How to Improve Your Executive Presence During Meetings.

Demonstrating executive presence during business presentations can help you to accelerate your career. Grabbing people's attention, communicating clearly, displaying confidence, and winning support for ideas can make a lasting impression on those you work with. The stakes are high, and you will increase your effectiveness by being authoritative and approachable. How you present yourself and package your ideas can influence the promotions you earn, the projects you are assigned, and the resources you are given. Building executive presence requires you to be confident, knowledgeable, well-groomed, articulate, self-aware, and empathic. Business professionals can build these traits by implementing these best practices.

Start with building confidence.

Being confident is an essential part of demonstrating executive presence. When a person is confident, it impacts the way they stand, speak, and presents themselves. Your confidence can affect body language, tone, speed of speech, and volume during a presentation. When you believe in the logic and importance of your words, those who listen are likelier to hear and consider your message. Speakers that are calm, direct, purposeful, and concise in their communication put audiences at ease.

Build confidence through writing.

Mastering information related to the topic you will be speaking to will help you confidently deliver your message. One way to improve your mastery of a subject is to write down what you currently know about a topic and reflect on what additional information you need to know before speaking. The process of writing allows you to organize your thoughts. It also gives you the material you can later review to strengthen your recall of a topic and refine your thinking.

A great way to start this process is to get out a blank sheet of paper and write down everything you know about the topic you are speaking about. When you begin this process, don't focus on form or structure.

Jot down whatever is on your mind. It can be helpful to use brainstorming tools like mindmaps to help you complete a brain dump. You will discover how much you know on the subject by putting your thoughts on paper while also allowing yourself to build new connections between thoughts and ideas.

Once you have sufficient information, you can organize the information into an outline, prioritize what is most important, and begin writing. As you put your thoughts on paper, you will likely discover that you know more about the topic than you want to write about. Having an excess of information is a good thing. As you

the transition from writing to preparing your presentation, you can confidently know you have a reservoir of knowledge to tap into as questions on your subject arise.

Plan your presentation to be brief and brilliant.

Now that you have written down what you know, it is time to plan how to communicate the information. As you develop your plan, it is good to remember that less is more. The more slides, words, props, and time you use, the more complexities you create. Complexity creates risk when you are presenting. When communicating, you want to keep things as simple as possible. Being an effective communicator is all about connecting with your audience. The fewer words, props, and slides you use, the better you can connect with your audience, read the room, and adjust your approach to match the feel of people in the room. Executive presence is all about impacting the people you are communicating with. Executive Coach and author Carmine Gallo, in his book Talk Like Ted, states that 18 minutes is the ideal amount of time for covering a topic. You can maximize your impact on the audience by delivering a solid yet short message demonstrating your knowledge and expertise on a topic.

Practice delivering your message.

Practice is the best way to ensure you can deliver a clear and confident message. Much like stage performers rehearse their lines so they can say them without notes, you want to practice your speech to the point that you can speak naturally without using many written aids. Communicating without having to use notes signals to listeners that you know what you are talking about.

One of the best ways to practice your presentation is to video record yourself. You can observe your posture, the pace of speech, and tone by video recording yourself. After watching the video, you can focus on addressing the observed opportunities. Then you can practice different rates and tones of speech and

gestures to see how your verbal and non-verbal communication can impact how you deliver your message.

After practicing your message on your own, you should solicit friends, family, or co-workers to listen to your presentation and give you feedback. The more the person mirrors the audience you will be speaking to, the better. If you are presenting to high-level senior executives, it is best to seek out a mentor or sponsor with a similar role or responsibility to practice with. Practicing with someone who knows or understands your audience will ensure that you get appropriate feedback.

Visualize how you want the presentation to go.

Most anxiety around speaking in front of others is rooted in fear of the unknown. As you prepare for your presentation, it is helpful to picture how you envision it going.

• How do you want to be perceived?

• What questions do you anticipate?

• How will you respond to those questions?

