Category Archives: Executive Coaching Articles

Few people are born with executive presence—leaders must cultivate it. If you’re seeking a promotion, learn the key traits of executive presence and how to develop them. Leadership coaching that targets your personal development needs will help you reach the next level in your career, as these articles discuss.

An executive coach will help you learn to radiate gravitas, hone your persuasive abilities, maximize the time you have, and embrace the ideal leadership style for you. An experienced coach will demystify how to internalize and model these qualities, helping you develop the inner confidence that will make others see you as a born leader. As you develop your leadership potential, you’ll allow your whole team to soar to new heights of success. Consider launching a personal executive coaching program to gain the customized support that will help you quickly rise up through the ranks.

Executive Presence and Communication | 17 Tactics

How does executive presence affect communication? And, by the same token, how does communication affect executive presence?

Communication is one of the three foundational domains of executive presence, which I term “Expression.” This domain centers on how well leaders communicate. In other words, if you want to show up as a leader with executive presence, you must master the art of communication.

Let’s take a look at the three elements of communicating with executive presence, which I describe in my 3×3 Executive Presence Model.

How Leaders with Executive Presence Communicate

Three elements of expression determine how effectively leaders communicate:

Ability to be vocal in meetings and interactions. Propensity for conveying insights that raise the level of discussion. Aptitude for speaking clearly and concisely.

Having executive presence means being vocal, insightful, and clear.

First, as a leader, you must learn to speak … Continue reading Executive Presence and Communication | 17 Tactics

Understanding Executive Presence | 3 Critical Elements

Three central elements imbue a leader with executive presence. Understanding them fully will allow you to cultivate each one. This will demystify what executive presence is and help you create a development plan for growing it.

3 Domains of Executive Presence

So, what are these three elements? I’m referring to the three domains of executive presence that I outline in my 3×3 Executive Presence Model:

Gravitas Authority Expression

This model provides a framework for understanding executive presence. You can view gravitas as who you are, authority as what you do, and expression as what you say. To understand executive presence, you need to know what each of these elements means and what it looks like in practice. Let’s take a birds-eye view of each one of them now.

Gravitas The 1st Element to Understanding Executive Presence

Gravitas is the powerful presence a leader with executive presence exudes. … Continue reading Understanding Executive Presence | 3 Critical Elements

Executive Presence Articles

Do you want a more in-depth understanding of executive presence—or even a basic sense of what it means? Or are you ready to start developing it—now? Browse through these articles on executive presence to learn exactly what executive presence is and how it will be the not-so-secret ingredient to your success.

I’ve grouped these executive presence articles by topic, so you can easily find multiple informative articles on key issues related to executive presence. That way, you can take a deeper dive into the topic of your choice.

Why Executive Presence Matters Articles

If you want a clearer idea of what executive presence is and how it will benefit your career, these articles are for you.

“10 Key Work Situations Where Building an Executive Presence Matters”: In this article< on building executive presence, you’ll gain a clear understanding of how executive presence affects your performance in … Continue reading Executive Presence Articles

Executive Presence for Professional Success

Have you seen colleagues rise above you in the ranks, even though they have no more talent than you? They most likely got promoted because they are beginning to emanate a strong leadership presence. As a result, senior leaders instinctively felt they could trust them with enhanced responsibilities and knew that others would follow their leadership.

Executive presence is critical to professional success, whether you want to reach the next level or excel in your current role. It serves as the key differentiator between those with a high level of talent and those who have what it takes to become top leaders. And this holds true both in-person and in online executive presence environments.

Let’s explore why executive presence plays such a vital role in a leaders’ professional success. Branding you as a next-level leader.

By radiating strength and capability, … Continue reading Executive Presence for Professional Success

Create an Executive Presence Development Plan

An executive presence development plan is essential for cultivating executive presence. This plan will structure your efforts, ensuring you’re focusing on your most critical areas for growth. Importantly, this plan will prepare you to excel not just in your current role, but in any future position as well.

How to create this development plan and begin improving your executive presence? Begin by targeting specific executive presence competencies that you’re most lacking. These are the areas that are currently undermining your executive presence. No matter how well you’re doing in certain other areas, they’re holding you back.

In coaching conversations, I call these “BUT” behaviors—their boss and other leaders may make comments like, “She is very eloquent when presenting ideas, BUT she never puts a stake in the ground and owns an idea.”

