Archive for category: Executive Presence / Career

In my practice, I have combined two disciplines: accent work; that is, speech, clarity, pronunciation, word stress, intonation and pitch control, and in general, sounding American or not with Executive Presence: that is, voice quality, projection, confidence, “how you show up,” how fast you talk, how in control you are of yourself and your reactions, how comfortable you feel, how loud you can be, how well you convey your message, and how well you can change how you to speak to meet your audience’s needs and expectations.

The question is how do Accent & Presence Interrelate?

• It’s Hard to Have Presence When Your Speech is Unclear: Part of being comfortable and confident when you speak is being in control of your pronunciation and saying things clearly. If you have muffled speech, mispronounce words occasionally, and speak in ways that are difficult for your audience to connect with you, Presence is hard to create. While there is more to communication than how well you speak English, I would argue that if you live in an English speaking country and you want to impress others, you need to have a good command of the spoken language as a point of entry.

• Speaking Clearly is Not Enough: You can pronounce all the words correctly and still not have Executive Presence. In fact, many native speakers talk in disempowering ways that are not inspiring. You can speak English fluently and not come across as confident, decisive, intelligent and insightful. You need to be able to inspire others; communicate your ideas, goals, thoughts, and ambitions clearly and vividly; it’s important to show empathy and exhibit self control. In terms of speech and movement, you need to be able to pace yourself and move and speak fluidly, not just fluently, using loudness and projection when necessary to your advantage. You must be able to craft your message and deliver it as intended, and react to subtle changes along the way. Clearly, Presence is more than accent, and fortunately it is teachable & learnable!

• Combining the Two Modalities Creates Synergy: The concept of synergy (that the combined effect of separate items is greater than their sum) applies here. If you merely work on your accent and separately work on speaking up, presenting, and communicating to an audience, you can gain some new skills, but it is not likely that you will address your whole body with awareness that creates dynamic, holistic change. Doing both speech and presence work together allows your brain to sync up your posture and breathing with your new speaking habits (like clearer pronunciation) so you can project your voice with greater confidence and more fully embrace the new learnings to integrate into a new, comprehensive persona that reflects your deepest beliefs, values, intentions and visualization of your ideal self. The result can be dramatically improved by combining the two modalities in your practice.

Accent & Presence interrelate so completely because the complement each other in many ways. Both speech and presence require us to examine how we speak, breathe, move and interact with others. While accent is more focused on the mouth, throat, jaw, tongue and other facial muscles, presence is more about the whole body, and of course, these areas overlap. Combining them gives you the advantage your brain needs to create meaningful and lasting change.

Whenever I work with clients who doubt their executive presence, they often are trying too hard to project an image instead of embracing who they are. It sounds deceptively easy to “just be yourself,” but there are many reasons why it’s a challenge.

It’s natural to feel pressured to perform, so you may appear tense or rushed to others. It’s also common to want to cover more than you can in a certain period of time. You may not have enough time to prepare or might not have slept well the night before. Because all these factors are possible and common, it’s important to develop a routine around being at the top of your game so that when you are in front of your target audience, you come off as a master, not a novice!

How Can You Naturally Have Presence?

