June 23, 2020
019: Developing Executive Presence
Executive Presence represents your ability to confidently lead an organization in a positive way, show respect for others, solve problems, and anticipate the future. In the episode, I talk about Executive Presence in terms of looking like a leader, acting like a leader, and becoming a leader.
You can download the show notes here.
Please visit stephenmclain.com for more resources.
You can now purchase a course to help you advance your career from Finance Leader Academy. It's called Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy That Sets You Apart.
Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:15.000
This week on the podcast I am talking about developing your executive presence.
There are many definitions floating around about executive presence, but I'm going to describe it in terms of looking, acting and becoming a confident and respectful leader who is capable of connecting with people, and communicating clearly enjoyed the episode this week. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. And this is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. I like this forum because it gives me an opportunity to reach out to you in the finance and accounting community that we can develop our leadership skills. It's another reminder that I believe very strongly that we have very strong technical skills that we need to continually be looking at our leadership skills and ensuring that we are looking out for our teams growing our teams empowering them and becoming better leaders every day so that we are focused on growing our team and also looking out for our organization as a whole. This week is episode number 19. And today, I will discuss executive presence, especially if you are desiring to grow your potential for senior leadership, john Maxwell said, a leader knows the way goes the way and shows the way there are numerous studies around what executive presence is, and how you develop it. It does come from where you are, and who you are on the inside how you act and how you interact with others. What demeanor you have what drives you? And do people naturally gravitate to you executive presence will continue to be an evolving definition. As our society evolves. It's thinking about how and what we want our senior leaders to be the world is filled with bias. The moment you work for an organization, you are being judged for your potential. And the definition for that potential may be different across organizations, it comes down to how you act, how you dress, how well you communicate a new idea how well you deal with adversity, can you solve problems? And can you think of the organization as a whole senior leaders usually have a specific viewpoint with what makes another senior leader I'm asking you to consider modeling behavior that is desired by senior leadership and senior leaders that you may be already working with. Of course, this depends on what the senior leadership in your company is composed of and how they act. And if they act properly. And if they look out for the organization as a whole NFL exemplifying proper values, I want you to have the best possible chance at advancement to the senior level. And that is why a discussion like this is important. And it won't be the last time that this topic will be discussed. I believe that executive presence is the confident ability to show you're capable of leading others and leading an organization in a positive way who can solve problems shows respect for others, and sees where the organization needs to go in the future to speak of executive presence is to determine how best to prepare yourself for senior leadership. And here are a few areas to consider. It's best to start early in your career so that you make positive impressions with your leadership and that you exceed expectations regarding your performance. And to show that you have potential for greater responsibility. You also need to show that you can see the organization as a whole. Instead of just the one piece that you are responsible for. It's good to be passionate about what you're responsible for. But as we grow in our responsibility, and as we grow in our role, we need to start seeing the organization as a whole and how each department and each team works together for the vision and the mission and the strategy of the organization and where the organization is going into the future and how each piece of it works together. You must have a strategic mindset ready to overcome adversity? What happens when you are faced with difficulty? Do you offer a solution? Or do you become part of the problem that you can respectfully get along with others and solve tough problems together, I recommend that you always be building relationship capital and you give way more than you take. I also recommend and encourage you to bridge gaps in the company. Wherever you see them, you will make significant gains by being a problem solver. I have found that there are gaps throughout every organization. One team may not be speaking to another team, but they must be doing that to solve the right problem. Once you find that a communication or a leadership gap exists between teams and departments, you have an opportunity to solve a big problem for the organization. You get to bring leaders together and you get to show off How you have influence in the organization which may end up solving a huge problem for the company, maybe even saving lots of money for the organization, creating new efficiencies and then creating new opportunities that didn't exist before. Because of this gap, I recommend that you continue to guard your professional reputation with acceptable