Here are 3 crucial steps to take in identifying areas for … Continue reading Create an Executive Presence Development Plan

Executive Presence & Gravitas

What is gravitas?

As one of the three domains of executive presence, gravitas will make or break how you show up in meetings and interactions. Leaders with executive presence exude gravitas whenever they step into a room. This means they radiate an inner power and conviction that causes heads to turn whenever they take the stage or begin to speak. They have an unmistakable charisma that makes others want to be in their presence. This magnetic power draws others to them, whether they’re an extrovert or an introvert. It’s not about being loud; it’s about being self-assured.

Gravitas comprises three core executive presence qualities: Confidence.

Leaders with gravitas emanate self-confidence, showing up as poised and radiating belief in themselves. As a result, others believe in them too. Command.

Leaders with gravitas are commanding in both high-stakes situations and everyday meetings. They step up … Continue reading Executive Presence & Gravitas

Maximize Your Executive Presence Strengths

Executive presence isn’t one single quality—it’s an amalgamation of qualities that together give a leader a particular power and presence. Hence, as leaders assess their level of executive presence, they typically realize that they have strengths in some areas of executive presence and weaknesses in others.

In other words, evaluating your level of executive presence doesn’t mean just concluding, “No, I don’t have executive presence,” or “Yes, I am starting to display executive presence.” Rather, it means determining the specific executive presence components you’re lacking—as well as the ones you possess.

Executive presence strengths

Executive presence is made up of the following 9 qualities, grouped under the 3 domains of executive presence:

Gravitas Confident Commanding Charismatic Authority Decisive Bold Influential Expression Vocal Insightful Clear

You may already have strengths in some of these areas. A self-assessment, feedback from others, and executive presence coaching can help to … Continue reading Maximize Your Executive Presence Strengths

Executive Presence and Influence

What is the relationship between executive presence and influence?

Having executive presence will dramatically expand your influence. Once you accrue a solid amount of executive presence, you’ll be appointed to positions that allow you to leverage your influence. You’ll build your credibility and expand your network as you take on these new opportunities, which will further grow your influence in turn.

How will cultivating executive presence grow your influence?

Influence is one of the 9 vital executive presence qualities, so as you cultivate executive presence, you’ll focus specifically on growing influence. Moreover, there is an interplay between influence and other executive presence competencies. Influence does not exist in a vacuum; developing other qualities like confidence, charisma, decisiveness, and insightfulness will also increase your influence.

For instance, as you lead higher-level projects, you’ll make your skills more widely known and respected. You’ll show others … Continue reading Executive Presence and Influence

Executive Presence & Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is a prerequisite for high-level leadership. In fact, 71% of companies find it more important than IQ, CareerBuilder has found.

How do executive presence and emotional intelligence relate to one another?

Having emotional intelligence will guide you in growing the 9 core qualities of executive presence—and radiating them in every situation. We’ll discuss more about that in a moment, but first, let’s look at what emotional intelligence actually is.

Daniel Goleman brought the term into widespread usage with his book Emotional Intelligence (1995). He outlines how EI (sometimes called EQ) it means relating to oneself and others intelligently and empathetically. This means understanding how you feel, and why; how other feel, and why; and showing you understand how they feel, as he explains in a recent HBR article, “What People (Still) Get Wrong about Emotional Intelligence.”

According to Harvard Business School, emotional intelligence has … Continue reading Executive Presence & Emotional Intelligence

How to Develop Executive Presence

Developing executive presence will give you a critical advantage over peers with the same qualifications and experience. Possessing executive presence will brand you as top leadership material, emanating capability that causes senior leaders to trust you with their most important initiatives.

But How to Develop Executive Presence? Understand the 3×3 Executive Presence Model

I outline my 3×3 Executive Presence Model in my book Executive Presence: Step into Your Power, Convey Confidence and Lead with Conviction. It lays out each of the three core executive presence domains—gravitas, authority, and expression—illustrating the three competencies that form the foundation of each domain. Study how the 9 executive presence competencies work together to form the three executive presence domains and imbue a leader with executive presence. Determine how you’re undermining your executive presence

As you learn about the 9 executive presence competencies—and take self-evaluations to find out where you stand—identify your greatest areas … Continue reading How to Develop Executive Presence