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JWI 505: Business Communications and Executive Presence Week 10 Lecture Notes

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JWI 505 – Lecture Notes (1206) Page 1 of 8

Executive Presence (Part II)

What It Means

We began our study of business communications by exploring the concept of executive presence. We defined the term as your ability to project confidence, communicate clearly, and convince others that you have authority. We also explored the four components of a strong executive presence: authenticity, attentiveness, credibility, and confidence. You know what executive presence is. But how do you demonstrate it?

As we have learned, executive presence is not a personality trait that people are just born with. It is a skill that you can develop. Fostering executive presence means establishing personal connections in each of your interactions. It means being flexible with your messages and strategies. It means not being afraid to be vulnerable and empathetic with your listeners. And it means aligning your team around shared goals that every member will contribute to.

In this lecture, we will explore different ways for you to grow and display your executive presence. We will also discuss how to apply a strong executive presence throughout your career.

Why It Matters

• A strong executive presence can convey your biggest strengths as a leader.

• Demonstrating executive presence can expedite your rise to the top of your organization or industry.

• Honing your executive presence can help you build strong, lifelong connections with others.

“‘Leadership potential’ isn’t enough to lever men and women into the executive suite. Leadership roles are given to those who also look and act the part.”

Sylvia Ann Hewlett

JWI 505: Business Communications and Executive Presence Week 10 Lecture Notes

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Show Them What You’ve Got

Think of a leader you really admire. It could be a CEO, a teacher, a political figure, or even a parent. Why do you look up to this person? Is it just because they have a particular title? Or is it because they know how to be decisive, how to rally people behind their vision, how to be honest with everyone, and how to make you feel valued? Leaders who demonstrate these qualities demonstrate their executive presence. As you have learned throughout this course, you do not have executive presence just because you think you have it. You have to develop this quality through each of your interactions. Your colleagues and connections have to feel that you are authoritative and present.

Over the past eight weeks, you have learned how to craft and deliver powerful communications to different audiences across different media. It does not matter if you are having a face-to-face conversation with your colleague or speaking in front of a packed auditorium. Every single interaction provides you with an opportunity to display and increase your executive presence. Every message you deliver is a chance to uncover your leadership potential and to adopt more relational and collaborative models for influencing people.

In the first set of Lecture Notes for this course, you learned how authenticity, attentiveness, credibility, and confidence play major roles in shaping your executive presence. In this final set of Lecture Notes, we will focus on how to demonstrate and enhance each of these qualities in your communications and conduct.

How to Be Authentic

There are no perfect people in business – or anywhere else, for that matter. Every manager has a shortcoming, and every leader – even Jack – has made decisions that they regretted. You should never strive to be a flawless leader. Instead, you should strive to be a leader who recognizes their flaws, a leader who is sincere and transparent. Being authentic means being aware of your strengths and weaknesses, as well as being open about them.

In Week 5 of our course, you learned how to communicate during crises. Specifically, you learned that when you are forthright with your team and your stakeholders, and when you commit to fixing the issue as quickly and completely as you can, you will weather any crisis and emerge stronger. Too often, leaders stumble through dire situations by blaming others, not

JWI 505: Business Communications and Executive Presence Week 10 Lecture Notes

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taking responsibility, and refusing to change how they conduct business. These are bad leadership practices precisely because they show a lack of authenticity. Those leaders are so intent on preserving their image, they will forsake any effort to actually mitigate the crisis.

You, as an authentic leader, will not make those missteps. If you and your organization are facing a crisis, do not waste time blaming other people, even if they are responsible. You risk coming across as vindictive, and those other people will not be motivated to help you fix the problem. Instead, be forthright and candid with everyone involved about how serious the crisis is. Do not downplay the effects it might have on you and your organization. And do not lie about any element of the situation – someone will invariably find out, and then you will have a hard time regaining people’s trust.

Authenticity is a crucial element for building support in bad times. But you must also practice it in good times. Your personal brand needs to resonate among your colleagues, superiors, direct reports, and customers. It needs to come across as genuine and personal. It needs to be real. Think back to Week 9 of our course, when you learned how to communicate online. How many of your social media connections and followers do you truly know? Can you vouch for these people’s characters and talents, or are they just people you connected with to grow your network?

