Webinar Executive Presence

So good afternoon, everyone. We have limited time today. This webinar is going to be approximately 45 minutes. And we're going to have a very authentic conversation about executive presence. I just want to make sure that we. This is being recorded. My assistant is on Dyra. Dyra, can you confirm that we are recording this for those who won't be able to join us today? I know a lot of people have requested to get the recording sent to them. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. So, like I started saying, many of you are starting to think about performance reviews at the end of the year. Many of you are starting to think if you are due promotions for 2025, maybe thinking about reflecting why you didn't get promotions, why you didn't get promotions this year, and what does it actually take to show up with extreme executive presence so that you're kind of killing every meeting, you're kind of owning the room, you are leading with expertise, you communicate with confidence when you talk to your boss, you mentor people on your team, and you're really intentional in your day to day activities. So put in the chat some of the things that you're starting to think about at the end of the year and we could use that as a segue into our conversation today. But I always felt that there are professionals that have executive presence or they don't. And the ones that don't need to have this authentic conversation with themselves that you need to cultivate executive presence. It's not a core competency that you're just born with. Okay, Many of you that have done resumes with me, you know that core competencies are things that we're born with and business expertise are things that we acquired during our career. So executive presence is something that needs to be nurtured. It's something that needs to be used on a day to day basis. And it's basically if you don't use it and you don't have it, it will never show up.

Okay?

So today we're going to be talking about various areas of your professional lives and the situation that you're faced with where you can have an opportunity to step up with executive presence and really use executive presence as your superpower to navigate difficult conversations, difficult situations, take things upon yourself, you, many of you, my existing clients that are on welcome and hello again. But you know that when I sit down and talk to you about your stars, about your resumes, I always ask you, what did you take upon yourself? What did you bring to the table? What problem, what gap did you identify and you took it upon yourself to fix it, because this is what gets you your promotion. This is what gets you visibility in your organization. This is the secret sauce that C suite executives have because they're intentional every single day, and they use every single day as an opportunity to practice their executive presence. Okay, so today I'm going to outline a program that I'm launching. But more importantly, we'll talk about the program towards the end for a few minutes. But more importantly, I want to discuss actual topics that have been coming up for many of my clients. I'm not doing this in a vacuum. There's a reason why I decided to launch this executive presence because I feel that this is really needed in the marketplace. Not only if you're a job seeker looking for that leadership role, but also if you want to navigate up in your organization or you want to be more visible in your industry or you finally want to break into that C suite role. I feel that executive presence is that superpower. So I really want to take the time today, the 45 minutes that we have today, to really unpack it and, and really understand what executive presence is. There will be some time for Q and A in the end, so just bear with all your questions towards the end. So, Dyra, can we have the next slide, please? Okay, so the program highlights and some of the things that I would like to have authentic conversations about today are the following. In order to obtain executive presence, in order to have it, in order to use it, in order to showcase it, you first need to have an authentic awareness and an audit of your skills. Sometimes it's impossible to audit your own skills. You need an outsider to do it. I always like to joke around that a surgeon can never operate on themselves. It's almost someone else needs to tell you that. Here are the skills that you have mastered. Here are the skills that need to be stretched, and here are the gaps. Here are the gaps in your skill set. This is what you're missing in order to make it to the next step. So when I help you write your performance reviews, and many of you I have helped over, over the last couple of years, I always ask you to bring to the table those stars, the situation, task, action, steps and results of things that you took upon yourself to fix in your organizations or on your projects. So that shows that you have this special skill that you're ready to stretch your skills, collaborate with others to gain those skills. You just to get things done for the good of the company. Okay, I'm going to be talking about this more Often a true leader and a person, an executive that has executive presence is really never thinking about themselves. They're always thinking about the greater good, the greater good of the team or the greater good of the company. And every single conversation that they have with outsiders or with their internal team members, it's always framed as such because you could never be accused of being self, you know, self interest, self interested if you're thinking about the benefit of Apple or Google or whoever your employer is.

Okay?

