3 Lessons for Building Executive Presence… from Your Cell Phone

Executive presence describes how powerfully you communicate with your stakeholders. When it’s strong, they find your messages clear, compelling and engaging. Take out your cell phone and let it remind you to use 3 practices for building executive presence that will help you get through to your audiences. Keep reading to learn more.

How Your Cell Phone Delivers Messages

While everyone wants to get through on cell phone calls, a leader must get through to key stakeholders. Listeners expect valuable communications (ideas, decisions, direction and support) and they will stop listening if your transmission isn’t powerful.  Three practices that will strengthen your presence and effectiveness are:

Stay Energized

While we might wish that our phone batteries and personal energy stayed strong endlessly, both require daily recharging. A phone becomes a paperweight without juice, but a leader without energy can become much worse – indecisive, distracted, defensive, and destructive to everyone’s spirit and performance.

What You Can Do: Enthusiasm sells. Keep your personal batteries charged. If you want strong presence, exhaustion won’t help. It’s not a luxury to take great care of yourself physically, emotionally and spiritually. It’s a leadership competence.  Define what you’re passionate about contributing in life and discover what others need to know so they will support your cause. Inspire and engage others by showing your passion as you share your vision and ideas for bringing it to life.

Stand Out, Stand Tall

By standing taller than the surrounding buildings and landscape, cell towers pick up, sort and send clear, strong signals far and wide. The strength of your presence and influence depends on positioning yourself visibly and being recognized as someone who listens broadly, sorts out what’s valuable from all the noise and shares clear messages listeners value.

What You Can Do: Listen broadly to people in various levels and functions, inside and outside your organization. Learn from them so you can offer new ideas and open new connections. Sort through the chaos swirling around you and select messages that will most help your audiences succeed. Add your ideas and resources to ever wider audiences. Stand tall with posture and attitudes that show you at your best every time you speak. Consistently take the high road on living your values so you stand tall for them as well.

Transmit Clearly: Can You Hear Me Now?

Listeners feel frustrated when phone calls or you:

• Transmit intermittently so they must struggle to make sense of snippets of information or worse, when communications “drop” completely. Instead, consistently keep lines of communications open with your audience so you can share and learn without anyone guessing or struggling to reach each other.

• Check: How clearly and consistently you are transmitting and asking others about their important messages? Do you stop connecting when you get busy and leave others wondering, “Are you there?” Transmit your ideas, information and recommendations using a structured flow that others follow easy. Periodically check how you are coming through to each other and how clearly all parties understand key information.

• Are so full of static that messages are incoherent.  Instead, when you present, take out distracting, tangential or unclear thoughts and simplify complicated ideas that may confound others. Help others to clarify their ideas so they get through clearly, too.

• Check: How coherent and clear are your verbal and non-verbal signals? Shorten and simplify key messages. Use examples so a sixth grader would understand clearly. Assure your non-verbal gestures, posture and facial expressions reinforce vs. interfere with making a positive impact. Practice presenting in front of your mirror and punch up your non-verbals to support your effectiveness.

• Are disrupted by another voice breaking into the conversation. Instead, guide the flow of group conversations so everyone contributes productively.

• Check: How skillfully do you facilitate to keep uninterrupted focus in group conversations? Learn to orchestrate clear communications so everyone gets “air time” to add ideas and helps to build one train of thought. Show the presence and skills of a symphony conductor…or the linking skills of a Lilly Tomlin operator, as you prefer.

Now What

If you want your audiences to hear you powerfully, sustain strong energy, clarity and consistency. Make sure you transmit what equips others to succeed more easily. Leave your audiences saying, “Got it!” instead of “Say what?”

I’ve helped dozens of senior and emerging leaders with diverse personalities build strong, authentic executive presence and influence. If you or leaders you coach are committed to building your confidence and skills so you influence others positively and you want expert help, call me. Our first call is always free. I love helping leaders be and contribute their best!

Comments?

Do you have additional ideas for strengthening executive presence? I welcome your ideas and feedback at mkimbell@corporateadventure.com or below.  Thanks!

Please share this blog with anyone who can benefit from it.

All the best,

Meredith Kimbell
President,Corporate Adventure®
Executive Advisor, Strategy Consultant, Leadership Energizer

Leadership Coaching Notes uses real or composite client examples drawn from 30 years of coaching and consulting with leaders committed to improve performance by solving their toughest personal, interpersonal and organizational issues.
Unless otherwise attributed, all material is copyrighted by Meredith Kimbell © 2013. All rights reserved. You may reprint any or all of this material if you include the following: “Leadership Coaching Notes” © 2013 Meredith Kimbell, Corporate Adventure®, Reston, VA. Used with permission.”