When you project a message, online or in person, you have to show you respect your audience. You do that when you are open and direct with them. If you have a personal website or social media account, do not use a pseudonym. Use your real name and let people know they are communicating with an actual human being. When possible, avoid sending form letters to people. Tailor your emails, posts, and other communications to each recipient. If someone emails you or posts to your account, respond as quickly as you can. If they choose to interact with you, assume they are genuinely interested in knowing about you. You should provide them with the same courtesy. Ask probing questions and learn more about them. That is how you build meaningful connections that enrich each person.

How to Be Attentive

In Winning, Jack wrote about the four principles of his approach to business. The fourth principle concerned recognizing and respecting people’s contributions: “every person in the

JWI 505: Business Communications and Executive Presence Week 10 Lecture Notes

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world wants voice and dignity, and every person deserves them.”1 It does not matter where you work or what your job title is. You are never too busy to make your listeners feel important. You may have a lot to do during your workday, but so do your colleagues and direct reports. If you want their respect and cooperation, you have to actively listen to them.

One of the most dispiriting experiences you can have when talking to someone is watching them turn away from you and glance at their phone. They are clearly not focused on you or engaged in what you are saying, and you are left feeling unimportant. You learned the value of improving your interpersonal communication skills in Week 2 of our course. When a subject is not paying attention to their audience’s reactions, and when a listener is not actively listening to the message, the communication has failed. Nobody receives any new information and everyone has wasted their time.

You, on the other hand, know how to harness the power of empathy in your communication. When you converse with someone, keep your body language open. Turn to face them fully and maintain eye contact with them. Ask complex questions that force them to really think about their answers. If they are talking, acknowledge what they are saying by nodding or repeating what you heard them say. Respond to them, but do not interrupt them. Remember that there is a difference between listening and waiting to talk. When you have already decided how you will respond to them and are just waiting for them to finish, you are not receiving their message in its entirety. Absorb what the other person is saying, and respond to their entire statement. If they ask you a question, take a moment to think through your answer. A pre-planned, generic answer will make the other person feel as if you are not actually listening to their perspective. And if you have already proven your point, or if you have already sold your listener on something, you do not need to keep talking. You have already accomplished your goal, and you do not want to bore your audience or waste their time.

Being adaptive is a critical part of being attentive. It entails adjusting your message or your medium to accommodate your listener and their needs. As you learned in Week 3, this is a valuable skill in all conversations. Attentiveness is particularly important when you communicate across cultures. Not knowing certain cultural standards and cues can drastically undermine whatever message you wish to send. For example, when he visited Australia in 1992, then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush made a V-sign with his fingers to greet a crowd of demonstrators. In the U.S., that sign can symbolize “V for victory.” In Australia, that gesture is incredibly offensive. Mistakes like this, while innocent, can demonstrate a lack of attention to details and

1 Jack Welch, Winning (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2005), 53.

JWI 505: Business Communications and Executive Presence Week 10 Lecture Notes

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nuances.

It takes a long time to be well versed in another culture. So, when you communicate across cultures, carefully consider how to deliver your message. Do not assume that your listeners will immediately understand the exact idea you are trying to convey. Take time to learn about how business is conducted there, and get to know your colleagues as individuals. If someone commits a cultural faux pas, do not assume they did so maliciously. Use a moment like that as an opportunity to teach them about your cultural values. If it is a particularly serious mistake, find a way to let them know immediately, yet diplomatically. Your listeners will be receptive to your message if you demonstrate that you care about their response.

How to Be Credible

Think back to why you enrolled at JWMI. Was it because the letters “MBA” look impressive at the end of your name? Was it because you wanted to learn how to conduct business through a leadership lens? Or was it because you want your peers and superiors to take you more seriously? Each of these reasons revolves around the same principle: you wanted to enhance your credibility as a leader. Even before you attain your degree, there are ways to demonstrate that listeners can trust you and that your message matters to them.

For one, you have to show you take your audience seriously. You learned how to do this in Week 6 of our course, when we examined how to create a communication strategy. So much thought goes into crafting and delivering a message. If you do not consider exactly what your objective is, you risk wasting your time. If you do not think about the content of the message, you end up providing too little – or too much – information. If you do not assess your audience, you might send your message to people who do not need to hear it. If you do not take into account your listeners’ culture, your listeners could interpret the message very poorly. And if you do not put any thought into your choice of medium, you will not get the response you want.

