can trust you, that you’re going to be able to lead them in the right direction. So it’s starting, know when we see all this and April, I think your example is going to really help paint the picture of this. When we say all this, it sounds very complicated, but it’s not. If you just cue into the fact of you have to be aware, you have to be able to respond to that in the appropriate way. You have to be curious and you have to be accountable.
21:06
Yeah, so I’ll go through my example here that I and I’ll try to use. I try to tie all the pieces together if I can through the example. So the executive presence of one of the people that I coach is that she is a very interesting, interesting mix of high, high level strategic thinker able to distill that down into the all the operation operations of an organization.
21:33
but she starts from a very high level of strategy. Well, when she got into a new culture, we first identified that it was not a strategic culture. And it was glaringly obvious to both of us because we were both, quote unquote, new to the organization and we both consider ourselves to be highly strategic thinkers, right? So there were many, many symptoms of what was happening in this organization and why. But…
22:00
one of the other pieces of this, and this is where we get to the piece about other people decide, right, is she had to be able to bring other people along while simultaneously shutting down the, is the way we have always done this. And so I made the very blunt statement, like, well, don’t waste your time on the ones that we’re not gonna necessarily keep. This is where I become the hatchet woman, right? But select the ones.
22:28
that are gonna be foundational to the future of where you’ve been brought in to move this organization, right? And compound this also by the fact that she had to manage up to a boss who wasn’t strategic. Like I said, the organization was not strategic, right? And so one of the other pieces here was to build relationships with the entire leadership team so that they could experience and see her executive presence for what it was, right? So there was no blockage. It was being able to bring that forth and put it out there.
22:57
so that there was an authentic experience of it because she knew how she was showing up through her executive presence. And then the other piece of being that highly strategic leader that could then distill it down into operations and make things happen is that she’s not a highly emotional person, but she was dealing with highly emotional people.
23:18
And so the other piece of this was being able to rise above that while still allowing people to feel heard to the point of bringing them along and then resetting the example of the expectations for the team to hold people accountable and then having those people drive it down to ultimately get to a culture of excellence through that strategic thinking. So if I think about the situational awareness and response, right,
23:46
In this instance, this person already had executive presence, right? So from previous experience, but we still had to make sure that that was gonna be authentic to where she was now. And as part of that, we did that audit, which I said was the data, the input necessary to be able to figure out how to create this, get the respect from the organization of what her true presence really was.
24:14
being curious, like Anne said, to do the investigation, right? So you heard me say that we kept seeing symptoms of things that we were like, I don’t know, and to the point of like not being heard, right? Like we’re trying different ways in, ways in that had worked before. And it was like, none of this is really landing. What are we gonna do with this, right? So then we get to this idea of like, oh, it’s very reactionary. People get credit for checking boxes. Everyone’s chasing a to-do list. People are working in silos, right? So then,
24:43
How am I going to show up for people so that they start to see that value of who I am and they start to understand the power of my leadership in this role? How’d I do? Should I connect enough dots? Yeah, I thought you did a great job, actually. Okay. Actually, I don’t mean to sound surprised by that. I thought you did a really good job, period. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that.
25:12
And you can see though, right? So we’ve said all along that this is work and it has to be really intentional. And I think that while it sounds like a mouthful, when we say situational awareness and response, curiosity and accountability, that really is the recipe. then, I think your point’s really well taken too, and I hope people heard it, that it’s, it almost like sits above characteristics, right? Cause it’s that like combination and then experience of you. The characteristics are really honestly the foundation of building to an executive presence.
25:42
in my mind. Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. Yes, great example. And I think what’s really important to also take away here is that what worked for her in one situation didn’t work for her in another. No, right. And she didn’t come in and try to change what she was seeing in the situation. She tried to adapt to the situation first so that she can grow that credibility, that reputation. Yes. And then if she wants to make change, she can go back and do that from a place of having that connections and those relationships.
