Last month I had the pleasure of participating in Women in Tech forum’s virtual panel on ‘Building Executive Presence and Owning the Room’, where I got to discuss this important topic with three other Women in Tech; @Louise Watkins, Head of Digital Media at Adobe, Nicole Kramer, Senior Corporate Counsel at FullStory and our host Angie Vaux, Founder and CEO of Women in Tech Forum.
The term ‘executive presence’ is used in corporate environments, particularly when it comes to feedback loops, but there is still much debate and ambiguity on what this truly means and how someone can develop this skill. So, it doesn’t surprise me that we were joined by an audience of over 100 via Zoom, who was interested in understanding what practical steps they could take in their everyday roles to build their executive presence.
Knowledge is power: What is executive presence?
Author Sylvia Anne Hewlett’s three pillars of executive presence: how you act [gravitas]; how you speak [communication]; and how you look [appearance] are widely quoted on this topic and yet, on an individual basis, there are many different perspectives on what executive presence is and why it’s important to your career development. We began our discussion by debating just that: What does executive presence mean to us? Each of us brought a different perspective, offering insight into what skills senior leaders are looking for when it comes to demonstrating this ability.
To me, executive presence is about building trust and confidence in your ability to deliver. It’s not just about giving confidence to a senior executive team, but anyone you work with – whether that’s your team, your colleagues, customers, investors, or any other stakeholders – that they can believe in you. This takes hard work and is a skill that is developed – it’s not something you’re naturally born with.
Louise introduced executive presence as understanding and correctly leveraging your strengths, while Nicole highlighted developing this skill creates better well-being for you as an employee by increasing your enjoyment of work.
Personally, I think views on the importance of appearance in building executive presence are outdated and create negative biases against minority groups. We are, and need to be, more accepting of anyone in business; how you look, how you dress, and how you present yourself doesn’t matter if you can be trusted to deliver.
Owning the room
We went on to talk about how to ‘own the room’ and get your voice heard as, very often as women in tech, the minority. The panellists and the audience chipped in with
some useful tools and advice here including the importance of preparation and building a narrative, so you have clarity and conviction in your message. Confidence, self-belief, and the importance of allies acting as an ambassador on your behalf resonated with each panellist as critical to building executive presence.
We shared experiences of being talked over, or somebody presenting your point as their own and the ways you can call this out, for example by acting as an ally to highlight someone’s contribution that may have been missed. And about when things don’t go to plan, the value of following up to make sure your message lands.
Navigating executive presence in a virtual environment
Owning the room is, of course, more difficult in the virtual rooms we find ourselves in today, where body language is hard to read, and cues can often be missed. However, every cloud has a silver lining and technology can also be used to your advantage – for example, simple but practical tools such as using a chat function to re-state your point, virtually raising your hand, coming off mute, and the power of a pause.
Prioritise building your network
We closed the session by talking about the one action people can start doing immediately to build their executive presence. My advice here is to get exposure and build your network – whether that’s putting yourself forward for important projects, speaking opportunities, volunteering for roles outside of work or reaching out to team members that you wouldn’t normally – you can create trust and confidence in your ability to deliver by being more visible and building relationships. I enjoyed taking part, thank you to Angie Vaux and Women in Tech forum for having me, and a big thanks to GBG Plc who give me the opportunity to learn and develop executive presence skills every day, with some fantastic mentors and allies along the way, such as Mick Hegarty, Lara Clark, Gus Tomlinson, Tabetha Taylor, CPC.