One of the mistakes when it comes to executive presence, or what I like to call, “your X factor,” is thinking that executive presence is just about public speaking. That you really only need executive presence if you’re going to be in front of a large group, delivering formal presentations. Now, look, I will support that having a strong presentation, public-speaking muscle is a really good one to have.
In fact, my son, Ethan, who’s in college, he and I were just talking about how public speaking is a required course. So yes, it is important, but executive presence is not just about public speaking. And perhaps maybe that’s in your head, because that’s often how we see it being most visible. We’re sitting in an audience and we see this amazing public speaker, and w equate it to, oh, they have fantastic executive presence.
Yes, that is, it’s kind of like the chicken before the egg, right? But to believe that the only time you need to have executive presence is if you are doing public speaking and big presentations, you are absolutely mistaken. The need to have this X factor to really lean into all of this is important in almost every single circumstance.
Executive presence is holistic, not situational.
So executive presence shows up when we’re one-on-one with individuals. I’m sure you can think of a time when you were having a one-on-one conversation with perhaps another leader who either really exhibited executive presence in your one-on-one conversation – or they didn’t. There’s times when we need to show up with strong executive presence in order to handle stress or conflict.
We need that executive presence to show up in our written communication, and we need it to show up in our whole body language, our physicality, how we’re posturing, how we’re using our hand gestures, where our eye contact is, what our facial expressions are. So again, as we think about some of these common myths and misconceptions around executive presence and your X factor, really open your eyes and say, where am I seeing it show up in my holistic day-to-day surroundings?
Take a look, find a particular leader, a role model that really exudes that executive presence, and carefully observe them in multiple interactions, situations, and events. And can you pick up on what some of their behaviors and characteristics are in these different situational experiences that really showcase their executive presence? And then how can you start to take that as your model and blend it into your own everyday situations?
Maybe you only start with one particular area, such as written communication – focus in on there, and then start to build your whole repertoire of how you show up with that executive presence.