What is Executive Presence, and How Can You Strengthen It?

From our good friend, Marilyn Cavicchia, editor of Bar Leader, published by the American Bar Association Bar Services Division, comes this excellent article on executive presence, applicable to lawyers and non-lawyers:

Executive presence—the way a person presents themselves and their ideas live or on video—“is much more important than it was 20 years ago,” according to Brooke Vuckovic, a clinical professor of leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.Indeed, Vuckovic noted, while a previous academic position involved teaching students, professors, and researchers to write clearly and persuasively, at Kellogg, video essays are assigned more frequently than written ones. Telling someone they need to write more clearly is too vague to be helpful, she believes—and so is telling them they need to project more executive presence, confidence, or gravitas.

But Vuckovic isn’t a fan of teaching leaders certain specific mannerisms or behaviors to help improve their executive presence. Instead, she told attendees of her webinar that was part of the virtual version of the 2020 ABA Bar Leadership Institute, she prefers a simple formula:

Executive presence = credibility + ease
ego

Vuckovic also likes to think in terms of an instrument panel with dials on it that can be turned up or down, depending on different situations. Among the three components of executive presence, credibility has the most dials, and they are the easiest to turn up or down. Ease has fewer dials, she said, and they are more challenging to turn—and ego is just one big dial that can be very difficult to adjust.

Drawing from her own expertise and the latest research in linguistics and social science, Vuckovic walked attendees through each of the components and how to make adjustments so they can be at their best in any speaking situation.

Credibility: Largely a matter of voice

“The foundation of credibility is expertise,” Vuckovic noted, adding that through expertise and preparation, “you have to focus on getting good before you earn the right to focus on looking good to other people.” That is, her tips were not meant to help cover for a lack of knowledge and effort, but instead to help convey those in the most effective way.

According to social science, she said, the voice is a critical place to start for anyone hoping to project more credibility. Researchers from the MIT Media Lab helped a call center that was trying to increase its agents’ effectiveness. The company was devoting most of its training time to the content of the calls and how the agents led people through the typical decision trees (“If the client says x, then you say y”). But the research team found that the success of an individual call and of an agent’s overall career depended on two variables: the ratio of listening to speaking (more listening led to better results), and the amount of inflection in the agent’s voice.

Those who exhibited a wider variation in pitch, volume, and speed were described as being “more knowledgeable in depth and breadth of knowledge, more responsive, and more caring,” Vuckovic said, adding that it’s also hard to follow a monotone voice because the listener needs pauses and variations in order to process what’s being said.

While inflection is generally a good thing, two types of inflection will diminish your credibility, Vuckovic said. One is upspeak, in which every sentence ends as if it’s a question. “If you don’t sound sure,” Vuckovic said, “how will anyone else in the room believe what you’re saying?”

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By hpadmin | September 26, 2020 | Crisis Communications, Crisis Management, Crisis Preparation, Issue Management, Media Culture, Media Relations, Media Training, Reputation Management, Speaker Training

What is Executive Presence, and How Can You Strengthen It?

Credibility: Largely a matter of voice

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