[0:05] My clients are nice people. They're collaborative, they're respectful, they're hardworking. But when those personality traits translate to communication style, it undermines their impact. I'm Rusty Gaillard, and this is Do Something Different. Today we're unpacking executive presence, and specifically communication and how communication impacts executive presence.

[0:29] Most people communicate in a way that becomes synonymous with their personality. People say, well, I'm just a nice person, and so my communication style tends to be nice. I tend to be gentle. I tend to be kind. I'm non-confrontational. That's all great, but there's a couple of problems with it. Number one is if you only have one style of communication, you are not going to be effective because that one style of communication does not work in every situation. You need to have a broader range of communication styles in order to be effective. The second problem here is how you think about your personality. If you think about your personality as fixed, this is who I am, you are by definition limiting yourself from future growth. What your personality really is, is a description of your current set of behaviors,

[1:20] which is largely habitual and based on the past. It's based on things you've done in the past that have worked, and you've carried them forward and you keep doing them because it's your habitual way of communicating.

[1:32] I recently had someone present an investor pitch to me. And he went through the pitch. And at some point I realized, you know what? This sounds like an investor pitch. And I get it because I've worked in the corporate world and I've been in corporate presentations. And in some way, corporate speak all kind of sounds the same. And if your personality is such that when you go into a corporate meeting, you step into that corporate speak kind of personality, this is what it looks like to give a presentation.

[2:05] You are limiting yourself because to some extent, you're forgettable. And that was the message I gave to this investor. Don't fit in with everybody else. You need to stand out. If you want people to invest in you, there has to be something unique about you. You need to be more compelling than your average investor. And if you talk like your average investor, you're going to be forgettable. The exact same thing is true in the corporate world. If you show up and you participate the same way everyone else does in the corporate world, you're going to blend in and you're going to be forgettable.

[2:38] The truth is, you are unique. You are a unique person with unique gifts and unique life experience and unique sense of humor and ideas. If those things are not coming through, then you're blending in. But now this, for many people, is going to come right up against their beliefs of what does it mean to be an effective corporate person? Because they say, well, corporate people aren't funny. We don't tell jokes. We're serious. We're to the point. That is your vision, perhaps. of what a corporate person is, but this is exactly what I mean about personality and about your perceptions of the past. Because we tend to be true and we tend to behave in ways that are consistent with our self-image, who we think we are and the way we want to be. That is the biggest predictor of your behavior, who you think you are. If you consider yourself to be a nice guy, then you are much more likely to act as a nice person. And it's why we are so strongly influenced by the people around us because we also see the people around us and we kind of identify with them. We start to feel connected with them and we act like them. It's why they say the five people around you are the best predictor of your happiness, your job satisfaction, your income, your health, your well-being. All of these things are so strongly influenced by the people around you because your self-image starts to be influenced by those people and it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

[4:05] In today's leadership world, we talk so much about authenticity and you want to be an authentic leader, but authentic to what? Are you authentic to your past self, to your personality, which is based on all of those habits and behaviors you learned in the past? Or are you authentic to your future self, to who you are becoming? Let's just do a thought experiment. Picture yourself in the future as a next level of success. Whatever that looks like for you, And picture yourself in a meeting, in an appropriate meeting setting for the kind of work that you do, but where you are speaking and others are listening. They're paying attention, they're nodding along, they value what you have to say, and you feel twice as confident as you do today. Imagine you're twice as confident. What does that feel like? Do that thought experiment to put yourself in that room. Look around. See, are other people listening? How are they nodding? How are they demonstrating their attention to you? How quickly are you speaking? How calm are you as you're presenting your opinion? Just notice what it feels like to be at that level of confidence and command that level of presence.

[5:23] That is the feeling you are going for. And you want to be authentic to that version of you, not some past version of you or even a current version of you. Because when you're static, you're not growing. You want to be growing towards that future version of you. I experienced this when I worked at Apple because I had been, up until that point in my life, a corporate guy. My entire career was in the corporate world. My first job out of college was at General Electric, a massive multinational corporation at the time. I went on after business school at Stanford to work at PG&E, another big corporation, and then at Apple, another massive multinational corporation with tens of thousands of people. And I got to the point where I saw myself as a corporate person.

