Every time you speak, people are making a decision. Is this someone I can trust or is this someone that I tune out of? Running my company, acquisition.
com, taught me this. Leadership lives or dies by your communication. If you cannot communicate like a leader, then you will never be trusted like one.
So, let me show you the five behaviors that are quietly killing your executive presence and exactly what to do instead. Number one is stop overexplaining. You can have the best ideas in the room, but if you can't actually communicate them clearly, you will always follow somebody who can.
And the thing is is that trust erodess with every weak behavior that you let slide. You don't need to add behaviors to be taken seriously. You actually just need to eliminate the ones that make you look weak.
The most intelligent people in the room, they rarely say the most. They actually usually say the least, but every word that they say lands with people that are there. I used to be the queen of overexplaining.
And and I did it for multiple reasons. One, I felt like if I didn't give people every single thing from my brain that they weren't going to understand the concept when it was actually the fact that I didn't know how to simplify concepts. The second is that I felt not sure in what I was saying.
And so I talked around the thing a million ways until I finally was like, does the person understand the message? And then the third thing was that if somebody wasn't giving me the reaction that I wanted, I felt unsure, uncertain, doubtful. So I kept talking and it was out of nervousness.
And so it wasn't until I got into a setting where I was leading a big team where I realized that I watched myself on a meeting and I was replaying it because I felt like I didn't get the reaction I wanted out of my team and when I watched them watching me, I was just talking in circles. At some point they tune out. They're like you're just said it six times already.
Like I don't need to hear you say it again, lady. Like we already know. The second is that I didn't come off confident.
So people start to check out because they're like suddenly they're like well I don't want to listen to you because you're not an expert. Because experts and people who are confident and people who know their they don't need to talk that much about the thing. They just say it and they assume that you understand.
They move on. Here's the thing. If you pause and you're okay with silence, it gives people time to process and respect your words.
Authority is felt when one speaks as if they're expected to be heard, not as if they're hoping to be heard. So when your communication's tight, your thinking appears sharp, even if it's imperfect. When people are trying to improve their executive presence, the first thing that I say is you have less time to talk.
They're usually taking up way too much time when they're speaking. A trick that I do with my executives, for example, is that when I'm having them present in our quarterly off sites, in our meetings, often times they say, "Well, how many slides can I get? " I'm like, "It's not about how many slides you get.
You get 2 minutes to talk. However many slides you want in there, great. " But I try to constrain the amount of talk time they have because it will constrain them to a certain amount of time which makes them bring the message down to only the most important points because if not right is most of the time they're overexlaining and overexlaining makes them sound insecure which is why people don't listen to you in the first place or take you seriously.
There's a quote by Warren Buffett that says the one easy way to become worth 50% more than you are right now is literally just to hone in on your communication skills. Number two is that we want to stop fidgeting. what you say does not matter if your body language is saying the opposite.
People won't follow somebody who looks uncertain. So if your voice and your body are not aligning, people don't trust either of those things because your energy reads as nervous and uncertain. And people don't want to follow somebody who comes off nervous and uncertain.
So instead, instead of being nervous and just and chewing gum like I'll do that, and playing with your hair and playing with your nails and like doing all sorts of things, instead you want to be controlled, precise, and slow. Now, why does this work? One, having a strong posture, having a strong presence, standing up straight, putting your hands together, having your shoulders back, sitting up straight, that shows that you're grounded, even if you are unsure.
And it also signals to you that you're grounded. The second is that the way that you position yourself literally signals to somebody how you feel about yourself. So, think about somebody who's really confident in themselves.
And then think about how they stand. Stand that way. Right?
If somebody's very confident, they're standing like this. They might be using a lot of gestures. They feel open.
They feel big and they're taking up a lot of space. Right? When you think about somebody who's not confident, you probably think of like more hunched over like this.
They're doing some uncertain stuff. It looks fidgety and they're slouching. They don't look sure about themselves.
