122: Executive Presence' Is Your Excuse, Not Your Problem — And It's Costing You the Promotion

In this conversation, Dr. Nicole discusses the concept of executive presence, particularly focusing on how it affects Black introverted women in the workplace. She highlights the internalized beliefs that hold individuals back from pursuing leadership roles, emphasizing the difference between feeling ready and being qualified. 

Your free executive presence workshop is here!!

What if working on your executive presence required you to shift some internalized beliefs AND take 3 simple actions to write your own ticket for your next promotion?  Join me on March 14, 2026  for Command The Room: Develop Executive Presence In 90 Days And Become The Obvious Choice For Executive Promotion.  You'll learn exactly what to do.

Save your seat today. 

Transcript

Webinar Invitation And Details

Turning The Lens Inward

How The System Trains Self-Policing

Unequal Scrutiny And The Wrinkled CEO

Chasing Myths And Extrovert Theater

The Real Fear Behind “Presence”

The Cost Of Waiting For Ready

The Qualified vs Ready Framework

Ditch Excuses, Focus On The 10%

Final Invite: Command The Room

SPEAKER_00 0:01

So she came to me for coaching because she wanted to pursue a vice president role. She was definitely qualified. In fact, she was more than qualified. She had 10 years of experience in that exact industry, in that exact discipline. She had a track record of great results. She was already a proven strategic thinker, and she was well respected by her peers. So I asked her, have you already applied for any VP roles? And she shook her head. No, I'm not ready, she said. And I leaned in and asked her, Well, what makes you think you're not ready? She paused for a minute and then she started with a whole list of things. I say, um, too much when I present. I don't dress executive enough. I'm not a strong public speaker, and I need to work on my executive presence first. I looked at her and I asked a question that stopped her dead in her tracks. Has anyone ever told you that? Or is that the story you're telling yourself? Radio silence. No one's ever told me that, she admitted, but I already know that is true. And that is the trap. The system doesn't just weaponize executive presence against you as a black introverted woman, it also teaches you to weaponize executive presence against yourself. And today, that's exactly what we're going to talk about. Now, before we dig in, I have two things that I want to say. The first is if you have dealt with executive presence before, if you have questioned your level of executive presence previously today, if you think about it all the time and you believe that that is what is holding you back, then I want to invite you to my webinar on March 14th at 11 a.m. I originally was going to do it at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, but I've moved it to 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. It's a Saturday. It's about 90 minutes of quality time together, where I get to show you and expose you to a different view of executive presence and how you, as an introverted woman, can leverage your introversion to build your executive presence and get the respect that you want and desire within your workplace and get your next promotion and feel the confidence that is already deep within you, but you're not touching it. You're not tapping into it on a day-to-day basis. If you want any of those things to keep moving your career forward, then join me on March 14th, 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. This one is going to fill up quickly because executive presence is such a prevalent topic amongst our community. If you're ready to sign up and reserve your seat, then click the link in the show notes or go to www.services.thechangedoc.com forward slash command the room. The second thing I wanted to say is if you did not listen to the episode before this, which is episode 121, then go back and check it out. Because in that episode, we're talking about when you get feedback from other people, when you get feedback from your boss, when someone somewhere within your career tells you things that makes you believe that you don't have that you need executive presence in order to get a more senior position in your company, in order to search in another company for a new and better job in order to become an executive leader. Today, we're actually talking about how we look at ourselves. Forget about everybody else around us, right? But how we look at ourselves in terms of executive presence. Because when I ask black women why they haven't pursued the executive role they want, eight times out of ten, I hear, I say um too much, I'm not polished enough, I don't have the right presence, I'm not a good public speaker, I need to lose weight first, I need to fix my hair, my clothes, my voice, I'm just not ready, they don't respect me, they don't like me. And when I ask, has anyone ever told you that? The answer is almost always no. These are socially accepted excuses. It's easier for you to say, I need to work on my executive presence, than it is for you to say, I'm scared that I am not enough. I don't believe that I actually deserve that next level of leadership position. I'm afraid that they'll find out that I actually don't belong here. Executive presence becomes the cover story for your imposter syndrome. Now, here's what nobody is willing to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you because that's how we roll here. The system trained you to do this. You didn't just wake up one day and decide, I'm actually gonna hold myself back using vague surface level metrics. No, the system taught you how to do that. The system taught you that how you look matters more than what you actually know. The system taught you that how you sound matters more than what you actually say. And the system has taught you that polish on the surface matters more than deep competence. And now you don't even need external feedback