[6:10] When I was ready to move on from my time at Apple, that self-image became a roadblock to me. I didn't know where else to go. Apple is a great company. I liked working there. I was good at it. I had a good job. But I knew I wanted to do something else, but no other corporation measured up. And I couldn't think of another job I wanted to do. I was stuck there. I got unstuck when somebody helped me break that connection to the past, to break that connection to my personality as a corporate person. And they said, you're bigger than your personality. You're not constrained by what you've done in the past. If you stopped worrying about what you've done in the past or what other people might think, or are you qualified or how much money will you make or will you be successful? And you simply ask yourself, what would you love to be doing? What does success look like to you?

[7:00] That is where I got the idea that I wanted to have meaningful conversations with people to help them break through their personal constraints and achieve a new level of success and impact and confidence.

[7:15] And that's what I did. For me, that was the moment that I got the idea to become an executive coach. And that was the path that I went down. Now, for my clients, it's not necessarily about changing career, but it's about changing their self-image and evolving and growing their personality so that they have more tools at their disposal to command executive presence, to command respect, and to be able to shape their job and show up with confidence to do the job in the way that they want to do it, not to fit into somebody else's

[7:48] mold, not to put on that corporate jacket and say, I'm a good corporate employee. I'm going to do what everybody else is doing, but to show up as you and to craft your job in a way that suits you, that plays to your strengths, that allows you to be the best version of yourself. That is the macro picture. But the piece that we're talking about today specifically is executive presence. Because part of that is getting people to see you as confident and present and executive in nature.

[8:18] You don't control executive presence because executive presence is really about how others perceive you, but you do control how you show up. And I want to give you five tools, all starting with a letter P, five Ps to boost your executive presence. As you know, I talk about skillset and mindset. So these five Ps range the spectrum between skillset and mindset, and they help you identify a future version of yourself that is more confident and conveys more respect and commands more respect from other people when you show up.

[8:52] The first P is your position. To position yourself as someone who is confident and has authority. And I don't mean position in terms of your physical position in the room. I mean position yourself mentally. This is clearly a mindset tool. Go back to that thought experiment we did earlier and say, what does it look like and how does it feel to be twice as confident? Put yourself in that position. Be that version of yourself that feels twice as confident, that shows up and acts accordingly.

[9:22] When you do that, a whole set of behaviors follows. All of your nonverbal language, so much of the way you communicate just flows naturally from that one step. That is the mindset step. There are several other tools which I want to give you which become more and more behavioral as we go. The second one I want to give you, second tool to help you boost your executive presence, is to use proclamation. What does that mean? It means to proclaim your statement, to make a statement as if it were true, rather than to couch it in words that minimize the impact, such as, well, my opinion is, or based on the research we did, or I think, or our team recommends, don't use any of those language. Just say the best path forward is X. Proclaim it as if it were true. Make a statement of what you believe is the best path forward without the qualifiers. Proclamation is so powerful. If you ever use writing, you will notice this so many times that this is what the team recommends or I recommend. Just notice how many times you start with the words, I think, or I recommend, or I believe. Those are all qualifiers. They're assumed because it's you are the one who's communicating. Of course, it's your opinion. Instead of saying those, saying the best path forward is, or the strongest next step is, there are many ways to phrase it. You can use ChatGPT if you want to give you options, but make proclamations, make statements rather than couching them as opinions.

[10:52] The third tool to boost your executive presence is your pitch.

[10:58] Notice what your inflection is, what pitch you use as you make a statement. Here's a sentence and I'm going to say it two different ways and they mean two totally different things. You went to the store today versus you went to the store today. Those are the same words said in two different ways, meaning two different things. Now, in this case, it's pretty obvious. One is a question like, oh, you went to the store today versus a statement. You went to the store today.

