The Executive Presence Trap
Why the “right” hand gestures won’t get you promoted
Have you ever been told you need to cultivate executive presence?
Whether you’re on your way up in your organization or already at the top, chances are that somewhere along the way, you’ve heard some of the following:
- Eliminate “weak” words from your vocabulary and strip all exclamation points from your emails. Stop saying “just”! Stop saying “like”! Stop apologizing!
- Stand up straight and take up more space! Practice those Wonder Woman arms!
- Purchase a more polished wardrobe or a new designer handbag so that people will take you seriously. Maybe try straightening your hair, or get a little strategic Botox or expensive highlights.
- Learn to Lean In — speak up! (But don’t take over.)
- Be warm. (But not too warm.)
- Be assertive. (But not bitchy.)
- Be confident in expressing your ideas. Eliminate “I think” and “I feel” statements.
- Don’t let anyone see you sweat — literally or figuratively.
If this feels overwhelming, confusing, nebulous, or impossible to execute to you, you’re not alone.
The larger question is this: how much of this has anything to do with actual leadership?
Most formulas for executive presence confuse the ability to look the part of a leader with the ability to play the part.
How do we define what leaders look and sound like: executive presence.
What is executive presence? Looking and sounding like a leader.
The advice presents itself as ludicrously easy: Want to be seen as a leader? JUST APPEAR MORE LEADERLY!
But we’re missing the important stuff here. Why?
First of all, the definition of executive presence is nebulous at best.
When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart struggled to define “obscene materials” in a landmark case on pornography and free speech, he said, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”
This is how most people understand “soft” concepts like presence and confidence and professionalism. Like obscenity, you know it when you see it . . . or when you don’t.
It’s pretty much impossible to hit a target when you don’t know what it is. Scrambling to “get it right” for the gatekeepers leaves most of us exhausted, frustrated, and disconnected from the moment at hand.
If we can’t tie executive presence to a concrete definition, maybe we can look at the advice given to achieve it. After all, there’s a lot of it: articles upon articles, enough books to fill several shelves in the self-help section, and a lot of “experts” making a lot of money off of telling you that they’ve cracked the code AND SO CAN YOU!
Here, we see more of the vagueness problem. Be calm, cool, and collected — according to whom? One person’s “cool and collected” is another person’s Ice Queen. Like that fuzzy I know it when I see it definition, success and failure is in the eye of the beholder.
Then there’s the other side of advice: the pinpoint-precise checklist kind. Here’s an example from the top result we got when googling “body language for executive presence”.
“Warmth and openness are demonstrated by rotating hands with palms up at about a 45-degree angle, a way of indicating that you have nothing to hide. Moving your hands and arms away from the front of your torso is another way of indicating sincerity and security. […]
Authority is shown by rotating your hands palms-down, a nonverbal way of saying, “Hold that thought.” The steeple gesture (where the tips of your fingers touch, but your palms are separated) is a sign that you’re sure of what you’re saying. As such, it can be very effective when you want to emphasize a certain point.”
This kind of WILDLY SPECIFIC advice may be somewhat easier to learn or take action on, but attempting to follow it often results in crippling self-consciousness.
How effective do you think you’ll be at demonstrating leadership while measuring what angle your hands are at and remembering which direction you’re supposed to rotate them in this specific moment?
(And don’t even get us started on the “steeple gesture”.)
But the biggest problem with nearly all of this advice is one simple thing: it’s CONTEXT-FREE.
It ignores both who you are and the situations you exist in. It ignores how the same actions and attitudes and gestures on two different people will be received differently, even if those two people are in the SAME SITUATION. It ignores that someone may follow every piece of executive presence advice they can get their hands on to the letter, but the decision-maker in the room may not receive it well.
It presents clear-cut solutions for a world that doesn’t actually exist. “What worked for me will work for you” — survivorship bias in action.
This means that most of this advice carries with it inherent contradictions and impossible double binds. Very little of this advice allows for the complexity of being a human around other humans in a meaningful way.
Action A does not automatically lead to Outcome B. That’s just not how human communication works.
But here we still are . . . with a nebulous (yet somehow also firm?) idea of what leaders ought to look and sound like, and a multi-billion dollar industry of coaches, magazines, books, courses, etc. telling you that they have the magic formula that will help you, potential leader, achieve that upward mobility you desire.
But executive presence is not the same thing as leadership. Executive presence is a costume.
