Executive Presence - Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Note: While reading a book whenever I come across something interesting, I highlight it on my Kindle. Later I turn those highlights into a blogpost. It is not a complete summary of the book. These are my notes which I intend to go back to later. Let’s start!

President Obama has it. So does Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. It’s embodied by people as varied as Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, celebrated Burmese parliamentarian Aung San Suu Kyi, and actress Angelina Jolie, especially since she made public her courageous decision to tackle her heritage of breast cancer. Nelson Mandela exuded it—when he donned the Springboks’ jersey and shook the hand of the captain of the winning all-white national rugby team the world knew that South Africa had found a leader intent on reconciliation. It is executive presence—and no man or woman attains a top job, lands an extraordinary deal, or develops a significant following without this heady combination of confidence, poise, and authenticity that convinces the rest of us we’re in the presence of someone who’s the real deal. It’s an amalgam of qualities that telegraphs that you are in charge or deserve to be.

EP rests on three pillars: How you act (gravitas) How you speak (communication) How you look (appearance)

While the specifics vary depending on context (what works on Wall Street doesn’t necessarily work in Silicon Valley), these three pillars of EP are universal. They are also somewhat interactive. For example, if your communication skills ensure you can “command a room,” your gravitas grows exponentially; conversely, if your presentation is rambling and your manner timid, your gravitas suffers a blow. One thing to note at the start is that these pillars are not equally important—not by a long shot. Gravitas is the core characteristic. Some 67 percent of the 268 senior executives we surveyed said that gravitas is what really matters. Signaling that “you know your stuff cold,” that you can go “six questions deep” in your domains of knowledge, is more salient than either communication (which got 28 percent of the senior executive vote) or appearance (which got a mere 5 percent).

Projecting intellectual horsepower underpins gravitas, but there’s more to this attribute than being the smartest gal or guy in the room. It’s about signaling that you have not only depth and heft but also the confidence and credibility to get your point across and create buy-in when the going gets rough—when your enterprise or venture is under extreme pressure. In fact, projecting confidence and “grace under fire” was the number-one pick of senior executives asked to identify what constitutes EP.

Bob Dudley, these days CEO of BP, is not a leader who gets hot under the collar, but it’s not because he’s stayed out of the kitchen. On the contrary, as he detailed in an interview with me, his career in Big Oil, which began at Amoco at the height of the OPEC crisis, has put him at the epicenter of the industry’s worst nightmares. As CEO of TNK-BP, he battled a group of Russian oligarchs intent on squeezing him out. He dealt with various kinds of harassment, including, some say, threats to his life, and, when his visa was denied, proceeded to run the company from an undisclosed remote location. Fresh from that challenging set of experiences, he was put in charge of BP’s operations in Asia and the Americas, reporting to CEO Tony Hayward. Then the Deepwater Horizon exploded, Hayward imploded (more on that later), and BP stock tumbled to half its value. In July, the firm tapped Dudley, who was heading up the Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, to take over from Hayward. Such was Dudley’s credibility that before the well was even capped, BP’s share price took an upturn. When I attempted during our interview to credit him with BP’s recovery, Dudley demurred with characteristic humility. “There were a lot of people who performed unbelievably well,” he said. But nothing, he agreed, is more important in troubled times than a leader who projects calm and confidence. “I want people around me who can be clear-thinking and calm in a crisis,” he emphasized. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been able to judge or trust a person unless I can see what they’re like under fire.”

We all know a real leader when we see one. Like Bob Dudley, he or she projects an aura of calm and competence that instills faith even in—especially in—the white-hot center of a crisis. Like Kathy Phillips, he or she reveals integrity and demonstrates courage by uttering truths when they are inconvenient or most unwelcome. And like our medical-device firm CEO, he or she demonstrates courage and emotional intelligence that secures followership even in the wake of news that would seemingly destroy it. These qualities connote gravitas, that weightiness or heft that marks you as worth following into the fire. Gravitas is the very essence of EP. Without it, you simply won’t be perceived as a leader, no matter what your title or level of authority, no matter how well you dress or speak. Gravitas, according to 62 percent of the leaders we surveyed, is what signals to the world you’re made of the right stuff and can be entrusted with serious responsibility.

Steeliness is forged, history shows us, in the crucible of crisis—and it may take a crisis for you to discover your core of confidence. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor since 2005, may not solve the euro crisis, but no one contests her competency or credibility as a leader, in large part because she never loses her composure. Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund and prior to taking over that institution, France’s finance minister, likewise enjoys universal respect for her poise and levelheadedness in steering her country through the straits of the 2008 liquidity crunch. Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s former prime minister, will forever be known as the Iron Lady for having weathered, with nary a hair out of place, protracted crises at home (double-digit unemployment, a national coal miners’ strike), a lingering cold war with the Soviets, and a Falkland Islands showdown with Argentina. Most of us are like teabags, to borrow from Eleanor Roosevelt’s shrewd words: We don’t know how strong we are until we’re in hot water. That you may have boiled the water in which you steep doesn’t necessarily undermine your opportunity to acquire gravitas. Look at recent headline makers who’ve proven their mettle not by averting mistakes, but by owning up to them. For example, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, failed to forestall some $5.8 billion in trading losses in 2011—which is not much of a testament to his leadership prowess! Dragged before Congress to explain why, he might well have joined the infamous ranks of dissemblers like WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers. But instead, Dimon accepted responsibility and equably answered questions, maintaining his composure and exuding confidence without coming off as arrogant. Far from gutting his gravitas, the public flogging actually seemed to bolster it. Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, observed in Fortune that Dimon would be remembered as a man who “dusted himself off, got back on his horse and rode on—stronger and a whole lot wiser.” Investors in JPMorgan actually cheered his performance, according to Money.com. History may yet judge Dimon a scalawag, but even his detractors came away impressed by his grace under fire.

