Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
The 2 skills that enabled her journey from ...

Bryony hung up from the virtual meeting with her boss with a heavy heart and a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had just gotten the news she dreaded.

Bryony was a Senior Manager who’d requested a promotion to Director. Her boss said, “Well, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll recommend you because you’re doing good work” and had unenthusiastically taken Bryony’s request to her boss. The answer was not only “Not now,” the top boss dismissed Bryony’s future possibilities as well.

Her boss thought she was being helpful when she said,” You don’t really have a chance of getting promoted because you don’t have leadership communication skills.”

Bryony had no idea what she was talking about. She asked what skills were they?  The boss had trouble defining them, just that Bryony wasn’t coming across as “a real leader”.

Bryony sat for five minutes trying to figure it out, wondering if she needed to be bossier. It was not her style and if that’s what was required, it was hopeless. She also didn’t see how being bossy was a good thing.

Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
The skills an SVP needs to create trust and ...

A large corporation had acquired 8 successful companies through their Mergers and Acquisitions. They paid a lot for them. Each one of them had a CEO. Now the CEOs were Senior Vice Presidents, high up in the large company, but no longer the men in charge of everything and everyone.

The CEO had gone through our special virtual Leadership Coaching Program based on Mastering Virtual Presentations. When he saw each one of these 8 new SVPs speak to internal audiences, he cringed. They had good content, but lots of sharp edges and missing key skills in their delivery that would make them great. So, he signed them up for the program.

The 8 men showed up skeptical and arrogant, but willing to give me a chance to see if there was anything good in what I presented. They didn’t think so, but they weren’t rude about it. They were quite pleasant. But arrogant. Especially with each other. Each one tremendously competent. Each one exceptionally accomplished, and the proof was the organizations they had built from nothing and then sold for hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars.

Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
Breaking the awareness barrier

Everything begins with awareness. When you are not fully aware of them, you lose sight of the person in front of you. An invisible wall forms, you unknowingly start talking at them, and your words can’t quite reach them. But when you become fully aware of them, truly present with them, the wall dissolves. You don’t have to try. Connection happens on its own. You start talking to them. Your communication flows naturally, it becomes effortless, and you reach them.

Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
You weren’t made to be ordinary

Ben didn’t want to just “improve” his communication skills. He wanted to stand out.

When he gave a presentation at a conference, he didn’t only want applause. He wanted people talking about it in the hall afterwards and telling everyone when they got back home.

When he met with his boss, Ben didn’t just want “a good meeting”. He wanted his boss fully engaged and talking to his boss about it, and that boss telling it all to his boss.

When he met with his team, he didn’t just want to “go through the agenda.” He wanted a team spirit that lifted everyone higher.

He wanted peers who respected him and sought out his opinions. He wanted customers with long-term, enthusiastic loyalty.

He wanted people’s faces to light up when he walked into a room.

Ben was done with ordinary. He wanted extraordinary.

Coaching, Executive Presence
Ingrid Gudenas
Human Connection in the World of AI

I love AI. I use it every day, I can’t believe how much time it saves me. Many of the people we’re coaching and training are not only using it, they’re creating it. They’re the ones designing it, making it all happen, and even shaping the future of AI for all of us. So, how do they feel about it?

This week I wrote about Human Connection in the World of AI. But I did something different. I recorded it as a podcast. Since I’m talking about human connection, it felt right that you should hear it in my voice.

Communication

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Living the magical life of an expert communicator

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Jesse is used to doing the impossible. He just applied for a position that everyone told him he couldn’t get.  He’s been told many times that “usually” people need to “prove” themselves for several years before they’re considered for these higher levels. 

 Jesse long ago decided that “usually” was not for him.

 He applied for the position … and got it.  Right away too, I might add.

 Jesse has gotten every position he’s applied for in the last 5 years, and there have been a good number.  Many more than “usual”.  His career is on the fast track.

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The solution to thinking under pressure

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I have a client in my life who makes unreasonable requests. I know, you’re thinking, “You’re lucky it’s just one unreasonable person in your life!”  Well, there are more, but this is about a particularly prickly one. 

The requests are always over the top, and sometimes they're impossible.  At a minimum, they're "make-your-team-bend-over-backwards-to-make-this-happen".

I was always caught off guard by his demanding and harsh attitude. I used to try to reason with him, but was always a little off balance.  I never came out of the meeting feeling good. Afterward I was always thinking, "Oh, I should have said ....."

I think it was uncomfortable for him too.

I decided one day, "No more of that!" (I hate feeling like an idiot.) I realized I wasn't giving myself time to think through what he was asking. My immediate reaction was always, "You have got to be kidding!" and I never had time for a second thought before he was demanding an immediate answer.