It’s often an ill-fitting costume, based on a murky sea of bias and old-fashioned standards of what leadership looks and sounds like. So let’s break down the components of the executive presence costume to see how much of it is actually achievable, and how much of it has to do with the ROLE of “leader”.
We’ve put this plethora of advice into three categories: polish, poise, and power.
Polish
This word is often used almost interchangeably with executive presence. Calling someone “polished” seems to be shorthand for:
- Looking the way we expect you to look — looking expensive, “understated”, “neat”, fitting into whatever spoken or unspoken standards this industry has for clothing and appearance
- Speaking the way we expect you to speak — eliminating accents, regionalisms, speech we consider too “youthful”, slang, and AAVE; eliminating “problem words” like just, like, sorry; eliminating verbal fillers; using “good speech”
- Acting the way we expect you to act — knowing your cultural etiquette, manners, and hierarchy.
Translation: Polish is about looking (and sounding) financially well-off, about pretending human beings never sweat or get dirty or disheveled, and about pretending that we come from the same culture (or at least can learn to seamlessly fit into the dominant culture).
Poise
If polish is about how you look and how you act, poise is about how you REACT. How do “leaders” respond to stimulus?
“A person with good executive presence never lets people see her sweat. She’s not harried running from meeting to meeting, she’s not flustered when she speaks, and she seems like the person who, even in the wake of a crisis in the middle of the night, could still show up looking put together. . . . Be calm, collected, and the person with all the answers, and you’ll be seen as a leader.”
- Showing what we expect you to show: warmth, gravitas, decisiveness
- Not showing what we expect you to hide: control over “negative” emotions, control over your response to conflict, control over fear or discomfort.
- Control over uncertainty: Always know the answer, and if you don’t, be able to meaningfully fake it.
Translation: Poise is about self-control: pretending human beings don’t ever feel negative emotions and are not meaningfully affected by other people, challenges, and circumstances. It’s also about being a human version of Janet from The Good Place, with the correct answer to any and every question anyone may have for you.
Power
Power is not only demonstrated through external presentation, of course . . . but the way we’re judged for whether or not we have it is often via cultural or surface-level standards.
Power is measured by:
- Your effect on others: Do people listen to you and take you seriously?
- Are people willing to be led by you? If they are unwilling, can you convince them, accomplish your goals, or manifest your will anyway?
- How do you handle obstacles? When you encounter them, can you overcome them, destroy them, or ignore them . . . or are you weak?
- Confidence — do you have it? Do other people think you have it?
- Charisma — are people drawn to you?
Translation: Power is about pretending that “real leaders” don’t get scared or feel unsure of themselves or their ideas. It’s knowing how to gain buy-in and/or control over others by any (socially acceptable) means necessary, whether that’s positive (charm, charisma, confidence) or negative (force, dominance).
Polish. Poise. Power. Are any of these things inherently BAD?
Not necessarily. Taking care of your appearance and speaking thoughtfully can demonstrate respect to yourself and others. The ability to regulate your emotions enough to defuse conflict and create win-win situations is an absolute benefit. And of course, if you want to lead people, ideally you want people to, well, FOLLOW you.
But all of these arenas have dark sides.
“Polish” often has an extremely narrow definition that only leaves room for people who learn to dress, speak, and act like those who are ALREADY leaders: i.e. white, wealthy cisgender, straight, able-bodied men (and ocasionally women). This has enormous consequences for anyone who falls outside any of those categories. If you are seen as lacking traditional polish, you may not advance.
“Poise” can become a nearly impossible standard to meet — mainly because human beings simply don’t and can’t have all the answers all the time, and because there is no such thing as “neutral”. Human beings are not neutral in how we ourselves respond to stimulus, and we are not neutral in how we are perceived by others. Demanding perfect calm in the face of all conflict sets people up for failure, emotional shutdown, and burnout.
As for “power” . . . as long as we define who is powerful by who can DOMINATE — situations, other people, even their own emotions and experience of the world — we remain in a zero-sum game of winners and losers. We’ve seen what that does to the world.
The current signifiers of executive presence are deeply connected to an old-fashioned, narrow view of power that we have come to accept as “just the way things are”. But dismantling toxic systems means we cannot equate tradition with quality or effectiveness.
Since an individual’s lack of executive presence can have real consequences for careers, “you know it when you see it” is not an acceptable definition. Neither are outdated visual markers. We need to dive in, look at what is really being enforced through all this coaching and development, and ultimately ask ourselves a question.