I remember actually that I had a director of operations and she was really great at managing projects. But the moment that it got to, okay, we're going to command the team, we're going to tell the team what to do, she had the weirdest fidgeting. And so she would do two things.
One, she would bite her nails when I go on the calls. She wouldn't stop biting her nails. and she would be talking her nails.
And I was like, it's so such a little thing, but it makes a difference. And the second thing she would do is she would constantly be doing like this with her hair and just playing with her hair and she wouldn't ever stop fidgeting. And her fidgeting actually signaled to me that she was nervous or uncertain.
And so I had a call with her and I said, "Hey, I actually think the one thing that you could do that would make the biggest difference into how you lead this team is I just need you to get some fake nails so you stop biting them. " And so it was really funny because she actually went to the nail salon, got fake nails, and then she stopped biting her nails. that it actually made her look much more confident with the team because she didn't have this nervous fidget that she was doing.
Think about how if you see a CEO on a stage versus, let's say, a customer support rep, how do you think they're going to show up differently? How are they going to walk? How are they going to talk?
Where are they going to put their hands? How are they going to move their hands? It's like the CEO is probably going to have very intentional gestures.
They're going to use their hands to tell a story. They're going to bring people into it. Whereas the customer support rep might be fidgeting.
They might be talking like this. They might be going like this. They might be, you know, rubbing their arm.
They might be playing with their hair. And so you have to remember what executive presence looks like. And most people have some kind of nervous fidget that they do or they ramble.
And those things distract them from what they're saying. It steals their confidence and it seals attention that the audience would have on what you're saying. And now they're watching the thing that you're doing.
So end of the day, we want to replace the nervous fidgets, the slouching, the weird gestures with adopting a slow, precise, and grounded posture and movement that make people instinctively trust you more. Number three is we want to stop asking for permission. You don't get appointed to be the leader.
You claim leadership through behavior. If you don't step in and own something, take ownership, become a leader, somebody else might. And that person might be dumber and less qualified than you, which is the funny part.
It might not be your job, but it is your responsibility to take ownership in situations. And people with a high executive presence do that automatically. I remember when I was in college and I was put on this project and there were four of us was actually out sick.
I'd had the flu and so when I came in, I had this group of four of us and I was like, "Okay, the project's due in 2 weeks. Like, where are we at? " And everyone was like, "I don't know.
We haven't started. We this, we that. " And I was like, "What?
" I was like, "Guys, we're not going to get this done. " And so I realized I was like, "I need to stop waiting for them to say, "Hey, you lead this project. " And I was like, "Fuck.
" So I got home that night. I put together the whole plan. I said, "I'm going to do this.
John's going to do this. Sarah's going to do this. Here's how it's going to go.
Here's the timeline. Here's what we're going to all do. We're going to meet after school tomorrow.
" So I came the next day. I brought them the plan. We put it all together.
And guess what? I didn't ask to be the leader, but then they all started coming to me. Hey, does this look okay?
Do you think I should do anything differently? What do you think I should do here? How should I do this?
And suddenly I became the leader in that situation. And now I didn't wait for somebody to say, "Hey, we need a leader here. " I just said, "Hey, there's no leader.
Maybe I should step up and do it myself. " Now, why does this work? Leaders are followed because they create certainty.
If you don't create certainty in your team amongst all the chaos, it's going to be really tough for people to follow you. And that is why people like being around leaders because they make them feel safe. Now, why do they feel safe?
Because they create that certainty. Now, how do they create that certainty? They don't sit there and ask, "Do I have permission to be your leader?
Do I have permission to lead you here? " They just are. They take control.
They take ownership. They're decisive. And that decisiveness builds momentum.
Whereas indecision is what breeds doubt in people. And people want to be led by somebody who acts, not somebody who asks for permission. Number four is we want to stop avoiding hard conversations.
People won't say it out loud, but they are counting every single time that you avoid doing the hard thing. It's mentally they're checking that point, right? And avoidance kills respect.
