Executive Presence When You Don't Feel Executive — Confidence for the Uncomfortable Zones

You earned the seat at the table, but imposter syndrome is loud in boardrooms full of suits. Here's how to project leadership confidence when you feel out of place — without faking it or losing what makes you effective.

Transcript

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Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to a new Lead with Confidence with me, your host, JP Warren. Lead with confidence, we give you five to 10 minute quick soft skills strengthening, strengthening your soft skills, either way, go with me here to help you navigate, communicate, influence with more confidence. That's what we're here today. So I'm gonna give you about five to seven minutes of something quickly we can apply quickly in our lives after this podcast ends. In the meantime, I would love for you to comment, like, share about uh this, this if you're learning something from this, if you're gaining, or maybe share this with someone who might face similar challenges. It just helps it grow, keeps me inspired to keep putting this out there, and it can help your team around you. Today, we're talking about executive presence when you actually don't feel like an executive. How do you walk in these high stressful rooms with confidence versus feeling like you're the only person in the room that doesn't belong? I know that feeling. I've been there, I sit in that feeling. That's part of my job of being surrounding myself with people that I feel that are a lot smarter than me. I entered these rooms and there's C-suites in there. There's executives in there managing multi-billion million dollar budgets, navigating, you know, hundreds of people, and have actually, you know, taken a lot of risk and all this, you know, go through contracts. There's a lot of intimidating factors that I feel before I walk in a room. So I'm gonna share with you a couple things that I have jotted down or that things that I have seen that have worked to instilling some confidence in these high stressful, uncomfortable situations. All right. So the first thing I want you to understand is this if you are invited in that room, if you are invited into that high stressful room with all these accomplished people sitting around the table, I want to explain something to you. Number one, you belong there. If you're invited, you belong there. If you're invited to the room, you belong there. If you're invited to speak, you belong there. Wherever you are, you are, you are. You belong there. That's number one, first off, okay? So the feeling is, you know, you walk into this room, right? You feel that everyone around the table has got this management or executive playbook that you have never received before. So you're thinking, what am I doing here? I'm a fish out of water. I'm surrounded by all these smart cats and I don't know as much as they do, right? I can't speak as eloquently as they can. But here's the fun fact: if you walk in a room full of 10 executives, eight out of those 10 executives are feeling those exact feelings that you're feeling, but no one talks about it. That's the best part. That's why we're here today on Lead with Confidence, all right? And the imposter syndrome, what happens is number one, you can go two routes. Number one, you kind of shut down, right? You don't feel like you belong in the room, and you kind of shut down and make yourself smaller, right? And when you do answer a question, you're not confident about it. You're not uh you don't have the energy behind it to answer that question confidently. Or the other way thing that people do that I've seen is that they overcompensate their expertise. They over talk people, they're cocky, not confident, right? So those two paths happen oftentimes, right? And then um, you know, you think that executive presence means becoming becoming someone else or this new version of you or something like that, but that's never really the case. Executive presence is you being the most authentic self of you, your most authentic self. All right. So here's some frameworks when we are walking in the room, how to prep yourself, how to get that confidence, how to know and how to believe and feel and project that you belong in the room. So, number one, anchor your expertise. Why were you invited that room? Start jotting down all your successes. You know what? I'm invited to this room because I just did this. I just, you know, worked on this project, completed this deadline, uh, was under budget with this. I uh, you know, I decided to go this route with this one project and it was a success. Start listing your expertise down, right? Because that's how we beat that imposter syndrome, right? We beat it with evidence of our success, our accolades, what we've done before. All right. It's not that story that's in our minds saying, hey, you're not good enough for this. Time out. We are because this is why. A, B, C. These are the reasons I belong in that room, right? The second thing that we need to do is translate our value in actual, not non-technical terms, but more business speak without diminishing ourselves. So, what do we actually do? How do we actually contribute our value in a business sense, not technical sense, in a business sense that people can understand what we do and it absorbs, versus having them kind of like piece it together or kind of not understand what we do because it's so technical and kind of goes over our head. So let's that's you know, that's part of our elevator pitch, right? Let's work on actually what we contribute or the value we provide without getting all technical, without listening to features, without listing our processes. Let's know our role, right? Let's know our value, okay? And the third thing you can do is claim your perspective. Every single person in that room has a different background. Every single person in that room has a different path that they've taken in their career. So, what is your unique perspective? What is your unique path that have brought you into that room, right? So own that, claim it. That is who you are. That is your executive presence, your unique insights, right? Again, you don't want to be around the room where everyone's has the same insights, same feedback, saying yes to the same challenges, yes to the same problems, right? You want to provide your unique insight, your value. And that's kind of how you gain that confidence around that table. So the next time you're walking in a room where you feel outranked, where you feel like an imposter, you feel like everyone here is so much more accomplished than I do. Ask your question. Ask a question that only someone with your background would think to ask. So with your expertise, what you've been working on, the projects you're doing, what is something that you can ask to bring light to the team to get people thinking and understand your perspective, right? Stop apologizing for your experience or trying to sound like everyone else in the room or trying to sound overly confident or overly cocky to everyone in the room, right? Humility and being humble is a great key part of having that executive presence, all right? And ask yourself before you walk on that, walk in that room, who in this room needs to know some piece of insight, some piece of knowledge that I have that I can share, right? Because we all have something that people can learn from. That is what we have to lean into. So I, you know, I want you to understand something that you are invited to that meeting, you're invited to that presentation, you're invited to whatever it is because people believe in you. People want you there. People want to understand what is this person's unique perspective and how can I learn. So ground yourself in that versus I don't belong here. Uh, you know, I'm just, you know, this is all smoke and mirrors what I've done. I'm only here because of luck, timing, and not my accolades. So again, understand your perspective. It's unique, it's powerful. Lean in on that. Thanks for tuning in for Lead with Confidence. Uh, me your host, JP Warren, and we'll see you uh the next one. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.