So a lot of executives that I work with on executive presence, I help them massage those sentences in their mind every time that they're speaking at conferences, at team meetings, at, you know, weekly meetings and, you know, board meetings, you know, whatever public speaking you need to do in your day to day work, it's very important to start crafting those sentences. And when you're making recommendations or when, when you're kind of highlighting complaints or gaps in whatever you're doing, it's always great to refer back to the good of the company. Okay, but when you're looking to acquire executive presence, you first need to start with a self awareness. Do I not have executive presence? Have people mentioned that to me that perhaps I'm not assertive enough, or maybe I'm too nice, or maybe I have a problem saying no, or maybe I'm not convincing, or maybe I have to up my leadership skills? Whatever the feedback that almost has been hurting you or you've taken it personally from, let's say, management or your peers, whatever feedback felt more like a sword and not a feather. That is where we need to start working to be able to create executive presence in your professional life.

Okay?

So auditing your current skills is very important and there's a lot of value if you hire someone to do that. I don't believe in assessments because if you take assessments 365 days in a year, each one of them will be different. Okay, so that's the value of coaching, where coaching can help you identify your current skills and the gaps and what skills you can stretch and what skills you need to acquire. So it's important to start with the self awareness, identifying your gaps and asking yourself, are my strengths or are my weaknesses serving me in the way I'm appearing as an executive? So for example, if your strength is you're always willing to help others, but at the same time because of that, you have a problem saying no. Has that strength gotten in your way of getting your promotion? Because you're always busy helping others, you need to have that self awareness and a Sense of executive presence in order to say to yourself, wait a minute, I will mentor, but I will only mentor 5% of my time because number one, this is not going to get me the promotion. And probably this is not for the good of the company because I need to identify more gaps in the project, my skills are needed more in this particular venue versus just keep helping somebody over and over again. So it's very important to identify those gaps and to ask yourself this very important question. Is this serving me?

Okay.

One of the most important things in executive presence is to really understand where you're going. So many people enter an organization or they're in their job and they really have no idea. They want a promotion, but they're not really sure what the responsibilities and what are the day to day actions of let's say a senior VP versus just a regular vp. So, so it really makes sense when you want to acquire executive presence, that you build a roadmap and you match that roadmap to your leadership style, the style that you have now. Now if the roadmap is going towards a C suite executive, let's say CEO, you need to take a look at your leadership style, where you are today, and build a roadmap that's going to get you to the C suite. That doesn't happen by accident. If you talk to any C suite executive today, they were intentional in what they were doing. Probably 10 years in the rears. No one just becomes a C suite executive. This is a calculated, calculated move. And when they get recruited into another organization and they're a C suite and they were C suite in their previous organization, that's not really a career move. The career move is when you're a VP and you want to make it to the C suite, either in that organization or in another organization. Some organizations are built in such a way that it's impossible to break that ceiling. For whatever reasons, if you've been with a company for 25 years, they still look at you as that junior executive that, that joined them 20 years ago. So that's why I always advise for people to move around two to three years. Okay, so every leader that has strong executive presence has developed a roadmap that they are following as much as they can. There's always outside factors, but they are intentional every single day. So the importance, so establishing that roadmap is actually your vision. What do you see yourself as? What is your dream job? Many of you that have had consultations with me, that's the first question I ask you. What is Your dream job. What do you see yourself being? Your legacy role. Out of which role would you like to retire? What role would feel like a tremendous accomplishment to you? So we need to establish that vision, build a roadmap, evaluate your skills, what skills you have, what skills you don't have, what skills you need to acquire, and build a plan of you acquiring those skills. AI is on the threshold right now. Many companies, many businesses, many professions are embracing AI. If you would like to establish more executive presence, take it upon yourself to enroll in an AI course. I looked at it a couple of days ago. Google is offering some interesting free courses. MIT is also. But you can probably seek something out and put something on your resume to show that you are current, that you are interested in something. That is innovation today. That is executive presence. Okay, taking a look at how you communicate with external parties, internal parties, and believe it or not, with yourself. Internal dialogue is very important for executive presence. Because if you don't believe it inside that you have what it takes to be a CEO, guess what? You're never going to make it there. No matter how many hours of coaching you invest, no matter who you get as, as your coach, it will not matter. Everything starts with your belief system. So you need to believe it yourself, communicate with yourself. You know, manage that internal dialogue. Trick your mind when your dialog is going the negative way. Oh, you'll never get that promotion because you haven't gotten one for the past three years. Control that internal dialogue. Control the dialogue that you have with your team, with people internally, and control your dialogue with people you have externally. Have you ever watched, you know, Christmas parties, Thanksgiving dinners are coming up. Have you ever watched people that are always complaining about their job? And guess what? Nothing ever good happens to them. But it takes discipline to not to complain about your job. When things are really falling apart at your job, what can those people do for you? I mean, misery loves company. I mean, they don't know the business that you're in. If your company didn't meet numbers, what is your friend who works for the hospital really going to do for you? So be aware of this communication style. If you're interested in establishing executive presence, first take a look at the dialogue you have with yourself every morning during your quiet time. Whether you're doing reflection, meditation, many of you have your rituals, whatever it is, but be aware of what you're thinking about your job in your head, the internal dialogue. Be aware of the conversation you're having with your team. Are you complaining? Are you, are you knocking other divisions Are you knocking the company? The company didn't do well. Start being aware of those conversations and then start being aware of the conversations you're having with your social circle about your work. And maybe conduct an experiment. If you keep telling everyone who asks you how's work, say things are terrific, couldn't have been better. Let's see if over 30 days, if you keep saying, almost like faking it till you're making it, let's see if some good factors are going to start showing up. I bet that they will. Please write to me. This is a challenge to everybody. Please write to me and let me know if you have noticed little inklings of changes in in work or in your work environment when you either stop complaining or even managing your internal dialogue.

