Have you ever wondered why there are some people who the minute they walk into the room, all eyes turn on them as if, you know, they’ve got this aura and are attracted to them?

That’s what Executive Presence is all about and the good news is that through a series of Executive Presence Tips, I’m going to show you how to get a few quick wins while you actually work on developing your Executive Presence.

Click here for Karmic Ally Coaching’s Executive Presence Special Offer

You can continue reading the transcript below:

Hi, my name is Vatsala Shukla and I’m the Chief Encouragement Officer at Karmic Ally Coaching. Today’s tip is about posture to promote powerful presence.

But before I get into this tip, I want to ask you a quick question.

Is your posture powerful?

Now think about it and let me know because you can be one of two.

Now there is a cat, there are a couple of cat pictures in this presentation but that is only to prove a point.

Would you say you’re a cat face palm? Or would you say you’re the cool cat on the right side?

The point is the cool cat on the right side has Executive Presence.

So if you’re not aware of Executive Presence. Or you’ve heard the word being bandied about but aren’t quite sure what it means, here’s a quick and short explanation.

It’s basically trying to define the undefinable.

It’s that certain something that makes people take notice of you like I was telling you earlier about walking, a person walking into a room and all eyes turning on them.

It’s actually a quality   that creates a memorable impact.

And it’s the ability to exude confidence, make your presence felt and that is often called Charisma.

In fact, in all the definitions that I went researching about Executive Presence and Leadership, one common thread that I found in all of them was that it is the ability of an effective leader to motivate group action in a particular direction, irrespective of the means.

Here is the statistics from a particular survey done by The Center for Talent Innovation where they actually surveyed 268 senior executives and findings indicated:

Executive Presence accounts for 26% of what’s required to be promoted and it also depended on getting 3 things right:

• Gravitas, which is that unexplainable WOW factor
• Communication, which will mean both overt and covert meaning what you’re saying as well as how you’re communicating it and
• Your Appearance.

Now the good news is that the posture part is going to help you with both the communication part as well as appearance.

And here’s a quick tip. If you want a quick win and start demonstrating Executive Presence, while at least from the body part, it is to adopt positive body language because your body language is a silent but powerful communicator.

In other words, your posture, facial expressions, and gestures convey volumes about your Executive Presence.

So, what does positive body language look like?

Before I give you that answer, I want you to have a thorough look at this photograph where this lecturer or presenter is talking to an audience. He is actually exuding Executive Presence through his posture.

What 3 things or 4 things can you think about that is demonstrating what I am talking about?

If you want, you can stop this video right now, think about it and then resume to get the answer.

3 Keys to positive Body Language

These are the 3 things I have found you will find, and they are also the 3 keys to positive body language.

Firstly, it was good posture. You’ll notice the presenter is standing tall, he’s got his shoulders back and the back is very straight.

Also, he’s got an open position. There’s a relaxed look about his arms, his legs are uncrossed, and his palms are open. They are not fists and on top of it. He is smiling and maintaining good eye contact thus he is indicating that while he is talking, he is also open to receptivity, and he is building trust.

I am going to be forever grateful to my class, one of my class teachers back in boarding school who used to walk around while all of us were having our meals in the Mess. And if she saw any girl slouching or bending, she would immediately say, ‘straight backs, straight backs, straight backs’.

And that is in fact one of the tips I’m going to give you in order to develop a good posture.

First one as I said is to sit straight. In fact when you keep your back straight, you’re reducing any kind of pressure that you’re putting on your spinal cord and your entire body actually functions better. In fact it’s also good in case you’re getting a flabby tummy from a sedentary lifestyle at the desk.

So sit straight.

Also walk with your back straight. In other words, when you’re walking, your hips are aligned with your legs, your shoulders are back and your chin is lifted upwards a bit so that everything is in line.

And if you want to test if you’re walking with your back a straight back, then you can do one thing that we were taught to do.

It is, put a heavy book on your head. Not so heavy that you crash, but heavy enough that you are required to balance it as you walk up and down and turn around.

That is going to show you a) can you walk straight? And b) whether you are walking with your back straight because if you start to slouch, that book is going to fall.

So 3 things – sit straight, walk with your back straight and stop slouching.

Now let’s have a look at another image.

This presenter who’s lecturing.

He’s got the attention of his audience. Again, what are you seeing?

He’s got a straight back. You can see he’s maintaining eye contact with the audience in front of him and his hands are open.

He’s using his body to communicate his message.