So, I changed my operating basis.

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The look in your eyes

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The look in your eyes tells me everything I need to know.  Way in advance of it happening, I can tell by the look in your eyes if you are going to win, barely maintain, or lose.

What is it I see?  I see the strength of your intention.  It tells me everything about how it’s going to turn out for you.

Intention is something I teach, so I know a lot about it.  It’s the secret ingredient of all success.

But, intention is not generally well understood.

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The secret to being compelling

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Leo, a newly promoted Vice President in a major corporation, came to me for coaching.  He said, “I want to be compelling.”

I said, “I can help you with that. What’s the message you’re trying to get across?”

Leo said, “Oh! Do you think I need one?”

Leo wanted to be compelling because, well, he wanted to be compelling.  That was it.  He had no real message.

We see too much of this.  All show and no substance.  People who want to be powerful only to get attention. Or status. Or admiration. Or to be told they’re compelling.

Painting your dreams into reality

2022 was an amazing year.  I’ll bet you discovered abilities you didn’t even know you had. These last several years have required your strength, grit, determination, resourcefulness, intelligence, and all the internal resources you could muster.

Well done!

Now we look ahead to 2023.

Starting the first week of January, you’ll pick up your brush and paint the first stroke of color on your blank canvas that will, day by day, turn into the next year of your life.

How do you manifest a beautiful year?

The moments that give life meaning

I’m a first generation immigrant. My parents came from Lithuania, right across the sea from Sweden.

We have a beautiful Christmas Eve tradition I think you’ll enjoy hearing about.  It creates a very special moment.

Each person at the dinner table receives a large wafer of unleavened bread and we have communion.

You might have heard of “Holy Communion”, which is different.  That’s when a Priest blesses the wafer and gives it special religious significance.

This Christmas Eve tradition of communion is not religious. If you look the word communion up in the dictionary, without the word “Holy” in front of it, it means:

The sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level.

 You can see it’s something special.

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The communication secret of high-powered corporate attorneys...

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I was inspired to write this article after attending the very moving Graduation for a group of 26 corporate attorneys who participated in our intensive 10-month professional development program.  The purpose of this program is the achievement of superior communication skills.  It includes developing Coaches who provide carefully crafted personal mentoring throughout the 10 months.  Students apply what they’re learning to challenging situations and demonstrate their ability to create extraordinary results through outstanding communication.

These attorneys are great communicators to begin with. 

However, to say they stepped out of their “comfort zone” to participate in this program is the understatement of understatements. 

The exhilaration both Coaches and participants experienced by the end can hardly be captured in words. 

One graduation requirement is for each participant to make a 2-minute video describing their journey, to talk about what they learned.

They gained a long, long list of new skills.  In their videos, they each talk about the particular ways in which they use them.  Each participant is very unique, has their own individual brand and accomplishments.  And so, it was with some surprise to hear every single one of them highlight the same particular skill that they said they especially valued, one that had a particularly memorable impact on their relationships and their successes…

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Communicating up...even when there's resistance

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The company was in trouble. Wall Street was unhappy. The normally optimistic CEO was tense and tight-lipped during media interviews.

Daniel was watching his CEO on the news with a tight feeling in his stomach. Daniel’s been with the organization for almost 20 years and most of them had been energizing and fulfilling. However and unfortunately, the previous CEO had made significant errors in predicting the direction of technology, and they were paying for it now.

The organization wasn’t a ship you could turn around overnight.

Daniel could easily get a clear concept of the CEO’s vision. It was a good one, a strategy Daniel could believe in, get behind and, with the clever work of his team, help make happen faster and better.

It required radical change, but Daniel saw a clear path for making the CEO’s vision a reality.

The problem was, Daniel had no access to the CEO.

Between Daniel and the CEO are three levels of management. The level right above him had the strategy of a dinosaur, which was, “Don’t change anything”.

This brick wall of “We know best”, and stubborn resistance to new ideas, blocked Daniel from the man with the vision, a vision that was not penetrating down into the organization.

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How to astonish your boss, the world and you

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Elena, one of the Vice Presidents I’m coaching, came in laughing. I’ll let her tell you why in her own words:

“Our corporate office has been making us do the wrong thing with customers. We know it’s wrong and we’ve been complaining, but nothing’s changed, we don’t do anything about it.

My boss, Andrew, and I took a trip to corporate headquarters for a meeting with the senior execs. Andrew went on a rant about how it was wrong (he was right about everything). The senior execs listened but looked stone-faced.

