Executive Presence Has Radically Changed

Executive presence is the elusive quality that executives seek to master in the pursuit of increasing their impact, positioning themselves for their next promotion and solidifying their status in the business world. Before the pandemic, executive presence was achieved through a projected emotional state, communication skills and appearance. It required savvy impression management and an inward-looking assessment of self. Leaders were driven to influence people’s answers to the question “How do you feel about me as an executive?”

My research collaboration with MBA students at Dominican University New York (see students names below) found that the pandemic radically changed the hallmarks of executive presence, transforming it from an inward-looking view of self to an outward-looking view of employee impact. In other words, executives must steer their focus away from the question “How do you feel about me as an executive?” and redirect their focus to influencing how employees answer the question “How do I make you feel?”

Mainstream Executive Presence

The term “executive presence” and “leadership presence” entered the mainstream business lexicon in 2014 following the release of the book Executive Presence by author Sylvia Ann Hewlett who described three pillars that govern executive presence:

1.    Act the part: Gravitas

2.    Speak the part: Communication

3.    Look the part: Appearance

Hewlett’s book served as the foundation for a plethora of training programs that taught up-and-coming executives how to look, speak and act like a compelling leader that people would want to follow. Many executives were trained on these three pillars. To be sure, these tenets of executive presence remain important, but are not enough to develop the executive presence needed today.

Executive Presence in “The New Normal”

Two conditions are driving change in executive presence behaviors:

1. Employee hardships: The pandemic impelled many employees to juggle a myriad of conflicts related to managing work and life simultaneously. Employees were forced to establish makeshift workstations while managing child and elderly care in their homes. Unrelenting stressors left employees feeling traumatized, with many experiencing anxiety and depression.
2. New Workplace Models: Remote and hybrid working models physically separated executives and employees, minimizing face-to-face interactions. With traditional ways of leading no longer relevant, executives were compelled to find new ways to inspire and communicate.

In response to changing conditions, executive presence now requires leaders to inspire their employees to feel connection, confidence, and conviction.

In short, leadership presence is not about you – it’s about others.

Create Connection

Leaders create connection through “psychological proximity” which involves interpersonal trust and a shared understanding of the company’s circumstances. To engender psychological proximity, executives need to

1. Communicate frequently with openness, honesty, and consistency.
2. Recognize the humanity of employees through empathy and compassion.
3. Present themselves as human, someone who also struggles through challenges, both professionally and personally.
4. Pursue means for interactivity, so that employees can feel heard, understood, and part of the solution.

Instill Confidence

2021 research led by confidence coach Kirsty Hulse found widespread confidence issues among employees seeking promotions and new jobs: 38% of respondents declined job promotions due to low confidence and 29% said they didn’t apply to job roles because of low self-esteem

Instilling confidence in employees involves the following behaviors:

1. Demonstrate realistic optimism: to stay optimistic under relentless pressures, executives must view challenges as problems to be solved and lessons to be learned. Optimism can be drawn from trusting employees’ capabilities, and that trust builds employees’ confidence in the company and themselves.
2. Exercise “mindful calm”: The key to mindful calm is not reacting impulsively, but rather gathering pertinent information needed to respond in a thoughtful way. It’s about staying in the present and not jumping to worst case scenarios. By focusing on the situation at hand, executives will remain curious rather than project fear.
3. Appreciate employees: Feeling valued was one of the most common and consistent drivers of employee engagement pre-pandemic, and it continues to be a top driver of engagement today. My articles Recognize Her on the Daily and Thank You Goes a Long Way provide ways to make employees feel appreciated.

Inspire Conviction

Conviction refers to employees’ strong belief in the company’s purpose: why the company exists and how the company adds value to society. Purpose is especially critical during times of uncertainty because it grounds employees in something constant and familiar and helps them make progress despite uncertainty. By emphasizing the company’s purpose and then linking employees’ work to that purpose, an executive makes employees feel that they matter.

In summary, executive presence needs to transform from its mainstream behaviors to behaviors that meet the challenges of the “post-pandemic” conditions. No longer should executive presence be inward-looking with a focus on “How do others feel about me?” It must transform to be outward-looking with a focus on “How do I make others feel?” Executive presence is now about inspiring feelings of genuine connection, confidence, and conviction.

Note: I am very thankful to The Dominican University MBA students who worked with me on this research including: David Chidsey Dawn Costancio, Adam Gloskin, Brent Gotkin, Teresa Keel, Ken McQuillen, Marcos Pierce and Zachary Sica.