Friday, July 23, 2021

Today: What does being resolute have to do with executive presence? Find out how executive presence works and what it means for you.

Your turn: We'd love to hear from you. Use the "Message" button on the Anchor app to share a story, question, or feedback related to this episode. Or email us at joe@connectioncounselor.com

Learn more: Details about the book, online course, YouTube tutorials and more can be found at www.connectioncounselor.com/executive-presence-place

Music: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License

“Remember, it’s not what you say, do, or wear. It’s how you make people feel that generates executive presence. Nothing. Else. Matters.”

Fancy word alert. Today, we're going to talk about equanimity, which is just a really fancy way of saying "cool under pressure." And for a fun, illustrative example of equanimity, we're going to go again to one of my favorite movies, the Princess Bride.

There's this scene where Westley is still recovering from being dead. Miracle Max has brought him back to life, but he's still very weak. And as he's laying there, down on a bed and he's just saved the love of his life, he's too weak to get up, when Prince Humperdinck who's his nemesis discovers him, busts into the room and says "to the death!"

Now for most people, this would be a very, very bad situation and you'd be forgiven if you would freak out, right? You thought you finally was reunited and rescued your true love and now you're about to be killed because you're too weak to even stand up. But no. What does Westley do? He practices equanimity and he doesn't lose his focus or his calm. And instead he very, very cleverly stalls the prince by saying "to the pain."

And then the prince says I'm not really familiar with that phrase, to which Wesley responds with one of my favorite lines from the whole book and movie. "I'll explain and I'll use small words so that you'll be sure to understand you warthog-faced buffoon." And then he proceeds to insult him and tell him all of these horrible things that he's going to do to him and just totally delays and freaks out the prince.

And then finally he stalled long enough and he stands up. And at that point, he tricks the prince into dropping his sword and surrendering. Buttercup ties the prince up before the prince realizes that Westley really was weak, which he suspected, but Wesley did such a good job of being calm and pretending and stalling that he got the advantage.

So what does this mean for executive presence? People look for leaders who stay calm under pressure; who have equanimity. Think about why this just makes so much sense. You want a leader and you look to a leader when difficult things are happening; things that most people would freak out about and not be able to handle well.

So the ordinary person, isn't going to be able to respond with calm under that figurative, or if you're in the military, perhaps literal fire. They will figure out what the right thing is to do, get people to participate or engage and do the thing that's most likely to help gain success or move things forward as best as they can in the given situation.

So that's why. Equanimity that state of being, it's one of my Six Degrees of Executive Presence. It's that state of being that people feel that's the presence part of executive presence, that really helps people perceive and feel that you're a leader. And that essentially is what executive presence is.

So thank you so much for listening to Executive Presence Morsels I'm Joe Kwon, the Connection Counselor. Remember, it's not what you say, do, or wear. It's, how you make people feel that generates executive presence. Nothing else matters.

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Today: What does being resolute have to do with executive presence? Find out how executive presence works and what it means for you.

Your turn: We'd love to hear from you. Use the "Message" button on the Anchor app to share a story, question, or feedback related to this episode. Or email us at joe@connectioncounselor.com

Learn more: Details about the book, online course, YouTube tutorials and more can be found at www.connectioncounselor.com/executive-presence-place

Music: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License

“Remember, it’s not what you say, do, or wear. It’s how you make people feel that generates executive presence. Nothing. Else. Matters.”

One of my favorite ways to explain executive presence, which seems like an elusive kind of concept is to actually look at the words themselves. Cause they actually tell you more than you would might realize at first about what executive presence actually is. So today we're going to look at the first of the two words, which is executive.

What is an executive anyway? If someone asked you, how would you define an executive? Think about how you might answer that or how you might define or explain what an executive is. Take a moment. Now, the word executive comes from the Latin word exsequi, which means to carry out. So in its simplest terms, an executive is someone whose role or job is to carry out plans.

If you really think about why you're an executive, it's because you have been given the trust or the assignment to make things happen. And it's not a plan in isolation. It is the plan of the organization that has given you that position. So it's not just what you want to do. It's what you think needs to be done to accomplish the overall plan of the organization that has assigned you to be an executive, to be in charge of that plan.

So when you think about executive presence in those terms, an executive is the type of confidence you want to inspire - that you really are an executive. So what does that mean now that we have a better sense of what an executive really is? You can ask your stock to ask yourself some questions.

Why would anyone think that I'm going to know what to do in terms of executing this plan? What are the things that would lead them to believe that I am the right choice? So ask yourself that in any situation that requires executive presence. Ask yourself what are things that may go against that. That may work against your executive presence, and are there things that you were doing that sort of undercut or self-sabotage yourself. Stop doing them because that works against your executive presence.

So this concept is so important. Executive presence should not be confused with competence, merit, or even the ability to get the job done. It's a really subtle, but important nuance. Executive presence is just, and I say, just not to minimize it, but I mean, to specify; it is just about whether people believe that you are the right person to lead.

So if you can generate that belief, if you can inspire that confidence, you will have executive presence. That doesn't mean you're going to do a good job. Doesn't mean you're always going to be right. It doesn't even mean, you know, what you're doing or are the best person for the job. It just means you've accomplished generating executive presence, which in and of itself is, can be a positive thing and can help you accomplish the thing that you're trying to accomplish, because it's much harder to accomplish anything if people don't believe they should follow you.

Imagine trying to accomplish any sort of complicated or difficult task if people aren't quite sure whether they should follow you or really they should have followed Tony or Patricia.