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Executive presence is also about cultivating your agility and your ability to adapt. Now this is kind of goes hand in hand with complaining and internal dialogue. Listen, the rate of innovation today is 10x to when I finished college in the 90s.

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Change is almost a daily thing aside from what's ever the news that are happening in the world. But every day there's something new to learn. Companies are adapting. AI companies are buying new CRMs, companies are buying new software, new methodologies are being introduced, new leadership is coming in and you always need to adapt. So in order to cultivate executive presence, look at change as something good. A lot of people have an internal dialogue saying it never gets better. Yes it does. It's the half empty glass, half full glass kind of concept. Believe that things do get better if change is implemented correctly or if a company invested in software or new training or whatever it is, believe that it is for the best and at least give it a try. One of my favorite books of all times is who Moved My Cheese? It's a very short book. It's very easy to read. It's something that was very popular in the 90s when I entered the workforce. But it may be worth reading for those of you that are resisting change. Because executive presence is all about that agility and how you manage change, whether you welcome it or whether you resist it.

Okay.

Many of you have heard that there is a new style of leadership that is showing up, which is called service leadership, servant leader. I mean, Tim Cook over at Apple is probably the poster child for service leadership. But what does that really mean? Are you always going to help people? What that really means is cultivating your emotional intelligence and empathy. This is something that is very much needed in leadership. This is very much needed to be highlighted in your careers and as you are developing your executive presence. So as you're doing your performance reviews, as you're daydreaming about a promotion next year, try to figure out ways situations, actually not ways situations where you could have highlighted your empathy for somebody that's on the team, where you could have highlighted your emotional intelligence skills and where in your mind you do see yourself as a service leader, someone that is doing things for the greater good and someone whose vision is actually bigger than they are. So for example, my vision to help job seekers is bigger than I am. I've already latched onto that vision a long time ago. Many of you have read articles that I have written about the lighthouse effect. When you latch onto, when you lock sight with that lighthouse that is in the distance that's guiding you, you're still currently in troubled waters, but you know where you're going. So my vision of helping job seekers is bigger than I am. I just kind of show up every single day and get, get out of the way just to help people. So if you're going to take any takeaways from this webinar, start asking yourself some of these open ended questions. If you don't remember the questions, the webinar will be sent to you. So you could definitely rewatch it. But you could always schedule a free consultations with a free consultation with me and unpack many of these things. Now obviously many of these things will be unpacked in this program.