• Take Care of Yourself. You want to be well rested, nourished, and emotionally strong. Make personal care a priority. As they say, “take care of yourself first, and then take care of others.”
• Develop Routines You Can Stick To. Whether it’s physical exercise, nutrition or vocal warmups, create ones that work for you and commit to them. Give yourself a break if you need one without judgment, and then recommit at your earliest opportunity. The regimen will support yourself discipline and that quality will impact how others perceive you.
• Reassess and Evaluate. Many of us are on automatic throughout the day. Instead, periodically check in and assess whether your daily routine is working for you. Do you need to modify it to get a better result? Do you need to record yourself to see how others see you? Make time to assess, restructure and change up the old routines so you continue to improve.
• Ask for Feedback. Make it part of your routine to ask others you trust and value to weigh in. Complacency is the enemy of progress. You need to know what others think of you to improve, realizing that as you progress in your career, different qualities matter. Take the changes into account, adjust, measure, and re-evaluate. Make sure you are being perceived the way you imagine you are.
• Fight Procrastination. It’s tempting to put it off until another day, and eventually time has gone by and you’ve lost your edge. If you want your presence to be natural, you have to work for it, but it’s less about “trying to project an image” and more about trusting yourself to let your true strengths shine through. You need to have a routine to do that.
• Get Support When You Need it. Some people try to do it themselves, and while their assessments tell them they don’t have the tools they need, they stick to the same routine. If you find you need help, take a class, get a Coach, ask your Mentor. While presence is natural, most of us have blind spots, and you may need new information, new tools, and structured exercises to attain a compelling presence.
• Speak From the Heart. While there are numerous ways to improve your speech, trusting yourself is the most basic. If you lead from the right place and connect to your best intentions, you are likely to get a better result. When you feel off-track or off-message, reconnect to your heart and speak again.

While speaking naturally and having presence takes awareness and practice, it doesn’t mean you have to pretend to be someone you are not or try excessively hard. If you find yourself in that state of mind, give some thought to the above areas of developing natural presence and see where it leads you!

Executive Presence

Fake news … trade war … children in cages … severing ties with our allies … the US president meeting with oppressive dictators … these are challenging times. So you may ask yourself, how does this relate to Executive Presence?

When times are easy, no one really notices how you behave. As long as you don’t rock the boat, things move along smoothly. If you work hard, you are likely to get rewarded or promoted. In communication terms, as long as people understand you when you speak, it’s good enough.

When times are tough, however, what’s required for success changes. It’s no longer enough to be present and do your job. You have to stand out; you have to be clear about what you stand for, and you have to make a difference. In communication terms, you need to speak in a way that inspires confidence and trust. You need to project clarity, wisdom, and depth. And that’s what Executive Presence is all about.

• You can tell people you will help them … or you can communicate with such warmth and concern that your audience “experiences” your support. This is gravitas.
• You can dress up in a suit to show people you are a “leader” … or you can exude confidence with your posture and movement that communicates your leadership ability regardless of what clothing you wear. This is appearance.
• You can talk a good game, monitoring your speed as you speak slowly and deliver your “script” or you can communicate with such clarity, expression, passion, and connection with your audience that everyone knows what you mean without having to think about it. This is communication.

These 3 components make up Executive Presence: gravitas, appearance, and communication. If you embody all three, you are empowered to make a difference.

In troubling times, your ability to adhere to your principles and incorporate your beliefs into your communication style is critical. Components of your speech and movement that you can control and change include:

• Voice quality … how strong is your voice? Does it carry? Can you control the pitch and do you have a good range?
• Clarity … when you speak, do people understand you the first time or do you have to repeat, rephrase, and explain? Does it come naturally with flow or do you have to self-monitor and talk slowly?
• Intention … is your audience on the same page with you from the beginning or do you have to wonder about whether or not they are getting your intent? Do you feel like there are “misunderstandings” after you communicate your message? Or do you have mechanisms built in when you speak to gauge understanding and proactively address any “disconnects” as they occur?
• Phrasing … Do you say things in a way that people follow and relate to and that flows naturally, or do you struggle to find the right words and express yourself and feel that others do a better job than you do?

When it comes to Executive Presence, you either have it, or you don’t. In challenging times, we need more from our leaders. Standing up, being clear, communicating intention and inspiring confidence aren’t optional; these are requirements.

Are you up to the task?

Recently I have noticed a much-needed return to the movement and body awareness methods of past generations: Feldenkrais, Alexander & other body awareness modalities, popular in the 60’s and before. In addition, there are the more recent phenomena of pilates popularity, and experts like Eric Franklin to focus on the gracefulness of movement over the rigors of ruthless body building and strenuous exercise.