• What will you do if your anxiety is getting the best of you?

Visualizing how you want to present and what you will do if things go wrong will help you prepare for the moment. Knowing how you will handle anxiety or unanticipated questions will help you to stay calm.

Develop a successful routine.

In the moments building up to your presentation, develop a successful routine.

1. Wear clothing that makes you comfortable and gives you confidence.

2. Check on your grooming to ensure you present the best version of yourself.

3. Listen to motivational music that can give you positive energy.

4. Practice your posture to be mindful of sitting or standing straight with an open stance.

5. Warm up your voice so that you can project with clarity.

Taking these steps before you walk into the room can help you to be confident and prepared.

Once you are in the room, there are a few things you should be mindful of. First, it is always best to have a glass of water when speaking in front of people. Drinking water can give you a moment to compose yourself if you are anxious or have difficulty answering a question. It is also helpful to keep your mouth moist when speaking. Second, having a pen and a piece of paper is helpful. While you are waiting to speak, there will be new ideas that will pop into your head. Writing them down will allow you to process the thought. If they can help your presentation, use them. If not, writing them down should help you refocus. During your presentation, having a piece of paper will allow you to take notes of questions you cannot answer. Taking good notes will allow you to follow up with the questions asked later.

It can also be helpful to have some techniques for grounding yourself. Practicing grounding techniques is a way to stop the brain from focusing on the future and being in the present moment. One technique Shirzad Chamine, executive coach and founder of the Positive Intelligence program, encourages clients to practice is rubbing their fingers together with so much attention that they can feel the ridges of their fingers. This practice can divert your focus from worrying about what could go wrong. Focusing on your breathing is another way of grounding. The key is to help your mind decrease negative thoughts. Negative thoughts create anxiety that can lower your confidence.

Summary

Building your executive presence will help you to advance your career. Everyone has great ideas, but few people are given the opportunity and resources to bring their ideas to life. By improving your ability to be approachable and authoritative you with both invite more people to work with you, and influence them to trust your judgment. Executive presence is a skill that is built over time. The more that you put yourself in a position to interact with Senior Leaders of your organization, the better able you will be to learn the cultural norms of your company. Having an executive presence is all about being your authentic self while respecting the communication norms of the organizational or group culture that you are working with.

---

Thank you for reading this blog

Dorian Cunion is an Executive Business Coach with Your Path Coaching and Consulting. He is a former retail executive with over 20 years of experience in the retail industry. He is a Co-Active coach who focuses on helping professionals and small business owners overcome insecurities, knowledge gaps, and lack of direction. He does this by helping clients tap into their values, recognize their strengths, and develop actionable strategies for growth.

Have you been trying to improve your career or business on your own but are not seeing success as fast as you desire?

Book a free discovery call where we can discuss your goals and how I can help you accelerate.

Talk with Dorian

Have Feedback? Send me a note at

Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

For daily tips on leadership and professional development, follow me:

LinkedIn

Facebook

Why work with an Executive Coach?

When I tell people that I am an executive coach, one of the first questions I hear is, what does an executive coach do? If you break down the words, executive means administrative or managing responsibilities, and coach means instructing or tutoring. At its most basic level, an executive coach helps individuals learn how to be better administrators and managers. But they really do so much more. An executive coach is an important partner that can help leaders reach their full potential by helping them to understand better who they are and who they want to be. Professional tennis players like Serena Williams who are looking to perform at their highest level work with a tennis coach. The same is true of top-tier singers like Beyonce, who frequently work with vocal coaches to help them expand their range, sing with more strength, and perform at a consistently high level. Professional athletes, vocal performers, and other professionals who work with specialized coaches know that no matter how good an individual is, there is an opportunity to be better and more consistent by working with a knowledgeable coach. Executive coaches can do for executives and managers what sports coaches do for athletes. Coaches help people to pause, reflect, learn, and continuously improve. One of the best-kept secrets of top-performing business executives and owners is that they work with executive coaches. Executive coaches are not discussed much but are essential to how talented executives and business owners reach their full potential.