Okay?

But these are important things for you to start thinking about. Especially if you have admitted to yourself that you do not have enough executive presence and you would like to develop that muscle. A service leader not only helps the company, the greater good, the team, but he or she are also in service to themselves. They're excellent at energy management, they're excellent at self care, they're excellent at preservation. They know that putting in 14 hour days is counterproductive and they have tools that help them manage that and they are disciplined. Many of you have heard about the 5am Club, the 24 hour week. You know, there's many tactics that are commercial and you know, people wrote books and made tons of money. But this is not what I'm really talking about. I'm talking about the discipline of self care. Taking the time during the day to do a brief stretching exercise, going out for a walk, 20, 30 minutes. Because what service leaders and what executives with executive presence understand that if they are going to just keep going, they're going to run out of fuel in the gas tank. You can't just keep going with the same type of fervor for 10 hours a day. So you need to be aware of this and you need to manage this. You need to manage your energy. You cannot spend your energy on dealing with a small squabble in the team if you know that you would rather take this time and prepare for the big presentation you're having with the boss next week. You have to have an inner, inner muscle, a discipline to tell yourself, no, Michelle, stop doing that. This is not serving you. That's called executive presence. Where you could make these little trade offs with yourself, where you could stop yourself and having negative dialogue, where you could literally get out of your own way. Because most of you are executives, probably all of you, some people I don't know, but most of my current clients, you're all high level executives. You all have what it takes. You just need to get out of your own way and latch onto that vision more strong, more strongly.

Okay?

So that discipline, cultivating that inner excellence, telling yourself, no, I'm not going to get involved in this drama between my two team members. I'm just going to walk away and say, you know what, this is not for the good of the company. We'll talk about another time. Let's park it, let the emotions diffuse and let's focus on the big presentation that's coming next week.

Okay?

Because all as many of you are interviewing, okay. There is a famous question that's popping up on interviews. Tell me about a situation that you had with a challenging employee or team member and how did you unravel it? That question is basically asking you, prove to me that you have executive presence. Why should we hire you? On a scale from 1 to 10, how well do you grade being an exec having executive presence versus the other person? This is what that question is all about. This may be a question that may appear on your performance review. This may be a question that you may have to answer to with HR if you're going through an internal interview panel to get that promotion.

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So these are all important scenarios that you need to start thinking about if you're interested in promotions, if you're interested in career progression. So once again, cultivating that inner excellence, taking time for pausing during the day, self care and definitely energy management are one of the most important things that you need to think about if you want to acquire executive presence. Now I mentioned relationships. Relationships need to be cultivated. Relationship building is something that you must do. Just like we must continue eating and breathing, we need to continue building relationships. Internal and External.

Okay.

And actually, based on what I mentioned before, a relationship with ourselves. But this is not what I mean here. In order for you to to feed your executive presence and make sure that it's evolving, you need to invest in relationships, meaning reaching out to people you know, people you don't know, and people you don't even know that you don't know. And those are the introductions and the referrals that people that do know you can be making for you. If you show up with executive presence, so many of you probably see how all of these things are intertwined and connected. I did not do. I'm not meaning to confuse you. This is why I decided to launch this program. Because the way I'm structuring the program, everything will be clear to you when you'll be done with the program. So let's get into the program. Daira, can you please go to the next slide? So here are the details of the program. Here are the dates. They are more or less set in stone. So these will be eight sessions, 45 minutes each, in a cohort scenario. So I'm selecting a certain amount of people. I'm thinking anywhere between 8 to 10, because that is a nice size of a group, so people can interact with one another as well. But these are people who want to progress in their career and want that next job next year, or they want that promotion or they want to go into another organization. As you see, I did this intentionally to end at the end of February because those are the times when you have to submit your performance reviews. Some organizations want them in November, December, but that's too short of a time. But if you enroll, even by December, you will have enough content to start showing up as somebody with more executive presence. So those are the dates. They're more or less set in stone. Some may change for January and February. Well, I'm more worried about getting together a really good cohort of people that are interested in this and that want to invest time and want to help each other. So it would be on those dates at 5 o', clock, 45 minutes. And those would be lecture style workshops with me on Zoom. And then there will be work in between the sessions which you will communicate with me directly and kind of make the submissions to me on whatever the homework assignment is.