behavior both on and off the job. Don't compromise your integrity or your company's values at any time, leaders continue to be leaders 24 hours each day, leadership is a privilege leading others is the highest privilege you can accept. So be honorable act honorably. protect those who need it, grow others and put forth unnecessary attention and energy to take care of those whom you are leading. senior leaders are looking for a trustworthy partner who they can work with to solve big problems. In chart a successful course for the company. You must continually read the room reading the room as a skill, you're going to hear this term a lot. You must continually be reading the room for clues to how you should act and how she would approach others and how you respect others and how you live your values and how you pitch a new idea and how you communicate clearly read the room. Understand your audience, understand who is in the room, understand who can help you and who needs to be introduced to others who can solve a problem. Now I'm going to take you through what looking like a leader acting like a leader and becoming a leader is all about looking like a leader is about communicating confidence and your mannerisms, your dressing style and your expressions. How do the senior leaders in your organization dress? What is the norm for dressing? are they wearing suits? Are they acting casual? Are they dressing casually? I think you must continually dress sharp and look the part of a senior leader casual dress even if considered acceptable may limit your advancement. Remember back a few moments ago when I talked about bias. senior leaders often have an internal bias around how people dress. So if you want to advance in your career through a senior leader position, I would recommend dressing sharply even though the atmosphere and the environment may be telling you to dress casually every day. So that's why I'm cautioning you if you want to dress casually every day, because you may be falling to someone's bias on your potential. It's still real how you dress communicates your commitment to the organization. It's still a very real fact in a lot of people's minds. So I would consider very seriously do you exemplify confidence? What are the facial expressions and body posture that you have every day? Do your facial expressions and body posture show leadership? Do they show confidence? Do they show that you care? Do they show that you are being positive and are engaged does your body posture and facial expressions show that you care about what others are speaking and that you respect others? So I would consider how you sit how you stand how you walk how you express your emotions when speaking with others. When listening I would consider everything that you do when you are in a meeting when you're speaking with others when you're sitting at your desk. Next I'll discuss what acting like a leader means regarding executive presence. acting like a leader is about how do you carry yourself? Do you act mature? Do you make a lot of assumptions? Do you make too many assumptions? Are your internal biases in check? Are you self aware of your actions? Or your lack of actions? How do you react to bad news? Is your reaction to bad news always to fly off the handle? What is your temperament? When somebody gives you bad news? Do you instantly try to blame someone? Do you instantly throw a fit when someone gives you bad news? Do you try to solve the problem? Do you try to lead the person who gave you the bad news? If they're responsible for it to find a solution to the problem? Do you offer a positive answer? If the bad news is about a crisis? Do you take leadership of that crisis to try to find solutions instead of other problems? What is your overall demeanor? Are you positive but also realistic. No one wants to be around negative people or people who are pessimistic you can definitely disagree without being negative and you can address changes need to occur without undermining leadership. You can also be positive while pitching an idea about a different direction that the organization should be pursuing. It's all about your approach and your demeanor and how you speak to others. Do you speak respectfully? Do you speak about your ideas? Do you try to focus on the solution that you're bringing? instead of blaming a part of the problem on another team on another person? Are you continually bringing positive solutions and maybe another direction but speaking in a manner that this is a possibility? And this is potentially a great vision for the company? Are you a big thinker? Are you someone who can bring a bring idea and bring in a lot of people into that idea? Do you get rattled easily when faced with adversity? It goes back to the bad news when something bad is happening and when you start In any kind of leadership capacity, you're going to have moments and you're going to have days that are going to bring bad news and issues that you need to resolve. And how do you overcome that? How do you grasp that crisis? And how do you grasp that problem? How do you overcome it? How do you provide the solutions? Do you jump at it and try to solve the problem? Do you run back into your office and you try to get away from it? Do you blame others? senior leaders are looking for people to solve big problems, especially problems are in a crisis in a problems that involve adversity of the company. When you walk into a meeting or a group? Do you build relationships with others? Do you connect easily with others? Or do you just go to your seat? I also recommend that we all become active listeners, we should listen way more than we speak. And you should be asking