Executive Presence: What’s Your Attitude?

Alex and Tom Lemanski of Chicago Executive Coaching discuss the real meaning of executive presence, moving beyond the common buzzword. Listeners will learn that presence is more about attitude than skills, and how to identify where they fall on the spectrum between meekness and arrogance to improve their leadership.

Tom Lemanski is an executive coach and leadership advisor at Chicago Executive Coaching. If this conversation sparked something for you, visit https://chicagoexecutivecoaching.com to learn more or get in touch.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:04

Welcome to Leadership Breakthroughs, where executive coaches and leaders explore the mindsets and strategies that drive real growth. I'm your host, Alex. And today we're talking about a phrase that gets thrown around a lot: executive presence, and what it actually means when you strip away the buzzword and get to what's really driving it. I'm joined by Tom Lemanski, founder of Chicago Executive Coaching. Tom, welcome.

Speaker 0:28

Good to be here. And I'll warn you I have a lot of opinions about this one.

Speaker 1 0:32

I figured, so let's start there. Executive presence. Every leader has heard it. A lot of them have been told they need more of it. What's actually being said when someone uses that phrase?

Speaker 0:42

Usually not much. That's the honest answer. It gets dropped in a performance review or a feedback session, and the person walks away with no idea what to do about it. Which is a problem because the concept itself is real. It's just rarely explained well. When I work with a leader on this, the first thing I tell them is that executive presence is not a skills issue. It's an attitude issue. And that reframe matters because it changes where you look for the solution.

Speaker 1 1:07

Say more about that distinction. Skills versus attitude. Why does it matter which one it is?

Speaker 1:13

Because if you think it's a skills problem, you go sign up for a presentation course or a communication workshop. And those things aren't bad, but they're not going to move the needle on presence. Presence comes from what you believe about yourself. It's a personification of your inner belief system. Henry Ford said it better than I can. Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right. Your beliefs show up in the room before your skills do.

Speaker 1 1:37

So when a leader lacks presence, what you're really saying is they have a belief problem. That's a harder fix than taking a course?

Speaker 1:44

It is, but it's also more honest. And once a leader accepts that framing, they can actually start working on the right thing. The question I ask them is what self-limiting beliefs are you carrying that are showing up as a weak presence? That question cuts through a lot of noise pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 2:00

Okay, so let's talk about what that looks like in practice. You write about a continuum. Meekness on one end, arrogance on the other. Walk me through that.

Speaker 2:09

Think of it like a spectrum. On one end you have meekness, the leader who is too deferential, too quiet, doesn't project conviction. They may be brilliant, but they fail to influence. On the other end, you have arrogance, the leader who is so certain of their own ideas that they repel everyone else's. Both extremes are leadership killers. The sweet spot is in the middle, and I use the Goldilocks principle to describe it. Not too much, not too little, just right. You need a combination of confidence and humility that actually works together.

Speaker 1 2:39

I want to push on the meekness end for a second. There's a version of this where someone says, I'm not meek, I'm just respectful. I don't want to be the loudest person in the room. Where's the line between being appropriately deferential and actually undercutting your own presence?

Speaker 2:54

That's a fair pushback. Look, I'll acknowledge there's even a spiritual tradition around the meek. The meek shall inherit the earth. I'm not arguing against humility as a virtue. What I'm saying is that the boardroom is not the place to express your humility by going quiet. The people in that room need to see your conviction. They need to feel that you believe in what you're saying. If you don't project that, it doesn't matter how right you are. You won't move anyone.

Speaker 1 3:19

And C.S. Lewis actually gives you cover on that point, doesn't he? You quote him in the post.

Speaker 3:24

Exactly. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. That's the distinction. You can be genuinely humble and still walk into a room with full confidence in your convictions. Those are not in conflict. The problem is when leaders confuse humility with self-doubt. They're not the same thing.

Speaker 1 3:42

So what does the arrogance end look like? Because I think most people would say, I'm not arrogant. Nobody thinks they're arrogant.