Okay.

The structure of the program will be the following. In the very beginning, each and every one of you will develop a vision of this dream job and how you want to appear with executive presence. What do you want to look like when you have executive presence? What do you want? What role do you want to be in? Do you want to leave your current job and go into, let's say, a more senior role in another organization? And what level of executive presence will you be bringing to that organization? Okay, so we need to establish that vision first. And that vision is going to be crafted almost like a thesis statement. Remember when we used to write essays in college? Everything started with an essay. Everything started with a thesis statement. And then we're going to build body paragraphs. Each body paragraph will be correlating with some of the topics will be we were talking about today. So the first body paragraph is your skills, your self awareness and your skill audit. We will craft a topic sentence together and then you will have to go off on your own and actually look for validations in your day to day activities. Almost like evidence. Many of you remember when you wrote essays, you would pick a topic sentence for a paragraph, then you would have to put in a quote, and then you would have to explain that quote. Well, it's not going to be like that because we're really not writing an essay. We're almost writing a case study for your executive presence Persona at some point in the future. So we will be gathering evidence that you will need to populate in that body paragraph and set it aside the following week. We're going to be talking about verbal and physical communication. We will establish the topic sentence. And then during your two weeks that you're off from the sessions, you will go into your day to day operations and you will look for scenarios that we can actually provide as evidence in that particular paragraph. The idea is by the end of the eight weeks and maybe there'll be an extra session that I'll slide in. I haven't really decided yet. But let's say eight to ten weeks. Eight to ten sessions, correction. And over four months you will have a finished essay about who you will look like when you will have the level of executive presence that you want. And that essay will be a magic essay because you will read it to yourself every time you go in an interview. You will look at it every time you have a conversation with your boss, every time you do a performance review. This will be a confidence booster because this will be a lot of information about you that you will be very proud of. This will be a very, very powerful tool that you could use to navigate the future of your career. Okay, so I'm going to pause here before I get into the nitty gritty, nitty gritty of the program. And I'm going to allow people to ask me questions because I kind of really rattled off a lot and I want to make sure that I'm answering all the questions that you have about anything that I have said. So put your. We don't have the ability to put the camera on because this is a webinar. But please put your questions in the chat and I will be more than happy to answer them. My assistant is sharing my link to book a meeting with me. For those of you. Many of you know how to reach me, but any questions about the program? The program is launching on November 12th. There will be a pre meeting. I'm looking to select eight to 10 executives that would like to be part of this cohort so we together can work on executive presence for each other and in a group. Any questions? Okay, Dyra, can we share the next screen, please? Oh, hold on a second. How important it is to be likable if you also want to have executive presence? You know, likable is a very loose word. That's individual. If you are professional, you will be liked. It also has to jive with the company culture. I'm very much against bending over backwards for people at work to be liked.

Okay.

Me personally, I have liked managers that I've had in my corporate career that were a little bit tougher on me because they wanted me to grow and they wanted to give me authentic feedback. So many people did not like those types of managers, but I actually appreciated it because they wanted me to grow. They took the time to tell me what I could improve on. That means that they cared.

Okay.

My favorite leadership book. I mean, I'm in the coaching realm. It's definitely the prosperous coach. So many of you that are interested, it's by this guy, Rich Litvin. I mean, he is brilliant and he's a leader and he's a servant leader and all of that specifically about leadership. I mean, there's various types of leaders.

Okay.