intriguing questions so that you learn more about others. When you do meet someone, how much do you talk about yourself without being prompted? How much do you generally try to know about the other person? And do you also remember their name? The next few moments, I want to talk about being a leader you should be building trust wherever you go. And whatever you are doing. senior executives have to know that they can trust you and trust you to act for the best of the organization and know that they can confide in you. You must be confident and capable of leading others through tough times. It's easy when things are going well. But leadership is about tackling tough problems. Can you make tough, unpopular decision for the sake of the organization? Can you see the future? Do you anticipate what needs to get done? Can you achieve results? How well do you communicate and influence your vision with your team and with the organization as a whole I'm going to talk about one final big idea about when you are working on advancing in your career that goes along with the last few weeks two episodes ago, I talked about taking risk in your career. Last episode, Episode Number 18. I talked about goal setting. But also want to combine those two episodes with this one in developing your executive presence is that you should be seizing opportunities to grow into advance. You need to continue to grow your skills, take some risk, do something hard tackle a tough project, speak up at meetings, I encourage you to use your voice wherever it matters. And wherever you can make a difference. Once you consider pitching a new idea and do something different. Get out of your comfort zone. Continue to find new opportunities where you can make a difference. And you can show off your skills and show off your abilities. continue to grow your skills, grow your leadership, start to develop your executive presence start to go through and develop some of the things that we've talked about in this episode about looking acting and becoming a leader showing confidence showing that you can lead others showing that you can be respectful of others and others opinions show that you can be humble and you want to learn about others. Show that you can build relationship capital that you can use to influence a great idea later, all these things are going to come together and it's going to be fruitful for you as you develop and advance your career. Now for an easy win today. If you're interested in advancing your career beyond manager here are a few things that you can start doing today. But you have to go deep inside yourself to assess and understand yourself better and make some significant changes. cosmetic changes won't suddenly give you potential for a senior leader position and a few things to consider. Do you deliver results? Can your leadership count on you to get the things done that you are responsible for? Can you deliver results on a tough project that matters the most to your company? Do you speak with confidence? Do you have body language that shows confidence? Do you respect others? How do you handle adversity? Can you lead a team with confidence even during a crisis or a tough situation? Now I want you to look around at your senior leadership, how are they dressed? How do they convey themselves? How do they communicate and handle adversity and hopefully you can find some solid examples to follow in your own company now wants you to do the analysis and make the necessary changes to begin your pathway to advancement. Continue to do the assessment of your own skills and abilities and start the game plan how you can advance in your own career because you want to become a senior leader one day now I found some interesting research to share with you. I saw that LinkedIn teamed up with Egon zehnder back in 2017. And they did a survey with over 7000 working women across seven countries. And the interesting statistic that I found is that 74% of the women globally, both in junior and middle manager level positions said that they wanted to reach senior and executive leadership within their organization. And they mentioned that CEO was the position that they wanted more than anything else. So this is why this kind of discussion is important. Again, a few episodes ago we talked about risk. And we talked about goal setting. We talked about executive presence. So I know that there are managers of teams out there that want to aspire to be CEO to be CFO, so This is why this is important that you start thinking about now about how you can develop your executive presence and how you can show that you are a confident and respectful leader. This episode is sponsored by my new online course offering to finance leader Academy. It's called advance your finance and accounting career developing a promotional strategy that sets you apart. Are you having difficulty getting recognition from your leadership despite all the hard work you pour into your job and your organization, this course will help you analyze what you bring to the organization, how you can set yourself apart from your peers through high visibility work and developing your leadership skills. Plus how you can devise a strategy to move ahead, you can go to Stephen McLain calm, and you can select the store from the menu. We are still in production mode with this course. So I'm offering a limited time offer to buy it now. But this offer will be gone soon. All right. In this episode, we talked about executive presence next week is the final episode of season number two and I'm going to be talking about becoming your best self. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. Hope you enjoy the show this week. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review so that others can get introduced to this forum. I will be reading reviews on future episodes and it might be yours. And please share with your colleagues. Thank you. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen mclain.com and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:15.000