My experience working with a coach

I worked with an executive coach when I was first promoted to Vice President of Operations. It was indeed a life-changing experience for me. The coach I worked with helped me to

• Clarify my professional goals

• Reflect on who I was a leader

• Define who I want to be

• Take on new perspectives

• Build new skills

• Be more strategic

The clarity I gained from working with a coach helped me feel more confident as I transitioned into a role that carried significantly more scope and responsibilities than any of my previous roles.

Clarify my professional goals

One aspect the coach helped me with was clarifying my professional goals. For most of my career, I focused on climbing to the next rung on the ladder. This served me in my career because it drove me to identify how I could excel in my current role. I knew I must first demonstrate mastery in my current role to advance. I would also take time to understand what skills, knowledge, and network were necessary to be successful in the next role, and I would spend time building toward those future needs. I felt like I had made it to the mountaintop for the first time in my career. I landed my ideal job of being an operations leader in geography close to my extended family. I could build an organizational culture, influence strategy, and run a multi-state business. With no next role to work towards, I had to re-evaluate how I would define success. My

coach helped me to explore my values, define my priorities and put words to what I wanted to accomplish going forward. For me, the goal was improving the quality of my employees' and Franchisees' lives. I knew that we had opportunities within our culture. Employees felt overworked and undervalued. Franchisees felt under-supported and unheard. I made it my mission to listen more than I spoke and to work on behalf of the employees and Franchisees within my zone to simplify operations, streamline priorities, and refocus our attention on serving customers and driving profitable growth.

Reflect on who I was as a leader.

After we explored what I wanted to do, we spent time researching how I would do it. As you move into higher levels of management, your role shifts from being

• an individual contributor responsible for managing yourself.

• to a manager of managers responsible for managing others

• to a functional manager accountable for segments of a business

• to a business manager responsible for the overall business

• to a group manager responsible for multiple businesses

• to an enterprise manager accountable for all operations

Each of these shifts requires developing new skills and changing how you spend your time. As you move up the ladder, you spend less time doing and more time leading. For example, one of the things that I greatly enjoy doing is building spreadsheets and analyzing data. This skill helped me stand out from my peers early in my career. I allocated hours weekly to building and analyzing data which enabled me to build my business acumen, improve my judgment and anticipate emerging trends. Now that I was in a senior executive role, spending time putting spreadsheets together was no longer the best use of my time. Every time that I built a spreadsheet myself, I was

• robbing someone junior to me the opportunity to build their data analysis skills

• reducing the amount of time, I had for other leadership activities

• not leveraging the skills and knowledge of others

My coach helped me understand that what got me into this role was not what would help me thrive. That I was more than a data analyst. I was a strategic thinker, a communicator, a developer of talent, and an inspirational leader. For me to excel as a Vice President, I would need to be comfortable wearing many different hats and be purposeful in not wearing the hat that I wanted to wear but the one that was required at any given moment.

Define who I want to be

With a sound foundation for who I was, we were able to begin to craft who I wanted to be. This was one of the most enlightening parts of my working with the executive coach. I defined my leadership philosophy while pursuing my MBA and during other leadership development training. I felt grounded in my leadership approach and felt like it served me well, especially since it afforded me three promotions in the prior four years. As I began working with my coach, it became clear I was the leader that others wanted me to be and not the leader I wanted to be. To get ahead, I developed masks I would wear when dealing with Senior Leaders because I thought being myself would not be accepted. I need to be an "executive," which I had interpreted as being reserved, stoic, agreeable when dealing with senior leaders, resolute, never wrong, and willing to do anything to get ahead.

Wearing these masks was fatiguing. I

• am not a stoic person

• enjoy speaking my mind

• admit when I am wrong

• do not believe in winning at all costs

• enjoy a good debate

• care deeply about people

• am playful

• am a big believer in the health debate.