[11:26] But think about if you're making a recommendation of what the next step is at work. And you're making a proclamation, so you're saying, the best next step is for us to do a focus group. That's totally different from, the best next step is for us to do a focus group?

[11:44] Which one conveys more authority? Which one conveys more impact? Clearly, the downward pitch rather than the upward pitch. Upward pitch is used for questions and creates uncertainty. It communicates uncertainty. Downward pitch communicates authority and confidence. Notice your pitch and be deliberate and notice the pitch of those around you to see how they communicate. The fourth tool, also starting with a P, is your pace. Notice how quickly you speak when you're in a meeting. Many of us in a meeting want to speak quickly because we want to get all of our ideas out before somebody else jumps in and interrupts us and the direction goes in some other way. Slow down. Those people who command the most respect and the most executive, have the most executive presence, speak slowly. They pause. They take time between their phrases, their sentences, their ideas. And they still command the room while doing so. That is an art. If you want executive presence, you can command way more executive presence in your silence than in filling the room with your words. Notice that. Pay attention to the people around you. See if you can play with your pace to slow down and pause and see how people react.

[13:13] The fifth tool, the last one, is projection. And this is simply a matter of being clearly heard. Of course, it matters virtually. Make sure that your microphone is good. Make sure you don't have this kind of echoey sound that some people have when they have a bad microphone set up. It's worth just making sure your sound quality is good so that you're easy to understand. And when you're in person, speak loudly enough, project enough that people can understand you clearly and easily. They can hear you. This is the most simple of requirements. If people cannot hear you, they will never understand what you have to say.

[13:51] Most people between being too soft and too loud err on the side of being too soft because we don't want to feel like we're yelling in the way we communicate. Take one notch up towards louder. Just move one notch up and speak a little bit more loudly. Project a little bit more in the room. So nobody has to work to hear you. Nobody has to work to understand you. And they can focus clearly on what you have to say.

[14:20] These five Ps, ranging from mindset to skillset, which is your position, your mental position as you go in, making proclamations, your pitch, your pace, and projection. These five P's can help you boost your executive presence. And they're very tactical, easy to apply tools in the way you communicate in a meeting. Now, a lot of people will say, yeah, that's all cool, but that's not really my style. Huh? What is your style? Your style is a static understanding of the way you operate today.

[14:54] And if you are being authentic to your style, you are being authentic to the past because your style is simply your past experiences that have worked for you so far that have gotten you to this point. If you want to be the next version of you, you need to be authentic in a forward-looking way. Don't be authentic backward-looking. Craft your new style and have various styles for various situations.

[15:21] You can't be a one-size-fits-all kind of leader. You need to have different styles and different modes of communication that are appropriate for the venue. So take one of these P's, your position, proclamation, pitch, pace, and projection, and practice it. Identify one of those. Which one of those do you need the most work on? Pick it, and then identify a very specific meeting where you're going to do something different.

[15:51] Because it's in the application that you change. And I'm not saying change this for the rest of your life and become a different person. I'm saying, are you willing to do an experiment? Are you willing to try something new for the sake of growing and learning and taking a step forward towards that future version of you? You are bigger than your style, your current style. You are bigger than your personality. That's what I discovered when I realized I'm not just a corporate person. Sure, that's a part of who I am, but that's not all of who I am.

[16:26] And just in the very same way, you might have an effective communication style, but you are bigger than your style. You can have different styles that are appropriate for different situations. You can elevate your impact. You can command more executive presence and you can show up with more confidence and more assurance and have a bigger impact on the people around you.

[16:49] It requires a different mindset and a different skill set. Put them in practice do an experiment it's in the experiment that you get some feedback and you learn what worked what didn't work it's going to be uncomfortable i get it but you have to be willing to tolerate the discomfort in the service of your growth to grow into that future version of you, you can do it you can absolutely grow you can be bigger than what you are now you are not constrained by your situation you are not constrained by your past you're not constrained by your boss, you're not constrained by your company, you are bigger than all of that. You have more capacity, you have more capability to grow and become a bigger and stronger and more effective leader. And it starts, you guessed it, by doing something different.