It’s timely, in fact, because speech work benefits greatly from these modalities. We often think of speech as a separate task, but years of speech and accent have taught me that the two are inextricably linked! If we are tense and restrained in our movement, our speech is also tense and restrained.

How do we move from stressed-out robots to naturally moving, happy communicators?

#1: Awareness: This is always my go-to drug of choice. Drench yourself in awareness exercises with acceptance. You can’t change what you don’t know. You have to see yourself as others see you and notice your breath, notice how you communicate, how your voice sounds, how your body moves … without trying to change it!

#2: Warm Up and Daily Habits: All of us prefer to move and talk the way we do. It’s our habit. If we want to be stress free (and aren’t), then we must accept the need for tangible, daily change exercises. Warming up before we speak is always a good practice. Daily habit examination for how we can move more freely and incorporate movement exercises into our day is also of paramount importance.

#3: Vocalize, Vocalize, Vocalize: Although some people chant while doing yoga, the vast majority of us exercise silently. The key to unifying your presence, is to combine breath and voice with movement. If you are moving and speaking in isolation, you can’t do this. You are also much more likely to move and sound like a robot. Exercise while making sounds! It’s really that simple.

#4: Accept that it’s a New Way of Being: Just like diet and exercise, you can’t eat healthy only now and then and expect to have great health, weight and well-being. The same is true with posture, movement and voice. It must be the “new you” and the “continued you.”

#5: Be Kind and Gentle with Yourself: Self talk matters, and it will make you tense and rigid if you tell yourself you are “wrong, bad, stupid, mistaken, and lazy.” Instead, remind yourself to “take care of yourself, do the right thing, feel free and move with fluidity and confidence.” It makes all the difference!

Integrate the ease and grace of movement with your voice and verbal expression, and you’ll move from being a stressed-out robot to a confident, happy communicator!

Of the three areas of Executive Presence, gravitas is arguably the most elusive. What is it? How do you know when you have it? I like thinking of it as having “gravity” in its core. There’s a “weight” and a “groundedness” to it. Gravitas is really about how comfortable and confident you are in your own skin and how others perceive you. You can “feel confident”, yet others can characterize you as “cocky” or “arrogant.” Gravitas refers to this element of having a richness and depth to your expression and a way of reaching out to others that allows them to feel at ease with you, to trust you, to have confidence in you, and describe you as deeply connected to the organization’s goals and messaging.

What elements of gravitas can you inspect, evaluate, and improve?

This one is the most challenging to define and change, but it can be done. Here are some areas you may want to explore:

• How do you breathe? Effortlessly or with challenges? Do you hold your breath?
• How fast do you talk? What do others tell you or think about your pacing?
• Do you connect on message with your audience and how do you know?
• Is your voice rich and resonant or pitchy and distracting?
• Is your gait comfortable and comforting?
• Is your eye contact warm and expressive and appropriately consistent?
• Do you convey strength, warmth, and a sense of mission?
• Do you connect with others?
• Do people see you as authentic?
• Do you express ideas, strategies, and plans that others are eager to embrace?
• Do you create enthusiasm and responsiveness in the people you interact with?
• What would people say about you when you aren’t around?
• What kind of a leader are you?
• What’s the most definable characteristic the people attribute to you? What adjectives do they use to describe you?

Gravitas is this depth of personality conveyance and connection … this merging of you and others concretely and metaphorically, in a real, human sense and in a spiritual, caring “on the same page” sense … a coming together of mission, passion, and results. It’s a sense that you are human; that you have a sense of humor; that you can be counted on in the tough times to make the right decisions and stick around for the ride. You exude the qualities that allow others to willingly and eagerly follow you and collaborate with you without reservation. That’s the evasive and pervasive nature of gravitas. When someone has it, everyone knows, but they often don’t know what it is. When you don’t have it, no one can tell you how to get it. Gravitas is like that … it’s an overarching quality that makes or breaks a leader. That’s why it’s so important to assess and cultivate it.