26:11
then she can influence. But I mean, it’s very hard to go in and bend everybody to your will and help people appreciate you if that is not their inclination. Totally. And in this instance, mean, she is very much the right person to turn the ship and do all of these things. But she is very much a fish out of water when you compare the profile of
26:39
typically employee and historically what has been what has worked and been valued versus what this role looks like now and should look like for the future. All right. That was a lot. You might need to listen to that section a couple of times. Yeah, I mean, it’s very nuanced. It’s very nuanced. And like I said, when you if you can adapt and like get into your brain that it’s not a model, it’s an outcome. Yes, that should help you to rectify everything we’re saying in a way that makes sense. right.
27:09
but let us give you a couple tools that help to make this a little bit more tangible. So the first one is one, we talk about it in the book, is one we talk about frequently on the podcast as well, is to use your personal mission statement as a guiding light for your executive presence. So this helps you anchor to what your intention is, right? So once you kind of do that situational awareness and response, you’ve gone through the data and you’re curious about the reactions you’re getting.
27:37
You’re taking ownership for the fact that your executive presence is something that you have to earn. You can start then to formulate that into a statement that helps you then regulate and proactively plan for how you’re going to show up. So the statement is, I want to be a person who is known for, and then you fill the blank. All right. So, and I’m sure April, maybe you can give, oh, you’re going to give an example of how your client actually used this. So,
28:06
I’ll leave that for April so you guys can have some of that continuity and I won’t just kind of insert, you know, whatever in here. But just know that the statement is, I want to be a person who is known for. And the reason why we like this, because it really elegantly reinforces the situational awareness, response, curiosity, and accountability. So it reinforces the characteristics you want to activate. So it keeps that in mind, encourages you to be curious about how to proactively think about how to show up in that way, as well as evaluate after.
28:35
if you did or not. it kind of is that, like I said, that guiding light, it’s that call it a mantra, call it whatever you want, but it helps you to filter through how am I going to be successful and then evaluate was I successful after the fact. And it sure is you’re holding yourself accountable to your value evaluators because you’re doing in the context of that experience that you want to show up with in order for people to feel like, yes,
29:01
I have executive presence and I’ve earned the right for you to trust me in that way. Yes. So if we go back to the example and I keep carrying the thread along. So the personal mission statement of this person was I want to be a person who’s known for instilling a strategic approach through action into my team and the broader organization and to make them believers in the importance of it. And so that gets to that whole point about really
29:30
getting her to a place to embrace the role and ship the organization the way it needed to go, but also bringing the people along so that their perception is their reality and they can now see a path forward through her leadership and executive presence. It speaks to the intent behind what she’s trying to do overall, but also with respect to the fact that this is where my organization sits. And there might be several of them along the way too, as you’re building.
29:59
that relationship and you’re building the credibility, you may start at a different point and continue to evolve it. that one feels maybe April, you can check me. That feels like it was one that’s like closer to the more evolved part of where she wanted to eventually get to. But it’s possible that maybe some of her earlier ones were more activated towards wanting to build that relationship initially. Is that fair to say or?
30:29
Yeah, I mean, when we first started, it was really a matter of I’m trying to think like, so for one of the earlier ones, it was I want to be a person who is known for listening to perspectives that may differ from mine, so that people feel heard. And that was one of the first steps to try to figure out like, what was happening, right? Because like,
30:56
We both came in with one understanding of the organization and we were like, well, this is interesting. And that’s where those behaviors came in. Right. So then we started to diagnose like, well, what’s happening. And that led us to, okay, we’re going to have to get here first or nothing else is going to matter. Right. And then it became, so we like kind of figured out like the people that were like under her and the doers. And I mean, there’s thousands of people in this organization. So that was a project.
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And then we very intentionally went toward what were we doing with the Boston leadership? So we kind of figured out like below, and then we were like, okay, well now what’s gonna happen? And so it became, I wanna be a person who is known for showing up with a point of view, something along the lines of, but that can be heard in an organization that presents itself differently or something along the lines of like bringing those people along, right? And one of the things that we uncovered really
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specifically there, which I mentioned in the in the kind of setup was, oh my gosh, I have a boss who is not a strategic thinker. And so there was like an inability to have a conversation where they could like understand each other. Right. So it was like, how do I learn to speak in a way that she knows what I’m thinking without coming away from those conversations with like really different next steps?
