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What does a Leader Look Like?
When you conjure up an image of a leader, what do you see? What do you hear? How do you feel about that person?
When I started coaching on presence and presentation skills, the assumptions were clear and widely shared. They’ve changed quite a bit, especially in the past decade or so.
Let’s delve into the differences.
Senior business leaders long looked for confidence, decisiveness, and a blue-chip pedigree in each other, in the executives they brought onto their teams, and in the consultants, lawyers, and others they worked with.
When it came to communication, they expected great speaking skills, forcefulness, and the ability to command a room.
And they valued a polished appearance along with tallness, youthfulness, and slimness. (Are you thinking what I’m thinking?)
Some of that is still at play. And some of it is played out.
Economist and consultant Sylvia Ann Hewlett researched Executive Presence for her 2012 book on the subject, a deep dive into our expectations of senior professionals in the areas of gravitas, communication, and appearance.
Today, we’re not living—much less working—in the same world, are we?
A decade on and then some, we have some very different ideas about what leaders look and sound like.
In the 2022 research, gravitas still plays the biggest role in executive presence, and it still depends partly on signs of confidence and decisiveness. We expect our leaders to believe in themselves and make decisions with self-assurance.
This is new, however. Inclusiveness carries almost as much weight now as those leading characteristics, and respect for others is on the updated gravitas list too.
That old hard-charging, “I’m the boss here” tone that used to tell us, “Pay attention to this guy” has softened considerably. Now we expect leaders to bring others into their decision-making and treat everyone at every level with respect.
When it comes to communication, forcefulness is so last decade.
Yes, senior executives and up-and-comers still need superior speaking skills and command of a room; those appear to be timeless attributes required for the C-suite and several levels below.
In fact, “command of a room” goes beyond the literal now that we’re often not in the same room. Command has expanded to include masterful use of virtual platforms. Can you make a strong impression on Zoom or Teams? Can you manage a meeting and keep people engaged?
In lieu of forcefulness, as Hewlett writes in Executive Presence 2.0, a “listen to learn” orientation is newly valued. And yes, that means listening to people who were once shut out of high-level discussions. We love a leader who can genuinely hear what clients, customers, and colleagues up and down the organization are saying, take it in, and take action.
Where joking and bantering used to win us professional presence points, it pays to be more careful now, about how we use humor.
And authenticity has arrived on the list of most important communication qualities. Executive Presence means blending those requisite speaking skills with enough personality to show up as one’s real self in presentations, conversations, and virtual meetings.
Body language is part of that, of course, and using it well remains an important piece of powerful communication.
Appearance still matters, but …
We still expect to see a polished look as part of professional presence, although our impression of polish has changed some. Who ever expected to see men in C-suites and on Capitol Hill wearing suits and athletic shoes?
The new normal style of dress is more than acceptable now.
Conventional good looks has dropped way down the list of appearance traits that make a difference when it comes to executive presence, along with being tall, youthful, and slim.
And that’s not a surprise, when you consider that authenticity shows up here again. Let’s face it, not everybody has tall, youthful, and slim going for them. Fitness and vigor do matter, though. Seems that taking care of our natural assets, whatever they are, pays off when it comes to presence.
So does being willing to show up in person. Yes, virtual platforms have given us a lot of freedom to work from home (or wherever) and the powers-that-be still want to see us without a camera and screen some of the time.
One last appearance trait that wasn’t even a factor a decade earlier? Curating your online image. Maybe you know someone who’s been undone by an errant Tweet or an unflattering photo on Instagram? It’s something for all of us to take into account.
Are you thinking about your own professional presence?
You might find some of these changes exciting—they open up more possibilities, especially for those of us who are not tall, deep-voiced men with Harvard MBAs.
Or maybe you’re wistfully remembering the days when everyone dressed up for work, knew their place in the org chart, and stuck to it.
Here’s your chance communicate—with or without gravitas—and tell us how you see executive presence in 2024.
PS …
A final word about “gravitas.” Some women object that they’ve been discounted for reasons that have nothing to do with their talents or abilities. It’s true that the word long had a male connotation. Katie Couric says “gravitas” is Latin for “testicles.”
I think we’ve expanded our thinking now. And, if you prefer, think of gravitas as seriousness of purpose. Any of us can have that, regardless of our particular body parts.