So it all depends what kind of leadership, what kind of industry you're talking about. So I don't think that leadership is a generic term. So it all depends on if you want to be a leader in. In tech, if you want to be a leader in finance, if you want to be a leader in nonprofit or all those things are all those industries are very, very different. We have another question. Can you elaborate more about what you would cover in January and February session? What else is required from a serious participant to attend this cohort? So I don't have the actual program defined yet. This is a webinar an introduction to the executive presence. But let me just run through the topics that will be covered. Week one would be self awareness of current skills and areas of improvement. The second week would be identifying gaps and how they're serving you. Establishing vision and breakdown of your goals. Week four, structure clear communication, verbal and physical. Week five, cultivate agility and adaptability. Week six, develop new leadership style, empathy, service, emotional intelligence. Cultivate your inner excellence. Discipline yourself with self care, delegation and energy management. Building relationships and then connecting. Connecting everything that we have written so far to the body paragraphs. So I'm assuming that the January and February will be about developing leadership style, cultivating your inner excellence, and building relationships. But on February 25, we would need to kind of wrap everything up into that final essay. So I hope that that helps. Okay, any other questions? We have a few more minutes before I. I kind of share the QR code and ask for people if they would like to participate. Any other questions? Now, for many of you that I'm working with already, this program can be an addition. Okay. Because this is going to be in a group coaching scenario. There's going to be an element of a buddy system where you will meet people. And this will be regarding time commitment. Very, very minimal, almost after the workday. So a lot of the work that you will be doing will be on your own.

Okay.

And this is just one pillar, the executive presence. What. Where. What I'm working on with many of you is other things. So this was designed to supplement what you're already doing or if you are someone that has not worked with me before and you are interested in acquiring more executive presence, you know, commanding a room, you know, speaking with confidence and, you know, qualities like that, then this, this program would definitely make a huge difference for you. The essay helps you build executive presence because executive presence needs to be acquired. It's not an overnight type of acquisition. It needs to be nurtured. And in order for you to nurture it, you first need to understand what skills you need to acquire to have executive presence. You don't wake up one day say, I have executive presence. Executive presence is made up of all of these components that I just discussed, and each component of Executive Presence is tied into the week of the cohort.

Okay.

It's a little bit difficult to explain without having a schedule, but a schedule is in the works right now.

Okay.

Dyra, can you share the next slide, please? As we wrap this up? So, what to expect? You will have a clear roadmap for how you want to show up as a leader in 2025, you will meet terrific people. You will have a cohort, you will have a buddy system. You will have me to guide you through this. And you will have a powerful essay at the end of the program, which will be a reminder of your vision, where you want to go, where do you need to step up? What do you need to keep reminding yourself to do? This essay will be almost like your bible on a day to day basis. It's like when you go to the gym, when you start going to the gym because you would like to lose 10 pounds, let's say in, in six months. In the beginning, you really need to watch every single exercise until it kind of becomes second nature. And even when it becomes second nature, when you get rusty, let's say you need to show a friend how you do your exercise routine.

You.

You may need to be reminded. This is the value of this essay. As many of you are navigating interviews, networking calls, conferences, internal interviews for promotions, talks with your superiors, talks with management, with board of directors. You need to exercise this muscle. And this essay will be a very powerful tool that will take you 10 minutes to read. It will remind yourself so you're not going to spin out of control and kind of sabotage your own success. I designed this. It took me really a few weeks to really think about what tool can I give everyone so they could literally carry it in their phone?

Okay.

I don't need to give you an app. I don't need to give you a workflow chart. I. I don't need to do any of that. I want to help you craft an essay about the person you want to become.

Okay.

And then be aware of it every single day and practice to become that person. So that is the reason for the essay. Okay, any questions about how you will access this essay, how will you write it, why are you writing it, and so forth. Any questions from anybody? Yes, this is a paid program, so I'd like. Dyra, can you share the next slide? So the price of the program is 3,000. But if you're interested and you would like to secure your spot, you get a webinar price for 2000. And we would require a $500 deposit. You could use this QR code, You could use the link. You could do any of those. Those would work. But I am interested in putting together a cohort of people that will help one another, that are in executive positions, that are interested to move forward, that will be a buddy to each other. And this is going to be a very powerful group. I think together you could achieve a lot more than individually. And I would like to end on my favorite quote of all time. If you want to go fast, you walk alone. If you want to go far, you walk with people. So thank you, everyone, for attending this webinar. Thank you for allowing me to share with you what I think executive presence is. And I am hoping that we're going to get a great cohort of people together that will help each other rise up and really be vested in developing their executive presence. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a great day.