There are many definitions floating around about executive presence, but I'm going to describe it in terms of looking, acting and becoming a confident and respectful leader who is capable of connecting with people, and communicating clearly enjoyed the episode this week. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. And this is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. I like this forum because it gives me an opportunity to reach out to you in the finance and accounting community that we can develop our leadership skills. It's another reminder that I believe very strongly that we have very strong technical skills that we need to continually be looking at our leadership skills and ensuring that we are looking out for our teams growing our teams empowering them and becoming better leaders every day so that we are focused on growing our team and also looking out for our organization as a whole. This week is episode number 19. And today, I will discuss executive presence, especially if you are desiring to grow your potential for senior leadership, john Maxwell said, a leader knows the way goes the way and shows the way there are numerous studies around what executive presence is, and how you develop it. It does come from where you are, and who you are on the inside how you act and how you interact with others. What demeanor you have what drives you? And do people naturally gravitate to you executive presence will continue to be an evolving definition. As our society evolves. It's thinking about how and what we want our senior leaders to be the world is filled with bias. The moment you work for an organization, you are being judged for your potential. And the definition for that potential may be different across organizations, it comes down to how you act, how you dress, how well you communicate a new idea how well you deal with adversity, can you solve problems? And can you think of the organization as a whole senior leaders usually have a specific viewpoint with what makes another senior leader I'm asking you to consider modeling behavior that is desired by senior leadership and senior leaders that you may be already working with. Of course, this depends on what the senior leadership in your company is composed of and how they act. And if they act properly. And if they look out for the organization as a whole NFL exemplifying proper values, I want you to have the best possible chance at advancement to the senior level. And that is why a discussion like this is important. And it won't be the last time that this topic will be discussed. I believe that executive presence is the confident ability to show you're capable of leading others and leading an organization in a positive way who can solve problems shows respect for others, and sees where the organization needs to go in the future to speak of executive presence is to determine how best to prepare yourself for senior leadership. And here are a few areas to consider. It's best to start early in your career so that you make positive impressions with your leadership and that you exceed expectations regarding your performance. And to show that you have potential for greater responsibility. You also need to show that you can see the organization as a whole. Instead of just the one piece that you are responsible for. It's good to be passionate about what you're responsible for. But as we grow in our responsibility, and as we grow in our role, we need to start seeing the organization as a whole and how each department and each team works together for the vision and the mission and the strategy of the organization and where the organization is going into the future and how each piece of it works together. You must have a strategic mindset ready to overcome adversity? What happens when you are faced with difficulty? Do you offer a solution? Or do you become part of the problem that you can respectfully get along with others and solve tough problems together, I recommend that you always be building relationship capital and you give way more than you take. I also recommend and encourage you to bridge gaps in the company. Wherever you see them, you will make significant gains by being a problem solver. I have found that there are gaps throughout every organization. One team may not be speaking to another team, but they must be doing that to solve the right problem. Once you find that a communication or a leadership gap exists between teams and departments, you have an opportunity to solve a big problem for the organization. You get to bring leaders together and you get to show off How you have influence in the organization which may end up solving a huge problem for the company, maybe even saving lots of money for the organization, creating new efficiencies and then creating new opportunities that didn't exist before. Because of this gap, I recommend that you continue to guard your professional reputation with acceptable behavior both on and off the job. Don't compromise your integrity or your company's values at any time, leaders continue to be leaders 24 hours each day, leadership is a privilege leading others is the highest privilege you can accept. So be honorable act honorably. protect those who need it, grow others and put forth unnecessary attention and energy to take care of those whom you are leading. senior