Normally, I would go in combative. Normally, we come in on the defensive, ready to defend our position from corporate. It was clear that “Normally” wasn’t working.

I came in ready to create a real dialogue. I came in with the mindset, “This is an opportunity where we could do something different …”

I let the conversation play out. I came in ready to listen … and I did listen to everything.

Then I took my time and really acknowledged what they said. I made sure they felt I really heard them.

Suddenly, they were ready to receive – I saw a willingness there. And I said, “We know the problem. This is a time we can change direction.”

I saw this difference in them. They were open to it.

It happened so quickly – took less than 10 minutes.

Today we got an official email telling us to go ahead.

Andrew emailed me with, “What just happened?”

I am not such a man

Today’s story about communication is from long ago, 1682 as a matter of fact. Much has been written about the first Thanksgiving and the debt and gratitude owed to the Native Americans who helped the struggling European settlers who were new to this land.

A little known story is of the Quaker William Penn who came from England in the 1600’s to escape severe religious persecution (he’d been thrown in prison twice already for his beliefs). His dream was to form a unique community of religious tolerance and inclusion in the new world, the first of its kind in the world.

The Lenape Native American tribe was already living on the land where Penn wanted to settle.

Before starting out on his journey across the sea, Penn wrote eloquently and respectfully to the Lenape, insisting that his words be meticulously translated into their language:

“I am very sensible of the unkindness and injustice that hath been too much exercised toward you by the people of these parts of the world, which I hear hath been a matter of trouble to you and caused great grudgings and animosities, sometimes to the shedding of blood … But I am not such a man …”

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Communicating "up" without feeling intimidated

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“I want to promote him, but I can’t.”

I heard three different executives say this last week. They were talking about three very different people that report to each of them, that they want me to coach, people who – by total coincidence – have the exact same problem holding them back.

It’s not an inability to do good work or a lack of their boss’s support.

Vikram, Martin and Sharni are all doing great work. Their bosses absolutely want to promote them and are going to bat for them as best they can. They want to make Vikram a Vice President, and Martin and Sharni each a Director.

However, the bosses are getting stopped by pushback from their peers and their own bosses – all for the exact same reason:

Vikram, Martin and Sharni are not seen as “good communicators”.

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Breaking free from what's holding you back... made easy

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Causative [kaw’-zuh-tiv], adjective: Making what you want HAPPEN. Being able to cause your intended effect or outcome at will.

When did we first stop being causative? Well, if it didn't happen sooner, it probably happened for most of us when we started school and were told to sit down and be quiet … for hours and hours at a time.

They told us exactly where to sit. We weren’t allowed to leave that seat.

They made us ask permission for everything, including leaving the room.

If we did something without permission, we were bad. It didn’t matter if it was right. It was automatically bad if it was done before asking for and receiving permission first. Even if it was just standing up to stretch.

If we wanted to talk, we had to raise our hand and wait to be called on. Raising your hand was dangerous because the teacher was asking a question that had one “right” and many “wrong” answers and when we were wrong, it was very public. Where I went to school, not many hands went up (usually the same ones over and over). We became skilled at avoiding eye contact with the person in the front of the room (something I still see today in my corporate workshops).

We weren’t allowed to talk to each other, only the one person in front of the room.

Everything we did was graded and compared to what everyone else did. Smarter than him but not as pretty as her.

We were graded based on one person's opinion of us, a person who often didn’t understand or like us. A person we thought was paid to be critical of us. To find every flaw.

Most of us did not get straight A’s. We were always falling short on something. Grades could easily make us feel that we were mediocre. Few were happy the day they got their “report card” and some hid them from their parents.

We were severely restrained from being causative. For years.

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How the "techie guy" learned to win over every audience

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“I’m a techie guy. I’m not one of those dynamic, charismatic types. I don’t even like them.”

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Steve. He had just been promoted to Senior VP. His boss, the Executive VP, reached out to me within weeks of Steve’s starting in his new role:

“You’ve got to help him. He’s in a very visible position now. His presentations are dreadful. He’s dry, monotone, off-putting. The employees are not warming up to him. Frankly, I don’t think they like him.”

The problem was that, while Steve dislikes the dynamic, charismatic type, that’s exactly the words used to describe the previous Senior VP, the one Steve was replacing, the one everyone loved, the one who had just left the company, the one everyone missed, the one everyone wished would come back.

You see the problem.

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This is better than being polished

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“I was struggling to find words.”

Vince, one of our Executive Coaching clients wrote that in an email that he sent along with the video of an extremely difficult conversation he had with a group of very unhappy individuals who felt they had experienced a great injustice.