Period. People won't say it to your face, but they will remember it when you avoid something. Every time that you dodge the truth, you lose respect.
Every time you don't address a challenging situation, you lose respect. And so, executive presence means being the one who will say what others won't say. I remember there was a quote from Mark Zuckerberg that I actually really like and he said, "Your job as a CEO is to be a trutht teller.
You have to tell the truth even if nobody else will. " I would say this is the number one thing that I have to do on a continuous basis is have hard conversations. The only way I've gotten anywhere in my health, my relationships, my family, my friendships, my work life is just by having those hard conversations.
For example, I remember that I had a friend and she kept telling me that she was having a hard time with her boyfriend. And she was saying like, "Oh, you know, I think he's two time me. I think he's this.
I think he's that. " And every time she brought it up, I realized that while she was bringing that up, she wasn't addressing the fact that she was doing some nefarious things in her relationship herself. And so, I said, "You know what?
I realize I can't be friends with somebody that should talk somebody who's also not upholding their end of the bargain. And so I addressed it to her and I said like, "Hey, I don't actually think that we can keep having these conversations because you don't take any responsibility for where you're at in the relationship. And so either take the responsibility or don't talk to me about it.
" And I remember in that moment she was like completely shocked. And I was like, "Well, listen, if you want to talk to me about it, I'm going to have an opinion about it. But if you don't want me to have an opinion, then don't talk to me about it.
And if you want me to talk to you about it, then do something about the situation. " And I remember it was like the first time I broke the seal with that person specifically who had been a friend and I felt fed up with their And what I realized in that moment is I walked away having more respect for myself. It wasn't about her and about the conversation, but it's about me feeling confident in myself, having the respect for myself, that I'm the kind of person that does hard things and addresses those things.
So what you want to do is you want to replace avoidance with confrontation. It's not that you just want to confront people and loosely call people out, act like an but you want to confront them with composure. And what that means is you want to be honest because when you're honest that builds trust.
When you soften the truth, when you avoid the truth, you create confusion. And when you name names, you become the person to look for when you want solutions. And great leaders don't avoid discomfort.
They walk towards it. Number five is stop being inconsistent. You cannot be trusted to lead others if you can't regulate yourself.
If your mood dictates how you lead, you are not leading. You're just reacting to your own emotions. Executive presence is earned through emotional predictability.
For example, when I was working in a gym as a personal trainer, I had a boss and and he would come in and it was like no matter what we had done, no matter how good we were doing, no matter how happy everybody was, it was like depending on whatever happened with him at home, that was going to rain hell on all of us that day. So, he would come in and it would be like, "What the are you doing? Get theing numbers up.
Do this. Do" And I was like, "Oh my gosh. " And it was horrible because what I realized I was like this guy has no emotional regulation and he will fail at his job because of that.
It's interesting because I remember even if he understood how to tactically do the job, the fact that he would walk in and his emotions were what controlled how he acted that day, I just had no respect for him and therefore I wouldn't follow him. I wouldn't be led by him and I end up eventually leaving the situation. So what you have to do in order to maintain and increase your executive presence is replace inconsistency with predictability.
Consistency creates psychological safety and people perform better when they know what to expect from you. Emotional regulation under stress is one of the rarest and most respected leadership traits. And so the higher that you climb, the more people will look to you before they look at the data.
Executive presence is not about being charismatic. It's about being somebody that people trust to lead. I used to think it was about charisma and so I felt like I wasn't a good communicator cuz I wasn't super charismatic, which is probably weird to see now.
So you want to cut out the weak behaviors and you want to replace them with clarity, with calmness, with conviction. And you will start to see that people will listen to you. And so at the end of the day, it's much more about what you stop doing that's making you not have executive presence than it is about what you start doing.
If you want to learn more about how to be a great leader, you can check out my video on how kind leaders succeed when nice bosses fail.