leaders are looking for a trustworthy partner who they can work with to solve big problems. In chart a successful course for the company. You must continually read the room reading the room as a skill, you're going to hear this term a lot. You must continually be reading the room for clues to how you should act and how she would approach others and how you respect others and how you live your values and how you pitch a new idea and how you communicate clearly read the room. Understand your audience, understand who is in the room, understand who can help you and who needs to be introduced to others who can solve a problem. Now I'm going to take you through what looking like a leader acting like a leader and becoming a leader is all about looking like a leader is about communicating confidence and your mannerisms, your dressing style and your expressions. How do the senior leaders in your organization dress? What is the norm for dressing? are they wearing suits? Are they acting casual? Are they dressing casually? I think you must continually dress sharp and look the part of a senior leader casual dress even if considered acceptable may limit your advancement. Remember back a few moments ago when I talked about bias. senior leaders often have an internal bias around how people dress. So if you want to advance in your career through a senior leader position, I would recommend dressing sharply even though the atmosphere and the environment may be telling you to dress casually every day. So that's why I'm cautioning you if you want to dress casually every day, because you may be falling to someone's bias on your potential. It's still real how you dress communicates your commitment to the organization. It's still a very real fact in a lot of people's minds. So I would consider very seriously do you exemplify confidence? What are the facial expressions and body posture that you have every day? Do your facial expressions and body posture show leadership? Do they show confidence? Do they show that you care? Do they show that you are being positive and are engaged does your body posture and facial expressions show that you care about what others are speaking and that you respect others? So I would consider how you sit how you stand how you walk how you express your emotions when speaking with others. When listening I would consider everything that you do when you are in a meeting when you're speaking with others when you're sitting at your desk. Next I'll discuss what acting like a leader means regarding executive presence. acting like a leader is about how do you carry yourself? Do you act mature? Do you make a lot of assumptions? Do you make too many assumptions? Are your internal biases in check? Are you self aware of your actions? Or your lack of actions? How do you react to bad news? Is your reaction to bad news always to fly off the handle? What is your temperament? When somebody gives you bad news? Do you instantly try to blame someone? Do you instantly throw a fit when someone gives you bad news? Do you try to solve the problem? Do you try to lead the person who gave you the bad news? If they're responsible for it to find a solution to the problem? Do you offer a positive answer? If the bad news is about a crisis? Do you take leadership of that crisis to try to find solutions instead of other problems? What is your overall demeanor? Are you positive but also realistic. No one wants to be around negative people or people who are pessimistic you can definitely disagree without being negative and you can address changes need to occur without undermining leadership. You can also be positive while pitching an idea about a different direction that the organization should be pursuing. It's all about your approach and your demeanor and how you speak to others. Do you speak respectfully? Do you speak about your ideas? Do you try to focus on the solution that you're bringing? instead of blaming a part of the problem on another team on another person? Are you continually bringing positive solutions and maybe another direction but speaking in a manner that this is a possibility? And this is potentially a great vision for the company? Are you a big thinker? Are you someone who can bring a bring idea and bring in a lot of people into that idea? Do you get rattled easily when faced with adversity? It goes back to the bad news when something bad is happening and when you start In any kind of leadership capacity, you're going to have moments and you're going to have days that are going to bring bad news and issues that you need to resolve. And how do you overcome that? How do you grasp that crisis? And how do you grasp that problem? How do you overcome it? How do you provide the solutions? Do you jump at it and try to solve the problem? Do you run back into your office and you try to get away from it? Do you blame others? senior leaders are looking for people to solve big problems, especially problems are in a crisis in a problems that involve adversity of the company. When you walk into a meeting or a group? Do you build relationships with others? Do you connect easily with others? Or do you just go to your seat? I also recommend that we all become active listeners, we should listen way more than we speak. And you should be asking intriguing questions so that you learn more about others. When you do meet someone, how much do you talk about yourself without being prompted? How much do you generally try to know about the other person? And do you also remember their name? The next few moments, I want to talk about being a leader you should be building trust wherever you go. And whatever you are doing. senior executives have to