He wanted to show us how, in an hour, this extremely distrustful group transformed into a smiling, grateful, warm, and unbelievably appreciative group of individuals who beamed at him with great friendliness.

It was remarkable to see.

Vince’s journey has been a fascinating one. He is a deep man, a good man.

Like many who come to us for Executive Coaching, his goal was to have executive presence and polish.

Isn’t it funny that now, after his coaching, he is writing about struggling for words? It sounds like he’s not “polished”. You would think he didn’t achieve his goals.

Yet Vince achieved something that goes way beyond.

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The secret to more progress, faster

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Don (VP of a major corporation here for coaching): “I want to extend my executive presence throughout the organization, beyond my immediate area.”

Me: “What does that mean?”

Don: “I want them to know I can add value to their activities.”

Me: “Is there a problem with that?”

Don: “Yes, they’re not seeing it. They think that I can only add value in my own area. Not outside of it, not for them cross-functionally in the organization. It’s frustrating.”

Me: “Have you ever told them that you can add value?”

Don: “No.”

Me: “Why not?”

Don: “They need to see it for themselves.”

I call this “Executive Charades”.

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The price tag on your soul

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“I don’t know who I am anymore.”

I was coaching Victor, a young man in his early 30’s who had already made millions. He came to me questioning everything. Early success in the venture-capital world led Victor on a hot pursuit of things he found did not matter to him once he had them.

The things that matter most are the ones you can’t see, like deep human connections. Like kindness, respect, real understanding, and emotional well-being.

Victor was missing all of the above and burst into tears when he found a safe haven with me to be able to say it out loud.

“My life feels like it’s been stripped of meaning.”

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How to talk to someone who doesn't want to talk to you

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Victoria leads a high-level Engineering team. It’s vital to her team that Sales doesn’t promise the customer anything Engineering can’t deliver.

It wasn’t going well. Engineering was no longer being invited to meetings involving Sales. That’s putting it mildly. Engineering was told to “stay out.” The relationship with Sales had gotten extremely contentious, to the point where the door was completely shut.

Victoria showed up for the Causative Communication workshop wanting to know how to communicate effectively with these people. How do you talk to someone who doesn’t even want to talk to you?

Her big focus was on finding out, “What do I say?”

She honestly believed she understood the Sales position and needed to get them to listen to her. She also knew they weren’t open to hearing anything.

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Fred’s search for executive presence

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“I’m the one who held back your promotion because I don’t think you have sufficient executive presence to be promoted to VP.”

I was helping Fred prepare for an upcoming one-on-one with the Executive Vice President, Olga, who was going to say these very words to him. Fred was there to change her mind.

We were practicing acknowledging the difficult things Olga would be telling him. Fred had earned some tough feedback and now had to pay the price of hearing it.

Even in the best of circumstances, Olga made Fred defensive. His hot buttons were triggered quickly. In past conversations, Fred’s strategy for getting Olga to change her mind was to overwhelm her with reasons she was wrong. But that didn’t work. It made Olga like him even less.

As Fred practiced acknowledging the piercing statements Olga would be making, I pointed out to Fred that his acknowledgements came across very reluctantly … and Fred just about shouted:

“Absolutely! I AM reluctant! Absolutely! I don’t WANT to acknowledge her when she’s WRONG!”

Acknowledgements have nothing to do with right and wrong. 

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What is essential is invisible to the eyes

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“What is essential is invisible to the eyes.”

Maxwell was quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the wonderful French writer, author of the lovely book The Little Prince.

Maxwell was a student in the early morning Causative Communication workshop I was delivering for European students last week. We were wrapping up the last 5 minutes of the 2-day training, talking about the class.

The golden sun was rising in California as he spoke.

Maxwell continued: “The Little Prince is required reading for every child in my country. I thought of this quote because ‘the invisible’ is what I believe you work on in this class, and this is what we have learned to do.”

He was right.

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How to deliver bad news

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“I know it’s bad, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Morgan was demonstrating how she delivers bad news. She looks like she hates you.

The truth was, Morgan hated the message she was delivering. Because of the supply shortage, she now couldn’t get the order that you need right now to you for a year. Who could possibly love that message?

The immediate response Morgan got was, “Well then, we’re going to your competitor.” Morgan was in customer service. It was her job to save the customer.

What was upsetting Morgan was how upset she was FOR her customer. She could FEEL their pain. She felt horrible because she CARED so MUCH for them and because she could do nothing to change the vicious material shortage for them.

I asked Morgan, “Why don’t you tell them? Let them know how you feel, how much you care, and how much you would love to help them?”

That had never occurred to her.

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