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as an example. Yeah, getting on the same page, right? On the same page. Yeah. And just like, it was another instance of like, I don’t think we’re speaking the same language, right? So you’re right. So it is right. You are right. You’re the personal mission statement has changed in this couple of years to get to the point of maturation of what it is now, where there are relationships, there is credibility, there is a rebuilding restructuring going on within the organization anyway.
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that allows her role to broaden and get bigger. But it was having to chip away at certain things in order to be able to earn her executive presence. do the big things, right? When you want to make significant changes in the organization, you need to earn your way into that. If she had started with that one, she probably would have been met with a ton of resistance. Right, right. And I mean, it’s not a knock, right?
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Organizations and cultures evolve over time, but it is such a critical moment when you’re like, I can see it so clearly, but that’s because I am from the outside. So it’s taking a beat, also speaking from experience and listening and observing and figuring out inroads, no matter how small, before you ever assert yourself to a level like that, where it would have not gone well. Right. mean, yeah, I’ve personal experience too, where I used to
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walk in, I remember walking into Fabric Care and we were doing our Super Bowl spot. And I mean, we were like, oh, two weeks away from launching. And so I was coming in at like the 11th hour. I’d already done Super Bowl several times. And so I came in with all my experience, all my knowledge and proceeded to share with everybody how they should be running this Super Bowl spot, right? And to say that that didn’t go over very well would be an understatement.
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And that was where I got the really huge reminder because, you know, my expertise I thought was going to be highly appreciated and they wanted to hear that. And that was, you know, the, um, the personal mission statement that I brought forward was wanting to be, you know, the expert and wanting to share, you know, and all those sorts of things. And then realizing that it was disrespectful to do what I did. And that’s when I learned about the different stages of the personal mission statement.
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Yeah, see, it’s where I should have started with, I need to go in, you know, and I want to be a person who’s known for understanding first, being able then to figure out where I can help and become a member of the team. And then, and then, you know, it is a really interesting thing because I felt like I didn’t have time to go do that. Right. And I know a lot of people feel like I got to get in, I got to build this quickly. And you know what?
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I can tell you from experience and April is going to say the same thing and we can say it through all of our coaching clients. When you try to fast track earning your executive presence, it never ever, ever, ever goes well and it will take as much time as it takes. But the more intentional you are, the faster it will go. Yes. That’s right. All right. The fourth point about executive presence that we wanted to cover here is that your executive presence doesn’t stay stagnant. It flexes. And I think
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This is just a culmination of what we were just been saying, but just to put a bow around this and make sure that that point is very, very clear is that your situations are gonna change. And so your executive presence is gonna, the change of the executive presence is gonna be required, right? So this is where, again, the self-awareness, the situational awareness, you have to understand what is being called for in that situation and how it is different.
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And even different people, moments, environments, they require different characteristics to activate. So it’s what I mentioned, you can’t just blanket your personal brand across all the situations and expect it’s gonna work. Because sometimes even in the same moment, you’re gonna have to flex it then even too. You’re gonna realize, ooh, this has worked in the past, but now it’s not working and either the situation’s different.
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the whatever the people are different or what the what you’re discussing is different or something that is triggering a different need that you’re going to have to adapt to in order for you to be effective. And again, as April said, this kind of rises above what our current quote unquote, what we think our leadership style is, because this is the presence we’re trying to to the experience of ourselves that we’re trying to create and that we’re trying to generate. And that presence is what’s important here.
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So like I said, and I’ll say it again, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can ride or die by certain characteristics just because they worked the most often or they’ve worked in the past. You’re gonna have to flex these in order to be sure that your executive presence is such that you are being effective in this situation and that people feel like that they can follow you. We say all the time, right, that your personal brand is not something that you set and forget. The same is true here. And…
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I think the masters of executive presence that I have been around and seen and experienced are the ones that see what is happening in the moment and are able to change course without people even really knowing that that’s what they did. And so, and the way that you see it show up looks a million different ways.