And that is what you are also required to do if you want a quick win to start exuding Executive Presence.

It’s all in the posture.

Now, if you want some more quick wins, then of course you can get my short but very important book on 5 actions that you can use to raise your Executive Presence and demonstrate to your employers your leadership potential.

The link to this ebook is going to be given below this video and you can check it out and see if that’s what you want and need.

Click here to see the Executive Presence workbook

But for now and for this moment I would like you to try out the tips I’ve given you for size and then let me know in the comments that did your changing your posture actually make you feel powerful?

Go one step further and do it when you’re in the presence of others and then observe their reactions and their comments and do let me know.

Practice it every day until it becomes a habit and go for gold.

Resource mentioned in training video

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I’ve always maintained we all need to develop our own leadership style applying our power base for maximum leverage and avoid becoming authoritarian or relying solely on the power our position gives us.

While there are many skills that a good leader needs to possess, the ability to command presence in a room is a skill that can be immensely useful for anyone in a leadership position.

If you can command a room, then you can get people to listen to your instructions, you can build respect, and you can help to establish calm when there is a panicked atmosphere.

Commanding a room doesn’t mean a booming voice or high energy. It means playing to your innate strengths and knowing how to get a message across.

Many years ago I worked as the CFO of an insurance company and witnessed the transfer of Country Manager and 2 different working styles emerge.

The first Country Manager was an energetic type who would walk into the meeting room on a Monday morning full of cheer and would get us all into a high vibe mood before starting the meeting.

The other Country Manager was a quiet person in general but we knew when he had entered the room and hung to his every word contributing our ideas when required.

The thing is, both Country Managers were great leaders with different styles.

The first one was a specialist in starting regional offices in the CE & CIS region post the collapse of USSR and knew how to take his multi-cultural team with him. The second one was a sales specialist who was into strategies and then tactics.

The common factor between both was that we met our sales targets every year and were the envy of the region.

Another common factor between both men was that they stood tall, made sure they greeted everyone with a smile when they walked into the room, made eye contact while speaking to a team member and leaned forward when someone was speaking so the other person felt their opinion or idea was important.

If they could do it, we can do it too.

So how can you become a commanding presence in the room too?

You have to develop your own style.

Here are 3 ways you can do it without being noisy or creating a nuisance like the person who keeps jumping up at every point to add to the conversation simply because they want to be visible.

Use Your Body Language

In my blog post Want to be Successful? First Build Your Positive Reflex, I mentioned the results of a study done by The Center for Talent Innovation to get at the essence of executive presence and how 67% of the respondents felt Gravitas (itself a set of behaviors) was the core characteristic followed by Communication (28%).

Body language is important for both these elements of executive presence.

In another study, participants were asked to rate speakers who they thought were highly charismatic.

In almost every case, those participants rated the people who spoke with the broadest gestures and most movement as being the ones who were truly charismatic.

This is because we actually use body language for the lion’s share of our communication. Therefore, when you gesticulate and move around the room, it ensures that your body seems congruent with what you are saying.

This in turn makes you seem much more interested in what you are saying, and much more genuine in it.

At the same time, taking up more space makes you appear more confident and dominant. Moving around more will make you easier to pay attention to.

If you want to exude Executive Presence using your body, there are 2 easy techniques that I’ve seen used to good effect. One is using your eyebrows along with your eyes to convey confidence and the other is using your feet to show gravitas. 

Speak From a Place of Genuine Emotion

The mistake many people will make is to try and “fake” charisma by forcing themselves to move unnaturally. Unsurprisingly, this seldom works and instead only makes you appear more insecure.

That’s why the best way to be more charismatic and to use your body language correctly, is to truly believe in what you’re saying.

Moreover, you need to really believe in what you’re saying.

One way you can do this is to tap into a powerful emotion whenever you speak.

When you think about how important, exciting, infuriating, or endearing something is, you will be able to convey that same emotion to your audience.

One non-corporate example that comes to my mind is the final scenes of the Liam Neesom movie The Grey. After surviving an air crash in Alaksa and timber wolves who have killed his co-survivors, he realizes he has literally walked into the wolves’ den and is facing the Alpha Wolf.

As he prepares for the final fight, we see his hands and expression and understand a deep emotion that doesn’t leave us even after the movie is over.

I was so affected by these last scenes I had to google it to learn more about the movie.

The power of that last scene lay in the fact that the director had asked Liam to “channel his grief” over the death of his late wife Natasha Richardson.