These are all aspects of myself that I readily showed to my direct reports but cautiously shared with company leadership. I am at my best in an environment that encourages creativity, the exploration of new ideas, openness to failure, comfort with conflict, and two-way communication. For the most part, this is the culture I had built underneath me. Through discussions with my coach, he encouraged me to define better the leader I wanted to be and try to help influence cultural change at the organization. He helped me believe that I could help be the change I wanted to see within the organization. It just required me to be myself, post great results, and communicate to others how leading differently could lead to better results.

Take on new perspectives

One of the skills that supported me in removing my mask was the time we spent exploring the different perspectives. He helped me to understand that I did not need different masks when dealing with people but different intentionality. When I interacted with Senior Leaders, they did not want me to be a yes-man that went along with everything they said. Being a yes man would lead us to make bad decisions because there was information that I had that Senior Leaders needed to lead the organization effectively. They did not want me to undermine their authority by challenging them during inappropriate times. If I was concerned about a policy or direction, they wanted me to address it at the proper time and place. In general, they preferred that I voice my concerns before making a decision. If a decision had been made and there was a need for a course correction, Senior Leadership's preference was for me to bring it to them privately and then to bring it up in group meetings. By slowing down and better understanding my leader's perspective, I was able to influence better and be more effective. My coach would encourage me to observe my actions from different vantage points.

• How would my peers look at what I was doing?

• How would my supervisor look at what I was doing?

• How would my direct reports look at what I was doing?

• How would my indirect reports look at what I was doing?

A leader's responsibilities were not to anyone stakeholder. Leaders have various stakeholders that are all looking to them for leadership. A leader can only perform at their highest level once they consider all of these perspectives and make the best decision based on the information they have. Leaders also need to be willing to learn and course correct when mistakes are made. Learning how to take different perspectives will help leaders to make fewer mistakes.

Be more strategic

One of the most significant changes you must make as you move up the corporate ladder is improving your strategic thinking. At higher levels of an organization, leaders must learn how to deal with scale, leverage, and resource constraints. The first and most important word that a leader must know is no. Learning to say no is essential because saying no, enables your organization to focus on the most critical priorities. When I took over the VP role, the biggest complaint of the team was

• priorities changed too frequently

• it was not clear what was important

• that we were asking people to do too much

Too many priorities, lack of clarity, and inconsistent vision are common challenges for businesses. The world is pregnant with possibilities, but you only have so much time and resources. As a leader, you must set the direction and define what is important. Keeping the team focused on what is important puts your organization in the best position to generate sustainable results.

Build New Skill

As mentioned earlier, moving to higher organizational levels requires you to develop new skills. An executive coach will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses through the coaching process. Then they will assist you in developing plans for building upon your strengths and mitigating your weaknesses. One important skill for me to develop was scanning for opportunities. When I found them, I needed to do a deep dive into problems, communicating a need for action to the person responsible for the issue and then giving them room to work without my interference. Everyone within an organization has a role and a responsibility. The role of a business manager is to provide guidance and direction to their employees. It is up to the employees to determine the best way to address the opportunity. To excel as a leader, you must be comfortable delegating, trust others, ask tough questions, and allow employees to take action without micromanaging. Employees need the opportunity to try, learn, fail, and succeed on their terms. This is the only way that they reach their full potential. This requires leaders to better evaluate risk, define objectives, establish trust, and create open lines of communication. Employees need to understand their leader is there to support them in accomplishing their goals.

Summary

Working with an executive coach can help you perform at a higher level regardless of your professional development phase. A trained executive coach is taught to

• Listen to their client and help them with self-discovery

• Challenge their client to identify limiting thoughts

• Engage their clients in thinking more deeply and from different perspectives

• Understand the role that emotions play in interactions with others

• Recognize stress and the impact that it has on decision making

• Develop strategies to help facilitate personal growth

• Identify values and the role they play in motivation

Business leaders seek out coaches because coaches can help them grow. This growth can be related to a new job, a performance challenge, or any other growth opportunity. If you are looking to grow as a professional, you should work with a coach.

