What is Executive Presence?
I believe that executive presence means that you look, sound and feel like you belong in a leadership role. Presence means that you show up and look like you are present. That you are comfortable and most importantly that you belong in your position. Presence might mean looking good when you don’t feel good. Presence means owing your space – physical, emotional and relational.
Your chief executive officer, CEO, could be the most powerful spokesperson for your organization. The market wants to hear from the leader. Customers and clients want to know the CEO. The media are often eager to interview and quote an effective leader. Is your organization getting the best return on the speaking skills of your leader?
Let’s review the results of a few effective speakers and a couple who were not.
Do you want to own the room? What might that mean? How can you own the room? Owning the room is a feeling of comfort and confidence.
A successful presentation starts with the presenter owning the room. When you know and own the room, you will feel more powerful and confident. That enables more effective and successful presentations for you.
When you are looking for an executive public speaking coach, how do you evaluate your choices? How can you choose the coach that is right for you? Like communication, it’s an imperfect process. Yet, there are principles that you can follow to help you make a better choice.
Like many soft skills there are no hard and fast measures. Instead, it’s subjective which means it can be a difficult decision. For example, if price was your only criteria, the decision would be easy. Pick the cheapest.
Naturally the cheapest solution is to do-it-. yourself. Watch YouTube videos. I’ve found YouTube videos to be helpful when searching for a cooking recipe or how to repair a house electrical or plumbing problem. I’m a handy man so I can follow some of those videos for simple home repairs.
If you are a leader or hope to be a leader in your company, organization or community – your words matter. It matters what you say and were wise enough not to say.
Are you paying attention to your words and implications? Guess what? Your audience pays attention and draws inferences and conclusions from your words. Here are five phrases that are counterproductive to your message because they can confuse or distance your listeners. People might not consciously notice these flaws, but these phrases can cause unconscious dissonance in your message.
Mind your words because they matter. Be precise and prudent with your choice of words. Remove words that are wasted, distracting or annoying.
What I do for them is I observe how they come across and I think about who’s their audience. What does their audience need? What’s the mindset of their audience? And I help the executive deliver the message in a way that the audience gets it and understands it and acts on it. I saw one of your videos where you put it nicely. These senior executives are technicians. They know what they know, and they don’t know how to convey that effectively.
They’re not effective communicators. Yeah it’s true many leaders are leaders because of their technical expertise. They could be an accountant, an engineer or operations person and that’s how they got to lead their department and maybe eventually the company, but they are grounded in the technical part and that’s the language that they use. When they become the leader of an organization they need to speak the language of the common person the common person in the company and the common person in their market.
Your first words are important because your audience is judging you. They are scrolling through questions in their mind:
Should I listen? How long will this take? Do I trust the person? How painful will this be? When will we get to the relevant part? What does this mean to me?
The purpose of your opening is to grab their attention, establish rapport and set the direction.
Most importantly – grab attention. How might you do that?
Pause right before an important point to create suspense and heighten the value of the important point because they need to catch their breath and wait a few seconds for the message.
Here is a recent exchange gone wrong from a person who asked to be a guest on my podcast. Notice the mistakes. Remember that my podcast is titled, Your Intended Message.
The close to your presentation is important to the success of your message. Your close is the last impression. You can make it the lasting impression that resonates within their mind even after they leave the room.
