Expand Your Executive Presence

Four levers that any leader can exercise

Years ago, I used to teach that executive (or leadership) presence is hard to put your finger on. Some people have it; others don’t. It’s kind of like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 definition of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)

I was so wrong. 

Over the past decade of working with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of LGBTQ+ senior executives, I’ve been able to develop a framework to define four levers that impact executive presence, along with a system to teach those skills. Spoiler alert: While my work has primarily been with marginalized leaders, it applies to all of us who are committed to expanding our leadership presence, regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression.

This week, I was able to share my “lavender diamond” framework during a session at the Out & Equal Workplace Summit, the largest gathering of LGBTQ+ leaders each year. I present it here to help you expand your own toolkit for leadership communication.

The Lavender Diamond

Those who know me well know this lad loves alliteration. My framework is composed of four concepts: clarity, confidence, competence, and connection. Within each, there are principles to guide actions and develop or sharpen skills. 

The lavender diamond, like many similar frameworks, is aspirational. It’s unlikely any of us can consistently hit the mark across all four dimensions. In fact, we may see that we need to lean into one quality to offset another. 

For example, a rookie leader may need to lean into building relationships (connection) when new to a job or firm since they don’t yet have their new role down (competence). Yet the goal remains to strive to push ourselves across all four dimensions, acknowledging that the larger the image framed by the four lines connecting the points of the radar, the greater the level of presence exhibited by the leader.

Let’s begin our journey at Clarity. If a leader’s position, vision, or directions are unclear, it’s challenging for others to follow. Some might even say impossible. Consider the wasted energy when employees leave a meeting puzzled rather than clear. They now must piece together different interpretations of what was said to try and determine how the message impacts them. The book Brief and website thebrieflab.com offer a bonanza of tools to help you build this skill. (Bonus track, McCormack will also help you be as concise as the title indicates.) 

Clarity gives way to Confidence. Once you have the precision of the message, you want the conviction that you are the best person to deliver this information to this audience. I’ll dedicate a future newsletter just to the topic of overcoming anxiety, but today I will share one quick hack. Based on the research of Alison Brooks, you can reframe “I’m anxious” with “I’m excited.” Biologically, your body does not distinguish between the two feelings. Both can cause sweaty palms, racing heart, dry mouth, and more. But we can significantly improve our performance if we change our inner voice from “I’m nervous” to “I’m excited.”

The model now moves to Competence, which contains two elements: performing the function for which you’re hired and knowing the essential elements of oral communication. Since each leader and firm is different, I can never offer tips about functional performance. However, I’ve dedicated my career (and this very newsletter) to helping leaders acquire, expand, and master speaking well. Regardless of the role you play in an organization, you must also commit to expanding your mastery of the skills to speak in a clear and compelling way to an audience.

Finally, we come to Connection, the ability to bridge the gap between you and others. This is most easily done through storytelling, but most effectively done through authentic vulnerability. It’s uncanny how the energy in a room changes when people pivot from giving information to sharing stories. Others lean in to hear a well-told story, and quite often a story is more memorable than the policies or statistics we could present. When well crafted, a story can illustrate a point and remind your team of the “why behind the what.”

When storytelling is further combined with taking a risk to be vulnerable, your impact can be even greater. Like millions of others, I treasure the work Brene Brown has done here, but I caution that it cannot simply be a means to an end, a manipulation. Rather, displaying vulnerability is a leadership choice, showing your organization your humanity and making it safe for others to do the same.

Displaying vulnerability is a leadership choice,
showing your humanity and making it safe for others to do the same.

As all four of these qualities come together, you are able to not simply expand your executive presence but are better able to lead others. As your leadership presence expands, so does your impact. 

So then, my ask for you this week is two-fold. First, notice the leaders you encounter who have the executive presence you aspire to show. Second, can you break down how their clarity, confidence, competence, and connection source their presence? 

I look forward to hearing from you about what you learn. I mean that. I treasure hearing from readers about how this newsletter contributes to your ability to both communicate and lead.

JD’s Recommendations: what I’m reading, hearing, and seeing:

• Reading: loved the insights from Melissa Karz in The Problem with Being Nice.

• Hearing: check out Doug Hattaway’s conversation with Dan Pink on “The Power of Regrets.”

• Seeing: the research mentioned above from Alison Brooks on moving from “I’m anxious” to “I’m excited” is playfully covered in this video from The Atlantic.

All the best, jds