Executive Presence – Mainstay of Leadership
Blog: NASSCOM Official Blog
A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Shruti often shares an interesting story. Once many years back while attending a social event with her work colleagues, a senior ex-colleague walked in and suddenly everyone got up to greet him. This gentleman had left the organization many years back and was a special invitee to the event. He was no longer the supervisor for anyone in the gathering. Yet, the moment he walked into the room, in a casual set-up, everyone gave him the respect, listened to him and he held the audience for a long while. He commanded it.
We have all witnessed that moment when a leader walks into a room and instantly attracts intense, positive attention. The air shifts. Heads turn. People gravitate toward them in the conversation circle. When they speak, others listen. When they put forward suggestions, others are minded to follow. In short, they have a “wow” factor. We call this executive presence.
Executive presence is often called the mainstay of leadership. It is the persona that lets everyone around the person know that he or she is in charge, confident, and capable of leading and influencing others.
Organizations often look for Executive presence when they are looking for leaders. The Gravitas!
But, why is it important and what is it?
Executive Presence gives people the ability to influence others and lead teams with ease. It makes it easy for the person to convince others around them, sell products, be the main person for the clients, make it easy to create buy-in with anyone, and charm their way through all conversations.
It is the unique combination of charm, poise, confidence, charisma, decisiveness, and authority, to name a few things.
The combination of business alignment: understanding the nuances of the business and business drivers, risk-taking ability, refining and articulating thoughts, among other things.
Leaders with executive presence also share the limelight with their teams and are extremely articulate with their own thoughts. They gain the trust of their team members by being reliable leaders and people who have credibility. These leaders capitalize on ambiguous situations like the one the world is going through today and lead from the front. No one has all the answers, and while a leader with executive presence will not pretend to have all answers, he will not leave you without at least a direction towards finding solutions. People with executive presence are high on emotional intelligence, lead by example, and are morally right. High on ethics and charisma, executive presence makes these people charmers, who have the ability to pull everyone towards them.
Executive presence is all this and so much more hence we believe that it is layered and difficult to comprehend. What we do comprehend, though is that anyone can recognize a person with executive presence, charisma, gravitas in the first five meetings of entering a room. He commands it and how!
But how does one build it?
“We are too close to our own story to see it objectively” – Michael Margolis
We believe executive presence can be built if one starts from within. Sometimes, it is believed that executive presence is about appearance and communication but it is far more than that.
The idea is to understand our own strengths and development areas well before we start understanding our teams and the business better. Through deep coaching, one can leverage their own strengths, know themselves better, gain confidence, and become a better version of themselves. Coaching helps people understand their own USP which people can work on and create the right energy when they walk into rooms. People can read our energy. It is difficult to be artificial; people can see it. Coaching helps us make it a part of our inherent personality. Good coaching can also help people understand the business better and take the whole company perspective when they come to work. This means thinking strategically outside their own work area and looking at the bigger picture.
Both coaching and mentoring can help people understand their thoughts better, structure them, and articulate them well. Building trust within teams, gaining credibility is another benefit, we believe one can derive from coaching. A good coach can help you examine your experiences, beliefs, assumptions, and automatic reactions towards most work-related topics such as control, success, communication style, goal setting, emotions, and change management.
Most coaches agree that coaching can help develop leaders who can lead from the front and create great organizations. And, executive presence is a big part of being a great leader.
Are you making your presence felt?
Authors:
Dr. Amit Nagpal is President, Bloggers Alliance, and is Faculty of Digital&Social Media at BIMTECH and other institutes
Shruti Swaroop is an Executive Coach and Inclusion Consultant, Founder – EMBRACE, Faculty at Ambedkar University, and other institutes.
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