“Dominique is smart, people like her, she gets things done. But we can’t promote her to VP yet. She has no executive presence.”
Imagine Dominique‘s reaction when she heard those words spoken by her senior management.
“But, but, but … I’m qualified! I don’t get it!”
That one missing ingredient was stopping it all.
What is executive presence? It’s an aura.
A man on stage plays the trumpet. The note he plays floats out over the crowd. The audience is still. Listening. Absorbed in that note. Nothing exists but that moment, that note. He gives his note everything and, as he does, so does the audience. He holds it, lets it go. The audience lets out their breath as they gently land into the silence.
When he’s not playing his trumpet, this man is a powerful force for good in a leadership position within his world-renowned organization.
He aspires to senior leadership and came to us for coaching on Executive Presence.
It turns out that what he learned about presence elevates not only his communications in the challenging professional world he inhabits, but also in his extraordinary other world as a musician.
People can tell you about the state of the world, what is and isn’t possible, what’s going to happen in 2022. They can tell you these things. It doesn’t make them true. They only become true when you decide they are true.
The truth of others may spoil our dreams if we follow their truths too closely. It’s only ever your own truth that ignites the spark that makes the real goodness in your life begin.
Don’t look at what other people are doing to find out what you are capable of. Your standards may be much higher than theirs.
Senior executives spend their days listening to endless proposals and briefings. They sit through so MANY presentations, it TORTURES them to listen to presenters who don’t get right to the point.
I’m sure you watch YouTube videos. Have you ever watched one that took a long time to get to the point? You know that feeling you got? Did you ever fast-forward hoping they would get to something good? Did you ever skip out before the end?
Senior executives LIVE with that feeling.
It’s torture. There’s no other word for it.
I’m sure they would wish for a remote control that could fast-forward. And they would use it liberally.
This is how to stand out from this crowd in your executive presentations:
Many executives who come to me for executive coaching come prepared with their word-for-word script.
What’s the problem with speaking from a script when you’re giving a presentation?
Well…what does a script say about your mindset? About your thoughts and feelings about yourself? Your feelings about the audience? About your true power?
Having a script sends out a lot of messaging about you that you might not want to be sending.
Last week I delivered a Causative Communication workshop to a small group of wonderful professionals ranging from a reliability engineer to several senior directors.
Every single one of them, in their final video, is radiant. There’s no other word for it. They are about to be confronted with a difficult situation. And they are radiant.
As a matter of fact, even before they’ve said a word, they have won you over. Any resistance you have, has completely melted away. You are already smiling and completely drawn to them. You can’t help it.
Their radiance steers the difficult situation they’re facing solidly on track towards a positive outcome.
It’s an almost overwhelming radiance. You might call it charisma, but charisma is a shabby word compared to this. What you’re seeing is much more powerful.
Where does this radiance come from? Two things.
In their first video, the “before” video, they were all thinking. This happens to pretty much everyone, no matter how successful they are. They’re thinking about what they’re going to say, about the outcome, about how difficult the situation is, lots of things. This thinking introverts their attention.
They’re not really being there, not in the moment, fully present and so therefore, they don’t have presence. Without presence, there is no radiance.
Secondly, in their first video, they don’t have much affinity for the other person. There’s no reason for them to have any because the other person is being difficult, so they don’t.
However, in their final video, they have stopped thinking. They have graduated to looking and knowing. They are completely in the moment, they are completely there, you feel them totally with you. Their presence is strong.
Additionally, they are FULL of affinity. For no reason, except that they are. Their great affinity makes you smile back before you even have time to think about it. It supersedes logic.
Radiant means to shine beams of light from a center.
That center is YOU. The light that shines is directly from you.
And when you are fully present, with your attention fully extroverted onto the other person, and when you are full of affinity, you are radiant.
You are also beautiful and handsome. We talked about how politically incorrect it was to mention it, but it just is that way. Their unique personalities were shining and they were beautiful and handsome.
