Gravitas: The Cornerstone of Executive Presence
Credibility with Self is the Can’t-Skip First Step
Photo by Getty Images via Unsplash+
I need to work on Executive Presence.
How do I develop Executive Presence?
Can you help me build Executive Presence?
I hear some variation of the phrases above in nearly every initial session I have with clients who seek Executive coaching. Beneath their words are their real, more-pointed internal questions:
How can I get people to take me seriously?
How do I command a room, a conversation, with confidence?
Despite long-won results, why am I still fighting for a seat at the table?
They seek to strengthen Executive Presence, but they’re unclear as to exactly what that is. Executive Presence is a combination of qualities that signal competence, credibility, and capacity to lead masterfully and effectively at upper-echelon senior levels.
Executive Presence is comprised of three components:
Gravitas
Effective clear Communication, and to a much smaller degree
pulled-together Manner & Appearance
Most often, my Executive clients are after Gravitas but they’re looking in the wrong places.
They associate Gravitas with bombast and standing taller, with taking up space and hurling opinions and directives at others. Lumbering, alpha- behavior is not Executive Presence and it’s not Gravitas.
Gravitas is rooted in Self-Assurance, the credibility and quiet trust one builds with themselves over time. Although Self-Assurance and Confidence are often used as synonyms for on another, they are not the same thing. Confidence is important, but Self-Assurance is deeper and more foundational than Confidence. Self-Assurance is the critical, absolute must-have to building Executive Presence. Whatever your story, whatever your background, and whatever your track record has been to this point, there are specific can-do ways to build Self Assurance. It starts with building Credibility — first with yourself, then with others. It must be built in this order to hold and stick. There really are no exceptions on this point.
Building credibility and trust with self first and then others is key, and it’s a major part of the work that I do with clients across industries and independent of titles or responsibilities.
Photo by Getty Images via Unsplash+
A client last year — an impressive tech VP — had vision, strategy, the skills and results, and also had the respect of his team. In Executive meetings however, and in situations that called for self-assured Executive Presence, he shrunk. He second-guessed himself as issues bubbled up. In situations where he had something valuable to add, he would stay silent. In other situations, he’d fill silence with chatter without ever digging-in and offering substance. He’d replay meetings in his mind, wondering (despite his proven skill and confidence in particular areas) what happened.
Sound familiar?
We worked together on self-awareness and on recognizing what transpired in these situations. We employed a very simple, anyone-can-do micro practice for building credibility with self and continued building from there. We also ID’d and practiced a physical anchor. For him it was placing both feet flat on the floor and taking one focused nasal breath before speaking. It became his practice, when he had a potential needle-moving something to add, to plant his feet, take a breath, and say “I want to add something here” or “Have we considered X? Because A and B would benefit from X, which could provide the shift on this we need.”
Deliberately building credibility with self first and others second, paired with a simple physical anchor that worked for him shifted everything. He relaxed into the perspective and value he could bring in a variety of settings, and less than six months later he was promoted. Not because he learned to perform bombast and confidence, but because he, via our specialized credibility-with-self work together, developed deeper trust in himself to show up and follow through even if, even though, even when.
The paradox of Executive Presence is that it doesn’t come from trying harder to impress people. It comes principally from Gravitas, which is a combination of quiet, genuine self-assurance, combined with many layers deep mastery-of-area Heft.
I observe bright, skilled, enthusiastic people exhaust themselves trying to be the smartest, most-commanding person in the room, but what actually lands? Self-Assured Credibility. Capacity. Congruence. People don’t follow the loudest voice. They follow the person that signals self-assured clarity.
Think about the people whether they are in positions of leadership or not, that you most respect. They most often are the people who make space for others, who listen and learn from others, while speaking sparingly and competently while holding their own ground. That’s Gravitas.
If you seek to level-up your own Executive Presence, start here:
Leave leadership theater behind and bring your credible, assured Self into the room — your heft, your curiosity, your values, your actual self and life.
Create a small practice that grounds you — a breath and gesture that brings you back to center.
Know that you don’t need to be the most polished to be effective and trusted. At the end of the day, Executive Presence isn’t about what you project. It’s about what you represent, signal and embody especially when things become difficult and the stakes are high.
As always friends, you’ve got this but it takes concentrated, deliberate work. If you’re interested in working on Executive Presence and more specifically on Gravitas, be in touch.