Someone in your company may have recently been promoted to a leadership position. This person successfully competed against other qualified candidates, some of whom were probably just as experienced and smart.

As often happens in judging one candidate over another, the decision most likely came down to degrees of “executive presence.”

Presence: Often referred to as “bearing,” presence incorporates a range of verbal and nonverbal patterns (one’s appearance, posture, vocal quality, subtle movements)—a whole collection of signals that others process into an evaluative impression of a person. ~ Karl Albrecht, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success

In this day and age, executive presence comes in all shapes and sizes, including some you wouldn’t normally recognize. Who would have thought, 30 years ago, that Bill Gates would command it?

Would Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook, have stood out as a high-potential CEO? But as one of the youngest men ever to be named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, he certainly has presence—albeit a “Gen Y” version of it.

An Internet search on executive presence reveals definitions and advice on everything from dressing for success and patterns of speech to more fundamental issues of emotional and social intelligence.

As it turns out, everyone’s definition of the term seems to differ. But planning your career and determining your leadership development needs shouldn’t be left to guesswork.

11 Aspects of Executive Presence

Most people aren’t born with executive presence. They develop the requisite skills with experience, maturity and a great deal of effort.

This article examines eleven qualities that contribute to executive presence and how you can cultivate your own presence and so that others perceive you as a high-potential leader.

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•    Searching for Executive Presence
•    11 Aspects of Executive Presence
•    Storytelling for Professional Success
•    What Really Matters
•    6 Steps for Building Executive Presence

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Some executives  are uncomfortable using power or office politics, viewing them as the dark side of workplace behavior. They believe morale and commitment erode when politics dominate the environment.

But research clearly shows that being politically savvy and building a power base pay off.

Sources of Influence

There are three sources of influence in an organization: positional, relational and personal:

1. Positional power: Your title and job status confer some level of formal authority.
2. Relationships: Informal power stems from the relationships and alliances you form with others. If you do a favor for someone, the law of reciprocity impacts your relationship.
3. Personal: Some people generate influence based on their knowledge, expertise, technical competencies and ability to articulate ideas or a vision that others will follow. Your communication skills, charisma and trustworthiness help determine your personal power.

Open to Influence

Executives and managers who are open to peers’ and subordinates’ input garner greater respect than those who resist others’ influence. An openness to influence demonstrates trust and respect, which become reciprocal and contagious.

You can offer goods and services to a potential ally in exchange for cooperation: technical assistance, information, lease of space or equipment, a plum assignment and the like. Understanding what others want or value is crucial.

Avoiding Power

Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and author of Power: Why Some People Have It—And Others Don’t, cites three barriers that cause executives to shy away from using power to extend their influence.

This article examines three ways people avoid power, why power is so important to success, persuasion tactics, and practical steps for leveraging office politics in an ethical manner.

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• Sources of Power
• Open to Influence
• Currencies of Exchange
• Power without Authority
• Avoiding Power
• Fair Play?
• Persuasion
• Office Politics

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Power, Politics, and Persuasion
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Power, Politics, and Persuasion
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The No. 1 reason why most Americans leave their jobs is the feeling they’re not appreciated.

In fact, 65% of people surveyed said they received no recognition for good work in a previous year, according to Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, authors of How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life (2004).

According to newer Gallup research, what employees want most — along with competitive pay — is quality management. When they feel unappreciated and disapprove of their managers, they leave or stop trying.

Almost 25% of U.S. employees would fire their bosses if given the chance, and about 50% of actively disengaged workers would follow suit.

Because of current economic realities, people may not be leaving their jobs. Instead, they join the growing ranks of the disengaged and “missing in action.” It rests upon managers to learn better ways of interacting with the people on whom they depend.

Based on a great deal of previous research, positive managers practice these three leadership behaviors:

1. Use a strengths-based approach
2. Provide frequent recognition and encouragement
3. Maintain a positive perspective when difficulties arise

Past studies have shown these practices have a direct effect on employee engagement, and each is an observable and testable behavior.

None of these characteristics are innate, but all can be learned. Very few executives intuitively know:

1. How to work with people’s strengths
2. How to automatically give frequent credit where due
3. How to respond with your best game face when the going gets rough

This article examines the bottom line results of a positive, strengths-based approach to improving performance.

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• 3 Steps to Positive Leadership
• A Strengths-Based Approach
• Focus on What Works
• The Problem-Seeking Mindset
• The Brain Power of Negativity
• When Things Go Wrong
• Positive Results

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A growing body of research reveals that our behavior and decisions are influenced by an array of strong psychological undercurrents, all of which are more powerful and pervasive than we realize.

By charting these undercurrents and their unanticipated effects, we can identify our faulty thinking that lead us to make irrational decisions.

Despite a great need for them, judgment and decision-making skills are only beginning to appear in better business schools’ curricula. But studies show we still don’t know enough about how good decisions occur.

Rational versus Emotional?

Psychologist and political scientist Herbert Simon in 1957 laid the groundwork on the limits of rationality when he attacked classical economics and game theory. Simon’s work made it clear that we must take the real world’s messiness and irrationality into account when making decisions.

“Research indicates that people are myopic in their decisions, may lack skill in predicting their future tastes, and can be led to erroneous choices by fallible memory and incorrect evaluations of past experiences,” wrote psychologist and Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman.

Neuroscientific research also proves that the brain is influenced by subconscious emotional reactions from its more primitive centers. We’re not in control of our reasoning capabilities as much as we’d like to think.

