In 2012, the Center for Talent and Innovation reported the outcomes from a study of over 260 senior executives. They organized their findings into three pillars of executive presence.

 #1. Gravitas – Behaviors included confidence and “grace under fire”, acting decisively, showing integrity, demonstrating emotional intelligence, polished reputation, projecting vision.

 #2. Communication – behaviors included great speaking skills, ability to command a room, ability to read an audience.

 #3. Appearance– Look like a leader is: good grooming, physical attractiveness.

While appearance did not rank the highest in importance, appearance stood out as a fast derailer.

With the outline of your strengths and traits in hand, you are ready to compare your strengths and characteristics with what your team or organization needs to perceive your executive presence. Place your strengths and traits side by side with the description of executive presence behaviors and traits. What stands out right away and aligns with what people need to see from professionals with presence? Highlight where you align. If you see some disconnects, match the needs up to your closest strength(s).

You will also notice gaps between your current strengths or traits and the traits people perceive as executive presence. Be aware of them, but keep your focus on your alignment.  We first enhance our presence building on our strengths, then we can make small adjustments to help close the gaps.

You are on the road to strengthening your executive presence as you are aware of your strengths and aware of leaders’ expected behaviors. Here’s an example of how one person completed this awareness exercise and found she had good base strengths and traits that she could build upon to demonstrate a better executive presence.

Lisa received a big promotion to the executive director role. She knew she was good at one-on-one communication but struggled to give presentations to groups of 8 or more people. Her strengths included confidently communicating her message to small groups, creating a compelling vision for her group, and the ability to connect with people. She compared her strengths to the expectations of an executive director with an executive presence. She found a gap in her communication skills in front of a group.

Before exploring her strengths (on her own and gathering feedback), she believed she could not speak in front of a large group. After going through this exercise, she gained more confidence than ever before. She had relevant strengths to build on. She was determined to better leverage those strengths to better communicate in front of a group.

In the next installment of How to Enhance Your Executive Presence (Part 3), we will dig into the three critical components of how we express our strengths and traits to create a positive perception of our executive presence. We will see what Lisa did after becoming aware of her strengths and the need to better communicate in front of a group.

What strengths did you discover so far about yourself?

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Ellevate Network originally published this article in 2017.