know that they can trust you and trust you to act for the best of the organization and know that they can confide in you. You must be confident and capable of leading others through tough times. It's easy when things are going well. But leadership is about tackling tough problems. Can you make tough, unpopular decision for the sake of the organization? Can you see the future? Do you anticipate what needs to get done? Can you achieve results? How well do you communicate and influence your vision with your team and with the organization as a whole I'm going to talk about one final big idea about when you are working on advancing in your career that goes along with the last few weeks two episodes ago, I talked about taking risk in your career. Last episode, Episode Number 18. I talked about goal setting. But also want to combine those two episodes with this one in developing your executive presence is that you should be seizing opportunities to grow into advance. You need to continue to grow your skills, take some risk, do something hard tackle a tough project, speak up at meetings, I encourage you to use your voice wherever it matters. And wherever you can make a difference. Once you consider pitching a new idea and do something different. Get out of your comfort zone. Continue to find new opportunities where you can make a difference. And you can show off your skills and show off your abilities. continue to grow your skills, grow your leadership, start to develop your executive presence start to go through and develop some of the things that we've talked about in this episode about looking acting and becoming a leader showing confidence showing that you can lead others showing that you can be respectful of others and others opinions show that you can be humble and you want to learn about others. Show that you can build relationship capital that you can use to influence a great idea later, all these things are going to come together and it's going to be fruitful for you as you develop and advance your career. Now for an easy win today. If you're interested in advancing your career beyond manager here are a few things that you can start doing today. But you have to go deep inside yourself to assess and understand yourself better and make some significant changes. cosmetic changes won't suddenly give you potential for a senior leader position and a few things to consider. Do you deliver results? Can your leadership count on you to get the things done that you are responsible for? Can you deliver results on a tough project that matters the most to your company? Do you speak with confidence? Do you have body language that shows confidence? Do you respect others? How do you handle adversity? Can you lead a team with confidence even during a crisis or a tough situation? Now I want you to look around at your senior leadership, how are they dressed? How do they convey themselves? How do they communicate and handle adversity and hopefully you can find some solid examples to follow in your own company now wants you to do the analysis and make the necessary changes to begin your pathway to advancement. Continue to do the assessment of your own skills and abilities and start the game plan how you can advance in your own career because you want to become a senior leader one day now I found some interesting research to share with you. I saw that LinkedIn teamed up with Egon zehnder back in 2017. And they did a survey with over 7000 working women across seven countries. And the interesting statistic that I found is that 74% of the women globally, both in junior and middle manager level positions said that they wanted to reach senior and executive leadership within their organization. And they mentioned that CEO was the position that they wanted more than anything else. So this is why this kind of discussion is important. Again, a few episodes ago we talked about risk. And we talked about goal setting. We talked about executive presence. So I know that there are managers of teams out there that want to aspire to be CEO to be CFO, so This is why this is important that you start thinking about now about how you can develop your executive presence and how you can show that you are a confident and respectful leader. This episode is sponsored by my new online course offering to finance leader Academy. It's called advance your finance and accounting career developing a promotional strategy that sets you apart. Are you having difficulty getting recognition from your leadership despite all the hard work you pour into your job and your organization, this course will help you analyze what you bring to the organization, how you can set yourself apart from your peers through high visibility work and developing your leadership skills. Plus how you can devise a strategy to move ahead, you can go to Stephen McLain calm, and you can select the store from the menu. We are still in production mode with this course. So I'm offering a limited time offer to buy it now. But this offer will be gone soon. All right. In this episode, we talked about executive presence next week is the final episode of season number two and I'm going to be talking about becoming your best self. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. Hope you enjoy the show this week. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review so that others can get introduced to this forum. I will be reading reviews on future episodes and it might be yours. And please share with your colleagues. Thank you. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen mclain.com and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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