That brings us to our special holiday tomorrow. In addition to being about fabulous food, Thanksgiving is about love. And connecting with the people we love most. We choose carefully who we spend Thanksgiving with. These are the people who really count deepest in our hearts.
You are what they are most thankful for.
A powerful connection is born when you connect directly from you, from your center, from your core. You connect by really being present with the people you’re with and by being full of affinity or even love for them.
Affinity is one of the highest nutrient-rich foods you can ever serve to your soul. It’s the only substance in the world that if you start giving away in the morning, but the end of the day you have way more than you started with.
As for me, I feel very grateful our paths have crossed - I have been truly enriched by it and am grateful we are part of a community dedicated to making the world a better place with our causative communication.
I’m wishing you a beautiful Thanksgiving full of love! May this special holiday abundantly fill your soul and emotional heart too.
Be the cause!
Ingrid
Ethan is 28 years old and works with billionaires.
He presents to SVP’s of Fortune 500 organizations and helps broker deals worth millions and even billions of dollars. Last week I spent a couple of days coaching him on his executive presence.
One of Ethan’s biggest problems was non-stop thinking.
Most people believe that thinking is good.
People in large corporations do way too much of it.
During coaching they often tell me, “I know I’m overthinking this.”
I find that ALL thinking is overthinking.
Power is in observing, knowing, deciding and acting.
These happen fast.
And then you start to think about them. Not only does that slow everything down, it completely obstructs your ability to be causative.
Ethan was so “in his head”, that as you were talking, he was simultaneously busily churning over what you were saying in his mind. It gave him a terribly worried look.
And as he was talking, he was carefully considering every point he was making. That made eye contact difficult. It made him look unsure of what he was saying. It killed his ability to communicate with real intention.
Because of his job, everything Ethan does is high stakes. This gave him a constant sense of anxiety. This made him think more and more.
He was afraid to stop thinking and to just LOOK. He was afraid it would make him stupid. Words would fail him, he wouldn’t know how to respond, he would look inexperienced.
He was afraid to just KNOW. He invalidated his ability to know because of his age. Actually, people that age often know more truth than people twice their age. They haven’t yet been taught how to compromise on what they see in front of them, to distort their vision to what others say they should see, or to lie to themselves.
He was also afraid to DECIDE. The word decision comes from the Latin de which means off and caedere which means to cut. When you decide, you cut off every other option, only one way forward.
And he was terrified to ACT.
He replaced all these with thinking. But the only thing that thinking accomplished was to take him around in circles. Into more thinking.
At the beginning of Causative Communication you do two exercises designed to get you out of your head. These very unique exercises get you to operate completely in the moment and to LOOK, to aim all your attention outward, to keenly observe the person in front of you, to SEE.
The noise in your head is gone. You are comfortable and full of well-being. Time seems to slow down. You are in control.
This is the very foundation of presence. And superior communication.
It’s also vital for forming a full connection with another person. You’ll never do it in your head.
Ethan developed a powerful presence. His age no longer mattered. He forgot about it and you forget about it too.
He also developed the ability to fully connect while he is talking with someone, anyone. This is the foundation of a powerful relationship.
This is what Ethan told me after he took his new skills for a test drive in the real world:
My experience of people is so much better. It’s a complete shift in how I am. It’s not only working in my negotiations, it snowballs into more and more parts of your life.
If you’re communicating effectively this is what it looks like. If you want gravitas, this is what it looks like. I will never, ever forget what I look like in those two videos [his “before” and “after” videos], the one where I was thinking and the other where I was being, looking and connecting.”
This is presence.
This is one of many things we teach. We taught Ethan and we can teach you.
The same applies when you are talking to a group or giving a presentation. This is where thinking and being in your head can easily go into hyper drive and destroy your impact.
In our Transformative Presentation Skills you learn how to stop all that and fully be in the moment.
You gain a presence so strong, so true, so compelling, that your audience is forever changed by the connection they feel to the REAL YOU.
Give it a try yourself. The ability to do it is native within you. It’s one of your greatest abilities. You develop it by using it. Feel free to let me know what happens. And let me know if you’d like any help with it.
Be the cause!
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