anymore because you've internalized it. You're doing the work of disqualifying yourself. Nobody else has to do that for you now because you're doing it to yourself. The system doesn't have to keep you out because you're keeping yourself out. So let's trace it back, right? Maybe there was a time when you were in a meeting and you shared an idea and someone talked over you or dismissed what you said, and you thought to yourself, maybe I didn't say it right. Maybe I need to work on my communication. Or maybe there was a time where you watched one of your white male colleagues get promoted, and you know he's less qualified than you because you trained him. You actually sat on the team that hired him in, and then you trained him. But he's uber, uber confident. He's polished, he is dressed to the nines every day, and you think, maybe that's what I'm missing because I need to work on my presence. Or perhaps you got vague feedback at some point in time. Maybe it was your most recent performance review, maybe it was last year, two years before. And the feedback was that you need to work on your executive presence. You actually asked, well, what the hell does that mean? And but they couldn't define it for you. So you started to fill in the blanks yourself with surface level things that you can control, either how you dress, or you felt like you needed to work on how you speak, or you needed to work on your presentation skills. And over time you learn that the problem is always you, that the solution is always fixing about how you show up, and that your competence, what you know, your expertise isn't enough. You also have to look, sound, and seem like an executive. And now you've become your own harshest critic. You no longer need a manager, a colleague, your boss to tell you that you're not ready because you are telling it to yourself every single day. And you're comparing yourself to all these other people or all these other things, some real and some completely imagined. So, for example, you look at your white colleagues who don't get scrutinized the same way that you do, they say um all the time. They wear wrinkled shirts, they can stumble through presentations, and it's called authentic or relatable. But when you do it, it's proof that you're not executive material. There was a time where I actually worked for a CEO who I nicknamed Wrinkled Pants. So when I would talk to my friends about him, I would call him Wrinkle Pants. Now, this man made like$300,000 at the time, right? And this was over a decade ago. So he made about$300,000 as the CEO in base. He made another$300,000 in bonus every year. And every day he would come to work in wrinkled khaki pants. And I remember asking him one day, do you not have an urine at home? I mean, we had that type of relationship. But, and he laughed, shoved it off, and kept on moving and kept wearing his wrinkled khaki pants, right? But he didn't give a damn about executive presence in terms of how he looked. Why? Because he was super confident that one, he was a strong leader, and two, that people were gonna follow him because of who he was, not necessarily what he was wearing, right? So that's that's just an example of how that can show up in the opposite. Now, you also might be comparing yourself to your extroverted colleagues who perform confidence even when they don't have the competence, right? They are walking around thinking and acting like they are the bomb, even when they don't have the expertise to match it. They speak up in every meeting, even when they don't know what the hell they're talking about. They volunteer for visibility, they act like they belong, whether they're qualified or not. And you think, maybe that's what I need to do. Maybe I need to be more like them. You might be comparing yourself to a totally imaginary executive who doesn't even exist, someone you've created in your mind, someone who is perfectly polished, someone who never says um or pauses when they speak, someone who doesn't need to actually think and do deep thought before they contribute, someone who always knows what they should be saying, and someone who commands every frickin' room that they walk into. That person is a myth, but you're holding yourself to that standard anywhere. You're not less qualified than your colleagues, friend. You're just more scrutinized, and you have internalized that scrutiny so deeply that now you're the one doing it. So let's get to the core of the matter. It is not that you lack executive presence, it's that you don't believe that you deserve the executive seat. And when you say I need to work on my presence, that is easier to say than I'm afraid that I'm not enough. I'm terrified that they'll see through me. I'm not sure I can handle that level of responsibility. I don't look like the people who've had this role before me. And I'm scared that if I go for it and fail, it proves that I was never ever supposed to be there. Executive presence becomes the shield that protects you. Because in one voice, you're saying, I want to become an executive. And in the other voice, that inner voice, that one that's deep, deep, deep down inside of you, you're saying, I don't have the executive presence, so I'm not gonna go for that executive leadership role. Because if you're always working on it, you never have to risk actually going for the thing that you want. You never have to face rejection, you never have to deal with failure, you never have to find out if you are in fact enough. But that's costing you, and let's talk about that. It is costing you years, little years of staying smaller than who you are. It is costing you years of waiting for permission that will never ever come. It is costing you you holding yourself back while less qualified people move forward. And it is costing you dollars, cents, and time. The dollars in terms of the money that you could be earning for yourself to create the life that you have envisioned. It is costing you the time. The longer you wait to actually believe in yourself, the