Executive Presence (EP)

#Leadership Executive Presence (EP)

Executive presence is a great tool that is hidden in everyone’s personality. Most of the time, people don’t explore and shine this hidden gem. #Executivepresence

Before this, let us understand what executive presence is.

It is the ability to act decisively and with dignity while embodying the most quintessential elements of leadership. People who have an executive presence are good at working under pressure, communicating clearly, and coming across as confident and capable.

We all experience in our careers that a few people at work create a great impact on our lives and, without any thinking, we follow their lead. People with a high level of executive presence can manage stakeholders' confidence, respect, and trust in your competencies and reliability. This creates a good catalyst for achieving the desired results.

Current research shows that good communication skills include being able to speak clearly, dressing appropriately, being able to read the situation, using body language, and making the right decision about how to communicate based on the situation.

§ People judge your executive presence at meetings with investors.

§ A few EP traits and let us understand these:

§ Think on your feet to express yourself clearly at any point in time or situation.

§ Move conversations forward with your impromptu ways with strong mental preparation.

§ Take a stand on controversial situations and drive home your point of view to make others understand.

§ Commit to what you communicate – consistency between what you say and what you do.

§ Strategic thinking is a critical skill that helps you differentiate yourself among others.

Speak with energy and body language even in unpredictable situations where you have never experienced it in the past.

Once the executive presence quotient is high, you are always powerful, regardless of the position, designation, and authority. All this improves self-esteem and enables one to achieve desired results with ease. Carrier growth is achieved much faster than others.

Improving Executive Presence (EP) comes with practicing on a regular basis. EP is art and science. which requires external support to build and asses the EP Quotient.

Auriel Global did a good amount of research on this area. In addition to these, once they added executive coaching skills to the leaders, their engagement with the team and with the stakeholders exponentially increased to the tune of 5-8 times based on the level of engagement. I further investigated how Executive Coaching adds so much value to EP. Critical communication takes place once the leader understands the context, asks the right questions, and can handle tough situations where leaders are not prepared to answer questions in dynamic environments such as press conferences, stakeholder meetings, investors' meetings, and at critical times of mergers and acquisitions. We have seen how few leaders can move in critical situations with ease and grace.