While I’m not in the least suggesting you recall a traumatic situation to emote at work what I am pointing out is that great communication is about transmitting emotion as much as it is about transmitting words.

Use the Power of Silence

While pacing and gesturing can get you a long way, you can also command a room with the power of silence.

Next time the office is raucous, and you want attention, try standing silently in the corner of the room with your arms crossed.

That’s a technique my 5^th Grade Class Teacher Mrs. Shrivastava used to get the entire class to go into pin drop silence.

When you apply this in the workplace, it will have an unsettling impact on the team and slowly they will become silent and pay attention too.

I’ve done it in the past while conducting training sessions in huge halls by standing on the stage and simply smiling at the audience until the noise levels went down.

It takes a huge amount of presence to be able to silence a room this way, and huge confidence to do so without opening your mouth.

How do you command the room?

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not an advocate of the ‘fake it till you make it’ tactic. I do know there are times when we need to appear confident even if we’re not particularly feeling that way.

One body language tip that not only helps us appear confident but can actually work on the sub-conscious mind to make us feel confident has to do with the eyebrows.

Used properly, it can assist in demonstrating Executive Presence.

Folklore about the Underdog becoming the Top Dog that raised Eyebrows in Court

Back in the days when my diplomat father was posted in Kabul, the long winter season meant staying at home and reading books. It was too cold to go out and play.

It was around this time that I was presented with a book full of folklore from all over the world. I read a story about how an underdog Japanese Hero fought the Fiercest Warrior in the Kingdom to transform from underdog to Top Dog. He won the hand of the princess in marriage which was the main prize.

I must have been 10 years old at the time. Having long forgotten the name of the story, the eyebrow part remains evergreen in my memory.

Apparently, the Ladies of the Court had, according to the fashion and standards of beauty of that time, shaved and painted high eyebrows which went up in amazement.

At one point in the story, they disappeared into their hairline when the underdog Hero was making mash of the Fiercest Warrior in the Kingdom.

Looking back, I suspect that was the beginning of my fascination with facial expressions in general but certainly eyebrows!

Since children are normally treated as flies on the wall, it was easy to observe the adults.

This included my parents and teachers. The school principal was a good object of study because his mustache moved too along with his eyebrows.

I didn’t spare the house help or parents of my friends. My sample included just about anybody who qualified as ancient from a 10-year-old child’s perspective.

I even recruited my younger sister and friends, and we had fun.

What was meant to be a fun game ended up teaching me quite a bit about the role of eyebrows as expressions of confidence and assertive body language.

Indicating assertiveness with your eyebrows

Step 3 in my book Self Confidence in 8 Steps, shares 2 self-coaching exercises to implement confident attitudes.

In this post, we’ll look at a few ways to exhibit confidence and assertiveness to support the inner work that is required for change with our eyebrows.

Believe it or not but eyebrow control is absolutely crucial during the early days of imbibing self-confidence and an assertive stance. If the eyes are the mirror of the Soul, then the eyebrows can help you wing it until you get the hang of being assertive.

An assertive person’s eyebrows are relaxed and will match the tone of voice. A person who is passive would raise their eyebrows indicating lack of assurance and a desire to please. Eyebrows that are pulled downwards indicates aggression or lack of clarity.

Try it. Go to the mirror and try out expressions based on your inner feelings and see what happens with your eyebrows. Better yet, observe others. You’ll get the drift.

Make your assertive and confident stance even more effective by maintaining good eye contact with the person that you are talking to. Take it a step further by standing tall in a relaxed manner.

In my post Executive Presence & Professional Brand needs a Strong Vocabulary I mentioned that body language comprises 55% of effective communications.

Practicing eyebrow control is winning more than half the battle right there.

Supplement your body language with a steady, firm, medium pitched tone of voice. Stress on your key words delivered in a warm, clear and sincere manner using your Signature Voice.

Apply these tips and you can exude self-confidence and assertiveness even on a day when you are far from feeling it.

How do you cover up your moments of passive behavior?

Additional Assertiveness Resources

There are lots of posts to help you with your assertive behavior at my blog. Here is a small selection including my book Self Confidence in 8 Steps.

 You can also visit Amazon India

Executive Presence & Professional Brand needs a Strong Vocabulary

Karmic Ally Coaching’s Executive Presence Checklist

Stun Gun the Meanie

When your time management is not enough

Japanese Warrior Picture Credit: Pixabay

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