longer you wait to switch the faulty thinking that you are experiencing right now, the longer it is for you to become and be in that seat of power and create the change that you want. The longer it's going to take for you to get the respect that you actually deserve as the professional, as the expert, and the leader that you are. Let me give you a framework that I used back in the day and it changed everything for me. So when I was in the place where I was having so much imposter syndrome and so much doubt about my own executive presence, because I there was a time where I knew that I was not the best public speaker. And I let that hold me back. I knew that I would pause and think, even you probably hear it sometimes here on the podcast, where I am literally in my mind looking and searching for the right words before I actually say it. And there was a time where I let those things hold me back. It prevented me from actually speaking. It prevented me from going for leadership roles, it prevented me from showing up as my best self and contributing. And then I got to a point where I was like, either you're gonna do this or you're not, right? Either you're going to move yourself forward or you're going to wind up waking up 10 years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, still in this same place, wanting something different for yourself, but not bringing it to reality. And then I actually had the conversation with myself about do you really want to be the best public speaker? Is that really your goal? And it wasn't. My goal was to become an executive leader. I didn't give a damn about being a perfect public speaker. I really didn't. That was just what I thought I needed to do in order to get my ultimate goal. But I wasn't necessarily even working on the thing that I thought I needed to do to reach my ultimate goal. I was letting it paralyze me. But then I came up with this framework that actually helped me on a day-to-day basis get unstuck. I stopped asking, am I ready? Right? Am I ready? I stopped asking myself that. And I started asking, am I qualified? Because ready is a feeling and qualified is a fact. When I work with the women who are in my one-on-one coaching, the elite executive experience program, I am always, always pushing them to stop focusing on feeling. Focus on fact. Don't go on what you believe. Go on what the data says. Because once you start operating on feelings, once you start making decisions, business decisions or personal decisions on feelings, it gets really, really hairy. Now, I'm not saying don't trust your gut. You should always trust your gut for sure. But if that trust in your gut doesn't have some type of tangible data behind it, then you are likely going to be going down a rabbit hole that you can't get yourself out of. So stop asking yourself, am I ready? Ready is a feeling. Start asking yourself, am I qualified? Because whether you're qualified or not, it's backed by facts, it's backed by data. Ready feels like, are you confident? Do you feel confident? Do you feel certain? Do you have no self-doubt? Do you feel perfectly prepared? That's what ready feels like. But when you look at qualifications, you are asking yourself: do you have the skills? Do you have the experience? Do you have the track record? And can you do that job? Because here's the secret that no one is telling you. You will never feel ready. I coach CEOs, chiefs of human resources, chief medical officers, chief marketing officers who have the job that they actually want. And on a day-to-day basis, they still don't feel ready. You will likely never feel 100% ready. Hell, I wasn't ready to MC a program for the top 50 leaders in my organization. My voice quivered for the first 10 minutes. My palms were sweating. I could barely make eye contact. But I was qualified. I built that program from scratch. I designed every aspect of it. I made the business case to the executive team. I got my executives to buy in and say yes to something that that company had never done in the 50 years that it had existed. My quivering voice when I was nervous and doubting myself didn't change that because that was data. So what I'm saying to you is if you're waiting to feel ready, stop that. Start moving when you are qualified. Now, if you've been holding yourself back and calling it executive presence, I need you to hear that the work you think you need to do, you probably don't need to do that. You need to stop doing the work of disqualifying yourself. Stop using um as an excuse. Stop using your hair as an excuse. Stop using your clothes as an excuse. Stop using I'm not ready as an excuse. Because you are qualified right now as you are. And on March 14th, I'm gonna show you exactly what you do need to focus on when it comes to executive presence instead. Executive presence is this like catch-all that we throw everything in, all of our doubts, all of our concerns, some of the things that people have told us, many of the things that we have told ourselves, we throw it into this big bucket called executive presence. But that big bucket, 90% of it is bullshit, and 10% of it probably, probably is truth. And if you are ready to get to that 10% of truth, if you are ready to walk in a room and be respected immediately by all of the people that are around you, if you are really ready to build your confidence up in order to To get your next promotion, if you are ready to be able to just speak five, 10 words and influence decisions that are happening around you, even though you're not the final decision maker, if any of these things are things that are really important to you and you feel are holding you back, then come join me on March 14th at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. We are hosting Command the Room Building Executive Presence in 90 Days as a Black Introverted Woman. The registration link is in the show notes, so don't wait. Executive presence is such a hot topic. This is gonna fill up. Until next week, Lady Leader, keep leading your introvert way.