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But if you have the ability in real time to understand and be that involved in your executive presence to the point where you can see something not landing before you even fully put it out there, it’s amazing. And I just think it is, yeah, it’s a mastery. I guess that’s what I would say. And again, not that it stagnates, not that it doesn’t change. Absolutely it does. It just is.
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something that I feel like is hard to get to. It does take all the work that we’ve talked about throughout this episode, but it just, it seems natural when I see people do it effectively, I guess is what I would say. And the not noticing part is just the fact that Ann and I do this work every day all day. And I’m a three on the Enneagram, so I’m watching people’s reactions and interactions constantly anyway. And so, yeah, I think it just, it shows up because I know what…
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is happening, the mastery and the magic is that others don’t, but they continue to receive and experience that person authentically and consistently. Yeah. And I think a really great analogy here, because you know how I like my analogies is I will professional athletes. I mean, I’ve heard especially Ken Griffey Jr. said this and I and it always stuck with me. And I think someone was asking a very simple question about like how you can hit a hundred mile per hour fastball. Like it just like whizzes by. Like, I mean, it’s
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Incredible, right? And he said, there’s this at some point where the game just slows down. Uh huh. And you can see, yeah. And you can see everything much more clearly and it, and it feels like there’s more space. So there becomes more time for choice and decision. And that is the same here guys. mean, initially it’s going to feel maybe a bit overwhelming and you’re going to feel like you’re constantly, your brain’s constantly running and you’re processing, but it will slow down like.
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and you’ll be able to see things a whole lot more clearly. And it’s just gonna pop in when you’re just as you’re kind of going through the process. And it’s just gonna be very, very obvious. It’ll learn to become very obvious if you start to practice this and you start to build that tool. And you can then be choiceful in the situation, which is really the key to executive presence is not to be, I mean, we all are humans. We’re gonna get triggered. It’s just, you know, call it what it is.
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but to understand when I’m gonna be triggered, how I’m gonna adapt to those triggers, what are my natural tendencies as a result when I am triggered, and you’re be able to make better choices. so the example I wanted to give here is, you guys know I do a lot of strategic action planning, and my goal when I go in there is always to try to make sure everyone feels heard. And I try to let the conversation go if I feel like the conversation is being productive.
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But when I see the strategic action plan sessions going off the rails, I have to change my approach because my executive presence in that room is to facilitate a very productive session. And if I am not facilitating a productive session, I didn’t say we had the session has to reach certain objectives. I didn’t say the session has to be a quote unquote happy session. I just like, needs to be a productive session. That’s the executive presence that I want to be known for when I go in and I’m doing strategic action planning.
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So when I see the session going off the rails, I have a choice I have to make in a minute is like, am I gonna continue to let this go? Or do I need to pull in something different, a different characteristic? And in those cases, I have to pull in, I choose to pull in a different characteristic, which is a little bit harder, a little bit edgier, a little bit more forceful, which needs to shut down the conversation in the moment, right? And that’s a little bit like harder to…
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because those are so like contradictory or they feel like they’re contradictory. But this is where I’ve talked about before where you have to hold these like paradoxes that both can be true. I can come here and listen and I’m gonna help facilitate the listening around the room. But if it goes off the rails, I have to pull in another characteristic in order to make sure I’m maintaining my executive presence of having a productive session, which is what we’ve all aligned that we need.
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And so if I let them just continue to ramble on and go off on their, their tangents and we get to the end of session, I’m like, well, that’s it. Um, we’re done, you know, the time is up and you know, the leader looks at me going, well, what do we accomplish? That’s on me. Right. Because I didn’t facilitate it in the way that we needed to have it facilitated. So that’s my example of how you have to kind of flex and you ha and you can’t be stagnant. But when you start to practice this, you start seeing these things happen more in slow motion. You can start anticipating.
