Developing Executive Presence: What Sets Great Leaders Apart

Great leaders are great communicators. They don’t just spew all the leadership bon mots that they memorized from the leadership course they went on last week, and they had better not get their inspiration from those damn posters!

Instead, you need something of a personality, and you need to be really, truly interested in the outcome of the people around you.

For me, it was trying to keep meetings interesting, and I had a little fun doing it.

For example, if people made boring meetings, I would call them out and tell them they had to get better. It may have pricked their ego a little bit, but they needed it if they were going to get better. Or if I saw someone sleeping during a meeting, I would call on them, and they would bumble about for an answer. People would laugh, and peer pressure would force them to shape up.

I would do that with a little bit of humor, and calling on the napper would do that. (Those people tended to be the group a-holes anyway, and the others didn’t want to miss that.) But it did ensure that everyone else didn’t fall asleep in my meetings.

Another thing I did was that when I hired people to come in and train my staff, part of the contract was that they had to give me a report card on all the participants. It’s one thing to go into someplace and blather on for an hour, but if no one is absorbing anything, then what was I spending the money for in the first place?

This also gave me some insights into whether the problem was with the students or the teacher. I also wanted the people to rate the instructor because I wanted insights into their effectiveness. Because if people received a training and then were still doing the things they were trained against, I had to ask whether I needed to spend the money on that instructor.

I remember once working with some trainers, and the owner of the company was a nice guy, but the most boring person I’d ever met. He was like a sedative to the audience, so when I heard about this, I told him I didn’t want him to present anymore, I wanted his partner. That was a tough thing to do.

Genuine curiosity is also important — being curious about the things and people around you. Not the guy who just wants to sit in a meeting and take a rest, because there is no substitute for genuine curiosity.

I can remember when I put in a warehouse management system and sent a lot of my staff to San Diego for training. One day, I showed up there and found four people standing around and smoking while everyone else was beavering away, learning and studying. Trying to better understand this new WMS so they could make the company run better.

Two weeks later, I fired the four people because they didn’t even have the basic curiosity about this new software system that they had been asking for.

In that kind of training, you learn an awful lot more from your fellow audience members than your actual instructor. As people are asking questions and clarifying information, you’re getting a better and deeper understanding of the subject matter. But if you just sit there like a dummy, or worse, go out and smoke, it’s just data being thrown at you. When you’re the manager in this kind of situation, you always want at least one champion in the group because they end up being the go-to person during the implementation.

Ultimately, being a successful manager means having a presence. You can’t just manage from your office; you need to be seen. You need to have people who are curious and are interested in the work you’re doing. And you have to make your presence known and felt, even when you’re not in the room.

I’ve been a manufacturing executive, as well as a sales and marketing professional, for a few decades. Now, I help companies turn around their own business, including pivoting within their industry. If you would like more information, please visit my website and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Photo credit: pplbuilder (Pixabay, creative Commons 0)