Have you ever been told you need to work on your “executive presence” and walked away thinking, what does that even mean? In this Talk About Talk episode, you’re getting a front-row seat to one of Dr. Andrea Wojnicki’s live training sessions. Andrea reframes the way we think about executive presence, calling it what it really is: leadership presence, and shares five concrete strategies to help you build it. You’ll also hear live Q&A from the audience on everything from dressing for presence, to navigating small talk in a high-stakes geopolitical moment, to showing up credibly across cultures. Executive Presence 2.0 by Sylvia Ann Hewlett – https://amzn.to/4bGiZex CONNECT WITH ANDREA 🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/ 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ ✉️ Andrea’s Email Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ 🟣 Talk About Talk on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503 🟢 Talk About Talk on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3afgjXuYZPmNAfIrbn8zXn?si=9ebfc87768524369 📺 Talk About Talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube TRANSCRIPTION Andrea Wojnicki: Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I coach ambitious professionals to improve their communication. So you can achieve your career goals. Rethinking Executive Presence: From Vague Feedback to Actionable Skills This episode is a little bit different from most. You’re gonna hear a live training session that I ran recently, focused on leadership presence and executive presence. In this episode, you’re gonna learn my framework for leadership presence, and you’re gonna hear five different strategy that you can choose to adopt to help you boost your leadership presence. You’ll also hear live questions from the audience for this session. I hope you enjoy it. Here we go. Welcome everyone. We are here today to talk about executive presence. So if you’re here, I’m guessing that either. You are a very ambitious person who has looked around at the folks around you that are knocking it outta the park in terms of their career. And you’re like, what is different about them? And I have people who come to me, and they’re like, it’s communication, but it’s more than communication, Andrea. It’s their executive presence. So that might be you, or you may have been told by someone, maybe a mentor, or maybe even your boss. It might have come up in your annual review that you need to work on developing your executive presence. I hear this a lot from folks. So the good news is I do a lot of thinking, writing, and coaching about executive presence. I’m gonna be encouraging you in the next hour to start to think about executive presence in a little bit of a different way, but a way where you can get traction. So here’s my promise to you. I’m gonna share with you a framework for how you can think about this sometimes nebulous topic or vague topic, you could say in a way that can really help you get traction in developing your executive presence. And I’m also gonna share with you, I’m a, for those of you who know me, I’m a big fan of the power of three, but I’m actually gonna share with you five different strategies or tactics that can help you establish this elusive executive presence. And so my challenge to you is to identify which one or two of these five that I’m sharing with you that you can adopt for yourself. So consistent with being, you know, focused on the power of three, we’re really gonna go through three things. First of all, we’re gonna talk about what executive presence is, and this is where I think I might surprise some of you with how I think about defining executive presence. The second thing. I’m gonna share with you the five different ways of establishing executive presence. And the third thing is, I’m gonna share with you an opportunity for you to work with me. It’s a program that I have to help people establish their executive presence and beyond, and then we’re gonna open it up for an open q and a, which is truly, it’s become my favorite part of doing these live coaching sessions. What Is Executive Presence—and Why It Feels So Vague So, as I said, some people. Are sent to me by their boss to work on their executive presence, and some people proactively come to me. And interestingly, something that I’ve noticed, and I’ve been reading a little bit about this lately, many people are not a big fan of the term executive presence. And there may be a couple reasons for this. The one that I think is very valid is that executive presence seems very subjective, right? It’s like you know it when you see it, but how do you actually define it? And in fact, some people have told me, and I think that this is a very eloquent way of putting it, that being told that you need to develop your executive presence can sound like vague coded feedback. That means you don’t have the it factor and you probably never will. I’ve heard those exact words from a couple of my clients, and they’re like, Andrea, I need to figure this out. And I’m like. It can be subjective, but we’re gonna turn it into something that’s a little bit more tangible or quantifiable, like real skills spec. We’re gonna specify, forget this vagueness, forget this coded feedback. We’re gonna make it into something that where you can get some traction. So when I ask people to define what they think it means, usually what comes up is something around gravitas. And inspiring people. So it’s a combination, often of gravitas, which I would say is a synonym for confidence as an executive, right, and inspiring people. And I would push back on that definition. I would say that sounds a little bit like a definition of effective leadership in general. There is a book, which I have over here by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, that is one of the best books I’ve read on executive presence, and she recently republished it. It’s called EP, as in Executive Presence 2.0, and she says there are three ingredients based on her research in what comprise executive presence. It is in fact, number one is gravitas. Number two is communication skills, and number three is what she calls how you show up. So your physical presence, and it’s kind of in that order, right? So if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna do one thing, it’s establishing gravitas, and then it’s communication skills, and then it’s how you show up. When I read this book, I thought to myself, for those I see some people in the room here that I’ve coached before. You probably know that I coach people on all of these topics. I would consider gravitas and confidence to be. A communication skill. Of course, communication skills are communication skills, and how you show up is certainly a communication skill. So I say great executive presence is all about communication. So that’s why we’re here, and that’s why I’m here to coach you. I wanna read to you the definition from Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book about what she says executive presence is, it’s something to think about here. She says, executive presence is typically perceived as consisting of three elements in descending order of importance, gravitas, skillful communication. The right appearance having, and she tells a story about showing up for her first job, interview out of college, dressed completely wrong, and how she attributes that to the fact that she didn’t get the job. So a lot of people say, well, how I dress doesn’t matter. It matters. People see you often before they hear a word that comes outta your mouth. So I would say that this is a great start, but based on my years of coaching. Hundreds of ambitious professionals, leaders, and aspiring professionals and leaders. I’ve noticed a trend, and I’m gonna share a framework with you. I’m also gonna encourage you to think about this executive presence in a different way. So I’m gonna start sharing my screen here. I want you to rethink executive presence. Because of the issues that I said before that it may be vague coded feedback. Some people also say when they think of executive presence, they think of like an old school 1990s. Dictatorship, authoritarian style male in a standing behind a podium, in a blue pinstripe suit. I know some of you, I see some names where we were hanging out in those days, and that was what an effective leader with executive presence looked like. Okay? From Executive Presence to Leadership Presence So I’m encouraging us now to rethink this and maybe call it. Leadership presence, and I would say leadership presence, ’cause that’s really what we’re aspiring to, right? Leadership presence is the ability to establish credibility and create impact. So you’re doing things, you can see there’s this upward arrow, right? You are doing all the things. Maybe some of the things that Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the author of, of EP 2.0, all of the things that she talked about will help you establish credibility so that you can create impact. And by the way, what is impact? I turn the question back to you. What is your goal? Are you looking to get promoted? Are you looking to get a new job? Are you looking to be heard in meetings? I hear this all the time. I don’t say a lot in meetings, Andrea, and when I do, people ignore me, and then someone else will say something similar, and they’ll get all the attention. I literally had this conversation last night in a coaching session. So impact can be big or small, right? Being heard, it can be having people congratulate you after you give a formal presentation. It can be a new job, it can be a promotion, it can be any of these th