Well, thanks so much, again for listening to executive presence, morsels. This is Joe Kwon, the Connection Counselor. I'd love to hear from you on Anchor FM, either the app or the website; you can record a message and leave your thoughts or questions on executive presence. I'd love to hear from you, and if we can, we'll include your message on a future show.

Remember, it's not what you say, do, or wear. It's, how you make people feel that generates executive presence. Nothing else matters.

Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Today: What does being resolute have to do with executive presence? Find out how executive presence works and what it means for you.

Your turn: We'd love to hear from you. Use the "Message" button on the Anchor app to share a story, question, or feedback related to this episode. Or email us at joe@connectioncounselor.com

Learn more: Details about the book, online course, YouTube tutorials and more can be found at www.connectioncounselor.com/executive-presence-place

Music: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License

“Remember, it’s not what you say, do, or wear. It’s how you make people feel that generates executive presence. Nothing. Else. Matters.”

Wow. Dealing with clueless leaders. Jeff, why do you give me all the easy questions? Well, one thing that I love about getting these questions is it really forces me to sort of stretch my thinking on the topic of executive presence and leadership. So I'm really appreciative to you, Jeff, for presenting that question, and that's why I recorded this episode specifically to answer that question. So thanks again, Jeff.

So the setup is what do you do when you're in situations where your leaders, for lack of a better term are clueless, and don't really seem to know what they're doing, but obviously there's a challenge because you don't control them. They're the leaders. You can't tell them what to do.

Managing upward is a lot of the way, you know, people talk about it in corporate America. How do you effectively manage upward? And how does executive presence help you do that? It's a fantastic question.

The key is you have little to no control over your leaders, right? Everyone understands that they're the leaders they're going to do what they want to do and you have little or no control over them. So trying to exert control over them or use a control-type technique generally is doomed to failure.

Now, another nuance is we often think of leaders as parents, but in this instance, I find the metaphor of a child works better. Not a child to belittle them or make it seem like we have power over them, but more in the sense that as a parent, have you ever tried to control your child? When they reach a certain age, “no” becomes a very powerful word for them and then as they get older and older, they just amass more and more independence and you really have no real control over your child.

So I find that to be more of an effective metaphor, to think about dealing with someone you have no control over, which is really everyone, but let's limit it to our bosses or management at this point. So I'm going to share three principles or tips that you can use that will maximize your executive presence while also allowing you to manage upward with someone that you have absolutely no control over.

The first tip is to activate their imagination. Sometimes their failure to see or understand is not one of technical ability or strategy, but it's just an act, it's just for them to really understand what's possible. And one of the most powerful ways to influence someone is to, by the way you interact with them and the things that you sort of direct them to see, activate their imagination as to what is possible and to see things in a new way, because one of the reasons why they're not seeing things the way you see them, perhaps more clearly, is their imagination may be limited and they just have not even fathomed that that's possible before.

So in the way that using imagination can really help with children, activating the imagination of your leaders can really help them see additional possibilities.

A second principle, or tip - present them with positive role models that they can learn from. Don't teach them. Cause we all know what happens when you try to teach a child or a boss something - that doesn't end up well. But instead present them, maneuver, shift their gaze, mention, bring them into the orbit of positive role models who really do seem to get some of the things that they don't get and let them learn naturally for them.

It's not to be sneaky. It's not to be manipulative, but again, it's for them to be able to be influenced and learn in a natural way, in a way that they want to, rather than you forcing them or taking the role of teacher, which we know will probably end in disaster. If not now, then later. They'll get you on the tail end.

And finally, the third principle or tip is, and I give credit to Chris Voss, who I sort of recognized this concept of when I was reading his excellent book, "Never Split the Difference." to ask questions. But not just any kind of questions. He calls them calibrated questions. They're questions with the intention of sort of moving things in a certain direction.

So questions like, "how can we do that?" If they're suggesting something that's totally ridiculous, saying, "Hey boss, that's totally ridiculous," again - not going to end well. However, if you ask, "how can we do that?" it prompts them to really think through it more. And even if they say something like we're just going to do it, they will understand and they will realize in the back of their minds that that's not really adequate. And they may come around later and think about, yeah, maybe there are some problems here and then come to you and say, okay, how can we do that? How can we fix that?

Or another option if you're being asked to do something which is totally ridiculous or contradicts something that you were asked to do earlier, a similar calibrated question is "how am I supposed to do that?"

Right? You're asked to do 80 hours of work in 40 hours of time. You can say, look, I have both of these things. You know, each of them takes 40 hours. You know, each of them takes 40 hours of work for 80 total hours of work. I'm only going to be here for 40 hours. That's not going to change. How am I supposed to do that? And then that gets them thinking about, okay, this is a problem - offload some of this reprioritize that, and then together you can get to a solution.

So these three tips: activating their imagination, presenting them with positive role models that they can naturally learn from, and finally asking calibrated questions, can really be powerful ways for you to stretch and flex your executive presence, muscles, which is really hard when you're dealing with management.

But I believe what has the biggest payoff and the biggest acknowledgement because not many people are actually comfortable or effective doing this sort of upwards management. So, thanks again, Jeff, for that excellent question. Hope some or all of this is helpful to you or to your clients. Thanks so much for listening to Executive Presence Morsels. This is Joe Kwon, the Connection Counselor. Remember, it's not what you say, do, or wear, it's how you make people feel that generates executive presence. Nothing else matters.