What Does Executive Presence Mean For The Modern Leader?

This was the exact question asked by one of my clients a couple of weeks ago, and it got me thinking. When I wrote a book on the topic of executive presence, it was 2015. A lot has happened since then, and my view now is this:

Emotional intelligence is front and centre. There’s a lot within this, but what humans crave more than ever in a post-Covid business world is connection with other human beings. Connection starts with paying attention - being fully present - and I’ve talked repeatedly about the bad habits which exist here. Self -awareness, a willingness to flex our behaviour to serve the discussion or relationship, curiosity, and a growth mindset are all elements of being able to connect with others.

Gravitas. I call that the ‘walking in a room and inspiring that “I’ll follow you anywhere” response in others’. Being credible, being consistent, being pragmatic, optimistic, practical and gracious under pressure all feature.

Exquisite communication skills. Being a translator of technical expertise into a relevant message, being a synthesiser of wide ranging discussion to target the most important components, being concise and compelling, being able to command attention but not demand attention, in any environment and with any size audience.


To find out more about how Sarah helps leaders at all stages of their career strengthen their executive presence, visit the What We Can Help With section on our website.

Written by Sarah Brummitt, Executive Coach and Leadership Development Expert

Here’s What Happens When Leaders Try To Be Influential Across Their Business

Over the past year I’ve been working with smart, engaging leaders who are operating in an environment of relentless change, ambiguity, and commercial pace. They have a lot to do; work across multiple teams and complexities and have little time in which to do it. They are technical experts, hard-working, run teams, may operate in multiple languages and all are certainly passionate about what they do.

So, what’s the problem? In essence:

• We don’t make the time to think through exactly what we’re trying to say to persuade others and be influential.
• We believe we don’t need to really think about it (always a mistake).
• We rely on our natural ability to be articulate (which tends towards talking too much and with the wrong focus).
• We fall back on in-depth technical expertise (which is almost never persuasive of itself).
• We ignore the reality that we go slower as a result, we make life harder for ourselves and our teams as a result, and we may not achieve the expected performance, as a result.
• We blame others, or circumstances (rather exercise sufficient curiosity to hone our own skills).

Being influential is a rich set of technical communication skills which require deliberate consideration and relentless practice to get it right.

And we help leaders around the world with that.

To find out more contact Sarah at sarah@sarahbrummitt.com

How To Be Influential Across Your Business (Part 2)

Following on from last month's newsletter here's five more ways to be influential across your business:

1. Link your message to the strategy and priorities of the business. Use this as the rationale for needing their support because it makes it compelling for the audience to listen and relate to what you’re saying.
   
   
2. Bring solutions not just problems. Avoid the "this is the problem and I’m asking you to fix it" approach. We’re all too busy and have too many demands on our time.
   
   
3. Don’t underestimate the power of quick wins to galvanise support. Making some progress is a ‘win’, versus trying to get the big, hairy, audacious goal in the first attempt.
   
   
4. The art of structuring a message for impact. I’ve written about this endlessly elsewhere. There are specific components of a message that must be present to influence and inspire.
   
   
5. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse your message ahead of time and ideally, record yourself on your phone. How you ‘think’ you’ll be influential is very different to practising being influential. Listen back, enhance, and go again.

If you missed Part 1 on this topic, visit the Resources section on my website for that, and many other newsletters.

How To Be Influential Across Your Business (Part 1)

We live and work in a world that isn’t listening most of the time, and building influence across a business is a habit and a practice. My conversations with clients have focused on this topic very specifically.

Strategies to master include:Adopt a ‘can do’ mindset. This is essential when faced with an original commitment which it transpires you can no longer fulfil as originally agreed. Rather than "trust me; we’ll do it if you give us a 3-week extension", adopt a "this is what I’ll need now to hit the original deadline” approach.

• Be crystal clear on your ‘why’. Why is this a problem to solve now? A priority?
• Something I should care about? Make time for?
• Build consensus one person at a time. Again, taking time to test ideas, get feedback, understand priorities requires strategy and effort. Avoid group calls where a ‘cold’ audience is listening to your idea. It never works.
• Finesse the problem you want to solve and evidence your sources. For example, "what our clients have been asking for”, or "what these parts of the business are struggling with" add significant credence to your point of view.

More to read here next month…

For more information go to www.sarahbrummitt.com

How To Ask Better Questions

Someone once said to me: “questions are the answer to better thinking” and as an expression, it is burned in my mind. However, as I reflect on the challenges my clients face to drive value, manage stakeholders against competing priorities and get the job done, there is a profound need to level up the quality of questions we ask.

What’s the evidence for that?

All too often I hear my clients saying (a) there are too many meetings in my calendar (b) we’re not moving fast enough (c) there is too much consensus decision-making, and (d) the conclusion of this meeting is… another meeting.

Asking better questions is about the mindset of wanting to serve the conversation, add value, seek clarity, secure decisions and get to action. In addition, and when we ask them, we need to be crisp, clear, strategic, and then stop talking and listen.

Better questions are ones which:

• We’ve thought about in advance of speaking (versus simultaneously articulating our train of thought and wandering around the topic).
• Are singular (just one question versus stacking multiple questions one after the next before allowing the person to answer).
• Avoid ‘ask and answer’ tactics, which is a question followed by an opinion. This is extremely problematic because it contradicts meaningfully wanting to understand the other person.
• Are strategic: by which I mean we use open questions to understand, encourage creativity, expansion of thought and possibilities. Closed questions drive priorities, decisions, accountability, and ownership.
• Drive better conversations, better decisions, better actions… all because the questions made us think.

What Is Exquisite Influence In Business Today?

My focus this month has been writing custom content for a high potential talent development programme targeting emerging leaders. Their challenges are many: change, uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity, and the commercial expectation of the business is to drive agility as a leader. Now, improving processes are great, honing product knowledge helps, and segmenting marketing efforts to increase the effort/reward ratio all make sense.

And yet.

The game-changer will be honing leadership capabilities focused on influence. I call it ‘exquisite influence’, and by that, I mean the ability of leaders to “to be persuasive and compelling with a wide variety of audiences. An ability to flex leadership style, build collaborative relationships, engage and empower teams, lead change and drive results through exceptional communication skills, purposeful curiosity, and an optimistic mindset”. Sounds relatively straightforward, right?   Wrong.

For leaders everywhere, it’s never been harder to demonstrate exquisite influence, and to do so consistently, under pressure, in the absence of clarity, with little time to prepare, at distance, across cultures, time zones and dotted reporting lines. Our content hones practical, impactful skills and strategies to get it right. This is about building muscle strength and high impact habits which make a difference.

To learn more about what I do, go to www.sarahbrummitt.com

 

Enough With The ‘Does That Make Sense?’

What is it with this phrase? In the past couple of months I’ve heard it far too often. In one meeting, a client said it 18 times.

My perspective is that these types of questions (along with ‘do you know what I mean?’ amongst others) need to be removed from our vocabulary if our goal is to be impactful.

All it reveals is that we’re unsure and unconfident that our message has landed; and hence have developed this verbal habit to check that if what we suspect is true.

Instead, I suggest:

1. Think before speaking. Articulating our internal thought process is one reason we feel the need to check what’s landed.
   
2. Practise brevity using a narrative structure. This is the 3 section headings of our message which help organise the detail for relevance, logic and flow.
   
3. Read the room. Look at the audience; that will reveal whether indeed, you have made sense.

I’ll resist the very obvious sign off now.