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these things and you can start to be more proactive. Yeah, I think that’s a good one. And for me, I do a lot of the coaching, right? And so I know the importance of rapport with my coaching clients and I work really hard to build the relationship first and spend time getting to know them, understanding how they communicate. I just said before, like, this is my Enneagram three, right? Like I know how to chameleon myself so that
42:59
They can hear what I’m going to say, right? However, tough love enters the arena from the very beginning. I am crystal clear about that. I tell people we named our company Forthright People for a reason. I will always be direct but respectful. However, they’re gonna hear things they don’t wanna hear and their job is to tell me if they can’t hear it. My job is to get the message to them in a way they can and then their job is to do the work and it’s not always gonna be fun and games, right?
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I feel the responsibility to give them the message they need to hear in a safe environment. If I don’t, like Ann said, I’m not holding up my end of the bargain as a coach that is committed to growth and change and development in people. I had one client tell me, and it has stuck with me forever, that she was explaining how we worked together to someone else. And the other person said, oh, I like to go to my coach because my coach makes me feel good and tells me I’m doing a great job. That is not coaching.
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So while I am building a relationship, mutual respect, trust, all of those things, I mean, it might be in the first session. If something is so glaringly obvious to me, and especially because I’ve already set the stage that I’m gonna tell you things you don’t wanna hear, I will bring it into the conversation because similar to Anne, that is my responsibility as the coach. And that is how I have to show up in order for them to make progress.
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Yeah, I love that. And I’m just going to extend that because I think that is a really good explanation of when you walk into a room and you just see people and you know that they just have presence, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you wonder, they just have this aura about them. you’re just like, God, that that person over there, there’s just something about them. Or, you know, when the speaker gets up and you know, it’s going to be a good speaker before they even open their mouth because of their presence. That doesn’t just come because they
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had some sort of magic like characteristic that is now blossoming is because they cultivated this and to make sure that their presence is something that they can identify with through their personal brand. And that aura is is in it’s the manifestation of that authenticity that April was talking about because it is who they are. Right. They’re showing up as they are. They know they’re bringing value to that room. They know that they have intent for whatever their
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for the reason why they’re in that room. And so when you look at people and you’re gonna like, again, you get that feeling like there’s just something about them. You can have that too, but you have to refine it. You have to define it. You have to practice it. It has to become a part of who you are. You can’t fake this part. You just can’t fake it. But as I said in the beginning, it’s not a set model that gets you there. It’s that connection back to who you are, that building it from the inside out that allows you that manifestation of presence.
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that people look at you and be like, yeah, that person has something. That person has something, right? That’s a great way to finish. I have nothing else. All right. I was just going to ask you, do you have anything else before I wrap this up? Okay. I feel like you already wrapped it, but. All right, there we go. I’ll just summarize real quick then. Okay. Developing your executive presence. First thing, that mindset shift, executive presence is an outcome, not a model. Hopefully you’ve gotten that because we talked about it a gazillion times throughout this whole thing and gave you a gazillion examples.
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Next, you build your executive presence through situational awareness and response, curiosity and accountability. You know what those things are, start to really indoctrinate them, think about and practice them, do the homework, do the work there to start to, like I said, it’s going to be overwhelming initially, but the game will slow down. work environment will slow down. It will start to become more natural, more automatic. Use your personal mission statement as a guiding light for your executive presence.
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know that it’s going to probably change as you mature in your recognition of others and how your executive presence is growing and developing. So there’ll be different stages. Be very mindful of what stage you’re in and what you’ve earned at that point and tread carefully. So to make sure that you are progressing at a pace that is going to be beneficial for you, but also going to be acceptable to the organization.
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And remember your executive presence doesn’t stay stagnant, it flexes. So not everything works in this, in every single situation. So be mindful of that and use that situational response, use the accountability, use the curiosity to flex how you need to show up in order to have the presence that you desire. All right, with that, go get our book.
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The Power of Your Personal Brand, a playbook for struggling middle managers who want to do big things. You can get it on Amazon. You can also get it through a local Cincinnati bookstore called Joseph Beth. So please go there, ask for our book. That always helps us out. And you can get the workbook, the accompanying workbook on our website, forthright-people.com. And you can also get the link to Amazon for our book there too.
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And with that, encourage you all to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put into practice. Cause remember Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action. we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!