Speaker 3:49

Nobody ever does. That's what makes it dangerous. Arrogance shows up as an inability to receive other people's ideas. You've stopped listening. You're not curious anymore. You think you already have the best answer in the room, and it shows. And here's the thing: it repels people, literally. The word I use is repelling because that's what it does to the people around you. They disengage, they stop bringing you their best thinking. And the leader often has no idea it's happening.

Speaker 1 4:16

You actually suggest in the post that leaders should ask someone who knows them well to rate them on this. That's a real ask. Most people aren't going to want to hear that answer.

Speaker 4:25

No, they're not. But if you're serious about avoiding arrogance, you have to be humble enough to ask the question and actually listen to the answer. That's the test right there. If the thought of asking someone to rate your arrogance makes you uncomfortable, that's information.

Speaker 1 4:41

You use a sailing metaphor in the post that I want to get into because I think it actually does something useful here. The sailboat going into irons.

Speaker 4:49

Right. If you point a sailboat directly into the wind, it stalls completely. That condition is called in irons. But if you tack as close to the wind as possible without hitting that stall point, you get optimum speed. The hull rises, you're moving fast, but you're also right at the tipping point. Experienced racers learn to find that position and hold it. I think about executive presence in exactly the same way. Your confidence should border on arrogance. Get as close to the line as you can without crossing it. That's where your maximum presence lives.

Speaker 1 5:19

That's a useful image, but here's the question it raises for me. How do you know where your line is? The racer has physical feedback. The boat tells you, what's the equivalent for a leader?

Speaker 5:30

The people around you are your feedback. Their engagement level, their willingness to push back, whether they bring you hard news or protect you from it, those are signals. If people have stopped disagreeing with you, you may have crossed the line. And like I said, ask someone who will tell you the truth. That's not comfortable, but it's the instrument panel.

Speaker 1 5:50

So it's not just internal work. You need external calibration too.

Speaker 5:54

You do. You cannot accurately assess your own presence in isolation. You have a blind spot almost by definition. The leaders I work with who grow the fastest are the ones who actively solicit that honest feedback and don't flinch from it.

Speaker 1 6:07

One thing you mentioned toward the end of the post is that this isn't just about what you say. It's how you say it and how you look. Can you say a little more about that piece? Because it feels like a different layer of the same thing.

Speaker 6:19

It is. Polish and poise are always in play in high-stakes settings. The content of what you say matters, obviously. But the conviction behind it, the composure you carry into the room, the way you hold yourself, those things signal something to the people watching you before you've said a word. If your inner belief system is solid, that tends to show up physically. If it's shaky, that shows up too. People are reading you constantly, whether you realize it or not.

Speaker 1 6:45

So the inner work and the outer presentation are connected. You can't fake one if the other isn't there.

Speaker 6:51

That's exactly right. You can rehearse body language all you want. But if you walk in convinced that you're out of your depth, the room will feel it. The belief has to be genuine. That's why I keep coming back to attitude development over skills development. Fix the belief, and a lot of the other stuff follows.

Speaker 1 7:08

If someone is listening to this on their commute and they've been told they need more executive presence, or they've wondered it about themselves, what's the one thing you'd tell them to do this week?

Speaker 7:20

Start with an honest question. Where am I on that continuum? Not where you want to be, where you actually are. Are you closer to meek or are you closer to arrogant? Because the fix is different depending on the answer. If you're on the meek end, the work is about building conviction in your own beliefs and practicing expressing them without hedging. If you're on the arrogant end, the work is about getting genuinely curious about other people's ideas. Not as a performance, but as a real discipline. And here's the thing either way: find one person who will tell you the truth and ask them directly. Your presence is visible to everyone around you. Use that. The feedback is right there if you're willing to hear it.

Speaker 1 7:59

That's leadership breakthroughs. Thanks to Tom Lemanski for cutting through the buzzword and getting to something you can actually use. You can find Tom's Leadership Breakthroughs blog and coaching programs at ChicagoExecutive Coaching.com. We'll see you next week.