You will enhance your credibility when you take all of these factors into account. Think very carefully about what message you want to send, who needs to hear it, and how you should say it. Determine very quickly what you want from your listeners. If you need their buy-in, you must figure out how to “sell” your message. If you are informing them of a new development, on the other hand, you do not have to sell anything. When you draft a message, read it out loud. If you think that you are missing information, or that your listeners might be confused about something, keep writing and editing your draft. Make sure every element of the message is

JWI 505: Business Communications and Executive Presence Week 10 Lecture Notes

© Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information and may not be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed, in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of Strayer University.

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explicitly tied to your central objective. Only send the message to the people who will act upon it. If a listener does not need your message to do their job, they do not have to receive it. Consider how your listeners will receive your message and respond. If you have detailed instructions, send an email or put together a handout. If you want their immediate feedback, set up a meeting.

However, credibility involves more than just taking your audience seriously. Taking yourself seriously is just as important. In Week 7 of our course, we studied how to craft powerful persuasive arguments. If you want to elicit strong responses from your audience, you have to appeal to both their intellect and their emotions. They will do what you ask if you demonstrate that you know what you are talking about, that your reasoning makes sense, and that you are personally invested in their response.

When you want your audience to take action, you have to prove that this topic matters to you. Think about how you present yourself. Do people think of you as an authority figure, or do you need to prove it? If you want to build up your credibility, consider your content. Take the time to research what you are talking about, and reflect on what details your listeners need to know. If your message contains new information or findings, tell your listeners how you received this information. If your listeners have questions for you, do not respond with generalizations. Put thought into each answer you give, and be honest with your audience if you cannot give them an answer just yet. Also, try to maintain a calm and professional demeanor at all times. Remember that your credibility is built upon what you say and how you say it.

How to Be Confident

We tend to think of leaders as people who never second-guess what they do. We believe they have a vision, that they always believe in themselves, and that they are experts in their field. But this is not always the case. Leaders have misgivings all the time, and unforeseen circumstances can scuttle even the best-laid plans. However, in spite of their doubts and any obstacles they may face, leaders make their messages understandable. Their thought processes are clear. They exude a confidence that convinces people they are in charge.

Too often, confidence is confused with arrogance. Someone can swagger into a boardroom and “look” like an executive, but that does not make them one. You can only bluster your way through so many interactions before your colleagues and direct reports stop trusting you. And as you learned in Week 4 of our course, trust is the bedrock for productive teamwork. Every

JWI 505: Business Communications and Executive Presence Week 10 Lecture Notes

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member of your team is there because they offer a particular expertise. When you stifle others’ voices or act as if you are more important than the rest of the group, you will not align people around your mission.

Being confident entails admitting you do not always have the answer to a situation. Know when to defer to a teammate on an issue. They will address it effectively, and you can learn how to address similar scenarios in the future. If you do know how to address a problem, offer to show others how to address it for their own benefit. In fact, look for opportunities to teach your team members how to perform work functions that you excel at. For example, if you are the head of a communications team at your office and you are well-versed in a certain type of mass email software, host a workshop on how to use it. Show that you are invested in others’ professional development.

As we discussed in our Week 8 Lecture Notes, when you present something to a group of people, it is easy to feel anxious. Everybody is watching you. They are listening to every word you say. There is a lot of pressure, and your confidence can evaporate under pressure. But remember, even if you are at a job interview, those listeners are not judging you. They are learning from you. They want to hear what you have to say. They do not want you to fail.

Presenting confidently means commanding the room. When you speak, find ways to make yourself bigger. Do not slouch or look at the floor. If the room is big enough, stand up and speak directly to each member of the audience. Maintain eye contact with someone for a complete thought or sentence, and then look at somebody else for your next thought. Find ways to express yourself physically. You can walk between your main points, but walk slowly and purposefully. Use your hands to accentuate your key words and thoughts, but do not gesture on every word. Make sure you vary your tone, pace, and pitch, depending on what you are saying. When you present, you control all of the information your audience needs. You just have to demonstrate that you are in control.

Wrapping Up

Over the past ten weeks, we explored how to deliver our communications in many different settings. We began by learning how to speak face to face with our colleagues. We then expanded the size of our listeners to include teams, groups of stakeholders, and even whole organizations. We also determined how to present ourselves online to an audience of unknown,

JWI 505: Business Communications and Executive Presence Week 10 Lecture Notes

© Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document contains Strayer University confidential and proprietary information and may not be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed, in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of Strayer University.

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innumerable people. At the core of each lesson, you learned how to build up your executive presence. You now know how to send clear messages and convince others that you have what it takes to win.