Scientists have identified several flaws in how we think when making decisions. Because they’re hardwired into our thinking process, we often fail to recognize them. This means they can undermine everything from new product development to acquisitions and divestiture strategy to succession planning.

This article examines 5 biases that lead to bad decisions and how we can avoid their traps.

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This is a brief synopsis of a 2000 & 1000-word article suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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• Rational versus Emotional?
• Loss Aversion
• Commitment
• Value Attribution
• Diagnosis Bias
• Too Much Information
• Decision Effectiveness
• Rate Your Company
• Leaders Can Improve
• The Certainty Bias

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What’s the most important thing to learn if you want to advance your career?

Should you gain diverse experience? Specialize? Go back to school for an advanced degree? Attend workshops? Get a coach?

While all of these career decisions may undoubtedly prove beneficial, book smarts don’t guarantee good teachers, nurses, doctors, businesspeople or leaders.

In today’s emerging right-brain economy, most professions require a set of skills and characteristics that cannot be taught in schools. Professionals who have the edge — those singled out for high-potential programs — are skilled at forging meaningful relationships.

The adage “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care” has never been more relevant.

While a good education is important, it’s no longer enough. Unfortunately, most business schools aren’t teaching the emotional competencies future leaders require. Perhaps these skills are far beyond a classroom’s reach.

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• Training Leaders for Future Complexities
• The Boss Is Last
• Combining Smarts with Heart

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Career Strengths for the Future: Show You Care

“Human communication has its own set of very unusual and counterintuitive rules.” — Malcolm Gladwell

What does it take to transmit bold new ideas to people who don’t want to hear them? How can the language you use facilitate enthusiastic, energetic implementation?

Transformational leaders:

• Generate enduring enthusiasm for a common cause
• Present innovative solutions to solve significant problems
• Catalyze shifts in people’s values and ideologies
• Demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the greater good
• Help others get through crisis moments
• Inspire people to want to change, creating a positive energy that sustains the change
• Generate followers who will ultimately become leaders

The what of transformational leadership is reasonably clear. It’s the how that’s usually obscure.

=>How do leaders communicate complex ideas and spark others into enduringly enthusiastic action?
=>What words do they use to inspire others to become new leaders?
=>Why are some leaders able to accomplish the feat while others fail miserably?

Stephen Denning, a senior scholar at the University of Maryland’s Burns Academy of Leadership, makes the case for transformational communications in his book The Secret Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2007). More than anything, it’s what leaders say — and the way they say it — that generates sustained energy and exponential results.

How to Lead Change

If leaders’ own inner commitment to change is to have any effect at all, they must communicate it to those they aspire to lead. Leaders’ actions speak louder than their words, but in the short run, it’s what leaders say — or don’t say — that has an impact.

The right words can create:

• A galvanizing effect
• Enthusiasm
• Energy
• Momentum
• Sustainable motivation

The wrong words, or even words said in the wrong sequence, can undermine your best intentions and plans, killing an initiative on the spot.

Confirmation Biases

A significant body of research shows that asking people to change often drives them more deeply into opposition. In study after study, people display a phenomenon called confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and to irrationally avoid information and interpretations that contradict existing beliefs.

Successful leaders follow a unique, almost hidden communication pattern:

Grab the audience’s attention ► Stimulate desire ► Reinforce with reasons

Unfortunately, this approach often eludes aspiring leaders. If you want listeners to own the change idea, your stories must help them discover the truth for themselves, thereby creating a new story.

What the leader says is the scaffolding — a catalyst for a creative process inside listeners’ heads.

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The complete 2,000 word article includes these important concepts:

• How to Lead Change
• Old-School Communication
• Confirmation Biases
• The Devil in the Details: Words Matter
• 3 Steps for Inspiring Change
• Step 1: Getting the Audience’s Attention
• Step 2: Creating Desire
• Step 3: Reinforcing with Reasons

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“The empires of the future will be empires of the mind.” — Winston Churchill

In a ruthless, globally competitive market, companies cannot afford the luxury of holding onto more employees than they need. With economic constraints and technological advances, some jobs are being eliminated completely — a trend that will surely continue.

A new generation of sophisticated information and communication technologies, together with new forms of business reorganization and management, is wiping out full-time employment for millions of blue- and white-collar workers.

Unless you want to go after menial work, you’ll need to acquire a disciplined education and variety of experiences, while also developing a highly valued mind.

We’ve all read about accelerating globalization, information overload, the drastic ascent of technology and science, and the threat of growing competition. Each of these challenges will require new ways of thinking and learning for those hoping to create a successful future.

Our Mind(s) Matter

In Five Minds for the Future (Harvard Business School Press, 2007), author and noted psychologist Howard Gardner says our mind — actually, minds — matters.

According to Gardner, five cognitive capacities will be in great demand in the years ahead:

1. The Disciplined Mind
2. The Synthesizing Mind
3. The Creating Mind
4. The Respectful Mind
5. The Ethical Mind

Developing these mental capacities equips us to deal with future expectations, as well as that which cannot be anticipated.

If we fail to develop these minds, we’ll be at the mercy of forces we can’t understand: overwhelmed by information, unable to succeed in the workplace, and incapable of making judicious decisions in personal and professional matters.

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• Our Mind(s) Matter
• The Disciplined Mind
• The Synthesizing Mind
• The Creating Mind
• The Respectful Mind
• The Ethical Mind
• The Future Is Now

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