Should I stay at my company following a layoff?

Your company just went through a layoff. The good news is that you were not let go. The bad news is that you are now concerned about your company's financial health. You also know that things will get more difficult in the near term. The work that was previously done by others will be reassigned. You will be asked to do more, and there is little chance of you getting incremental compensation despite the extra effort.

You are asking yourself, do I want to stay here? Part of you wants to be loyal to your company and peers, put your head down, and help to turn things around. Another part of you is scared if you will be next and wonders if this is the perfect time to seek employment elsewhere

.

Things to consider before leaving your company after a layoff

1. Do you enjoy your job?

This is the most critical factor to consider because if you don't like what you do, you will not perform at a high level. Think about what aspects of your job make you happy and what aspects make you frustrated or bored. If the positives outweigh the negatives, you might want to stay and see how things evolve. You might want to seek something more fulfilling if the negatives are too overwhelming.

2. Do you believe the company can turn things around?

Layoffs are usually a sign of financial trouble, but they can also be a strategic move to restructure and improve the company's performance. If you trust the leadership and vision of the company, and you see signs of recovery and growth, you might want to stick around and be part of the solution. If you doubt the company's future and direction and you see no evidence of improvement or innovation, you might want to jump ship before it sinks.

3. Will you have the potential to grow by staying?

Layoffs can create new opportunities for those who remain, such as taking on more responsibilities, learning new skills, or moving up the ladder. If you see a clear career development and advancement path within the company, you might want to stay and seize those opportunities. If you feel stuck or stagnant in your current role and have no prospects for growth or change, you might want to look for other options that can challenge and reward you.

Things to do after a layoff at your company

1. Journal about your feelings.

Writing down your thoughts and emotions can help you process what happened and cope with the change. It can also help you identify what you liked and disliked about your job, what you are learning, and what you want to avoid in the future. Journaling can also boost your self-esteem and confidence by reminding you of your strengths and achievements.

2. Define what you want from your career.

After your company lays off workers, you may feel tempted to accept job offers from other companies, but this may not be the best option for your long-term satisfaction and growth. Take some time to think about what you want from your career, such as the type of work, the industry, the culture, the values, the benefits, and the salary. Create a list of the top 10 things that are important to you, and evaluate how your current role is fulfilling your needs.

3. Define career options.

Once you have a clear idea of what you want from your career, you can start researching and evaluating different career options that match your criteria. You can use online resources such as job boards, company websites, industry blogs, or professional networks to learn more about the current trends, opportunities, and challenges in various fields. You can also contact people who work in careers that interest you and ask them for advice or feedback. This can help you determine if you would be better off staying or pursuing employment elsewhere.

Summary

Deciding whether to leave an organization after a layoff is a difficult decision. You have to evaluate your values, options, and long-term career plans. By taking time to explore your feelings about your

• company

• current job

and the knowledge you have of

• the economy

• your industry

• your long-term career goals

you can find the right answer to whether you should stay or leave. Every decision allows you to learn more about who you are and the world around you. If you stay centered on your values, use your strengths, and pursue your long-term goals, you will end up exactly where you are meant to be.

---

Thank you for reading this blog

Dorian Cunion is an Executive Coach and Business Consultant with Your Path Coaching and Consulting. He is a former retail executive with over 20 years of experience in the retail industry. He is a Co-Active coach who focuses on helping professionals, and small business owners overcome insecurities, knowledge gaps, and lack of direction. He does this by assisting clients to tap into their values, recognize their strengths, and develop actionable strategies for growth.

Have you been trying to improve your career or business on your own but are not seeing success as fast as you desire?

Book a free discovery call to discuss your goals and how I can help you accelerate.

Talk with Dorian

Have Feedback Send me a note at

Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

For daily tips on leadership and professional development, follow me:

LinkedIn

Facebook