Can we broaden our definition of effective leadership to include those who may not fall into the very narrow box currently marked professionalism? Can we separate the costume of executive presence from the concept of leadership?
How do we build a new model of leadership and new, more diverse markers for how we demonstrate it? Focus on what really matters . . . not beautifully tailored clothes or someone’s idea of perfect composure, but actions that help build better organizations and a better future for as many people as we can. Curiosity, not judgment. Honoring humanity.
This takes us to the CONCEPT of leadership and power, and this is where we get excited.
If you want to do more just than look and sound like a leader, here are the things we know to be crucial:
Presence
Not “executive”. Presence, as in the act of truly living in your own body, mind, heart, and spirit with other people, and reacting to what is in front of you. Real presence means that we acknowledge that no amount of strategy or preparation allows us to wholly control the situation or the moment.
Rejecting Neutral/Calm as the standard of “real leadership”
Emotions are a critical component of our humanity, and empathy is a crucial component of leadership. When people try to achieve perfect neutrality, what we see most often is tension, gripping, and muscling control over themselves and others. This leads to shut down, not neutrality. Shut down and calm are NOT the same thing, and letting go of neutral/calm doesn’t mean you will explode. Having and showing emotions is healthy and can connect us to others. Poise can include finding the center in your emotions (even strong ones!) and learning to ride them without letting them take over.
Understanding and appreciating your team.
Leadership is not about being a person who knows all the answers by yourself . . . or knows how to socially accomplish ANYTHING. It’s about being able to truly see and respond to those you work closely with, to understand their strengths, their gifts, their potential, and their humanity. True leaders create space for people to shine as who they are, not by asking them to be pale imitations of an old-fashioned standard. True leaders build and nurture relationships, instead of trying to “master” them. True leaders know that they shine when their team thrives, not just when they’re “productive”.
Calibrate your Internal compass.
As we get to leadership, the exact behaviors that got us approval before (which often tend to live in the sphere of “obedience”) become a liability. There is no longer anyone to check in with for approval, or more importantly permission. This next level is about innovation and generation. It’s a whole different ball game. YOU are the person people are looking to. You are now creating your own standard. You’re shifting away from the idea that you require others’ approval and permission, and toward a new standard: self-knowledge, curiosity, and allowing for input from others . . . with you as the final decision maker. Know your core values and define your own concept of leadership, so you can stop looking to others for the way to do it “correctly”. The person who sets the standards has the power.
Taking your space.
For all the talk about power poses, there is very little good advice about how to actually OCCUPY your space. How we take space, much like the energy we enter into a room with, is an area that we focus on because it’s, well, powerful. Done well, it allows you presence and gravitas in a room, without tripping the Wild Kingdom winners and losers binary.
Here are our top tips for occupying space:
Finding Gravitas
Literally meaning gravity. Connection with the ground. Around these parts we use the phrase “LET YOUR BUTT BE BIG” to access more gravitas and a fully embodied, richer speaking voice.
Occupying Core Space
We perceive space from the centers of our bodies (from shoulders to pelvis, including our sternum, back, spine, and ribs), not our limbs. Anything that increases the space your core occupies (including breathing) helps you be perceived as more powerful. This way of taking space is not about blowing up to look as big as possible. It’s not a competition. Also, notice we use “occupy” instead of “take” your space. You are entitled to your space. You do not need to “take” it from someone else.
Occupying Time Space
We express this through finishing sentences, allowing for silence, and moving at your own rhythm. There is a difference between the kind of beneficial awareness of your audience that helps us land our ideas so they can be heard, and accommodating them. Accommodation can look like speeding up because you’re worried about taking up too much of their time, or word-vomiting because you feel the need to answer every question before it’s even asked. You do not need to do this. Give your ideas the space they deserve.
None of the above pathways requires anyone’s permission . . . or even their buy-in. You can find your gravitas and space anywhere. This kind of power is what fascinates us here at Vital Voice Training.
There is so much ground to uncover, learn, and map about executive presence. We will continue to dive deeper over the coming weeks to look at both the big picture and the pieces so you can ultimately make the choices that will get you where you want to go. We’ll dive deeper into ways to stand in your truth and your power that are not dependent on external approval, standards, or permission.
We can’t wait to continue this conversation with you.
For further discussion on executive presence from an incredible group of women, check out our special panel podcast episode — Executive Presence: A VOICE(is) Conversation on the Future of Leadership.