So while avoiding catastrophe may demonstrate competence, it is handling catastrophe that confers gravitas. Recall Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who landed in the Hudson River after striking a flock of Canada geese. Avoiding the geese was not an option; what was an option for this leader was not succumbing to the “worst sickening, pit-of-your-stomach falling-through-the-floor” feeling he suffered moments before the crash. As a result of Sully’s extraordinary poise and control, every passenger and crew member survived that forced landing unharmed.

You will make mistakes. You will suffer the mistakes of others. Accidents completely out of your control will befall you. Each of these represents, however, a monumental opportunity to acquire and exude gravitas: to reach within yourself, at the height of the storm, for that eye of calm, and to speak and act from that place of clarity. Because when you demonstrate that your confidence cannot be shaken, you inspire confidence in others. At worst, you’ll win their forgiveness and forbearance. Very possibly, you’ll win their trust and loyalty.

Tim Melville-Ross tells of just such a watershed moment in his career, when a mistake he made might have cost him his job, his career, and his reputation—but instead provided him occasion to man up and show the public what he was really made of. Back when he was CEO of Nationwide, the United Kingdom’s biggest building society (equivalent to a savings and loan in the United States), Melville-Ross acceded to pressure from one of his top directors to adopt a questionable business practice, one that would help the firm hold its margins in a shrinking economy. “To my undying shame, we tried to screw the customer,” he admits. “A good building society simply doesn’t do that. I made the wrong decision.” But then he made the right one: He sacked that director and made a very public apology. He wrote a letter to the London Times, one that he closed by inviting readers to write to him personally. Many did write, Melville-Ross told me, and took him to task for his blunder. The larger result of his falling on his sword, however, was restored faith in Nationwide—and, interestingly, in him personally. “It established me as a leader of integrity,” he says, “a reputation which has carried me through many a storm since.” Melville-Ross is today chair of the Higher Education Funding Council for England and president of the Institute of Business Ethics. You have this same choice. In a crisis, you can lean into the wind, acknowledge your shortcomings, and rise above them; or you can take cover. You can acquire gravitas, the cornerstone of a real leader. Or you can demonstrate that, no matter what your actual title, you really don’t deserve to be in charge.

Just look at Tony Hayward. When the BP oil spill first made the news, Hayward seemed to have the public’s trust because he’d shown himself to be “frightfully” candid about BP’s previous stumbles and “dreadful” performance. But the minute he attempted to distance himself and the company from blame—the infamous “What the hell did we do to deserve this?” comment to BP executives, and then, two weeks later, observing to the Guardian that “the amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into [the Gulf] is tiny in relation to the total water volume”—the public turned on him. His comments were seen as conveying arrogance rather than confidence. Any chance he may have had to restore public opinion—by apologizing, for instance—he squandered with ever more stunning displays of insensitivity, the most memorable being his infamous remark “I’d like my life back.” These petulant words provoked a savage reaction. News commentators couldn’t believe that he was complaining about his schedule—missing a few summer weekends seemed a paltry sacrifice in the context of this catastrophic spill that had wreaked havoc in the Gulf. So many residents had lost their livelihoods—and eleven oil rig workers lost their lives. So instead of calming the waters, Tony set fire to them. It was a blunder that cost him his job.

Lynn Utter, who is today chief operating officer of Knoll Inc., a global leader in furniture and textile manufacturing, recalls the moment in her career when she first showed teeth. She’d just been named head of the container unit at Coors Brewing Company, replacing a thirty-year company veteran to become the company’s first female senior leader. Just a few months into the role, Utter sat in a meeting with half a dozen male board members who were debating whether to invest millions of dollars to fund a start-up as part of a joint venture. Having done her homework, she was utterly clear on how and why Coors should do the deal. Still, she listened to others, hoping for insights outside her own, until finally, fed up with the equivocation, she stood and addressed the room. “If we do not invest,” she said with calm, sturdy authority, “we are not living up to the fundamental philosophy of our partnership. If we do nothing, in fact, the entity is doomed. Either we step up, or we call it off.” Under her leadership, the investment went forward. “I do not think they expected me to have that kind of backbone,” Utter says. “But I’d done my homework and knew the numbers cold. I knew what we needed to do and felt it was up to me to show strength and point the way forward.”

Making difficult decisions is what we look to leaders to do. It is not so much about rendering the right decision, but about rendering a decision at a time when no one else dares, that confers gravitas, because it telegraphs that you have the courage, as well as the confidence, to impose a direction and take responsibility for it. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer showed she had the chops when she announced that all employees, starting in June 2013, would need to be working out of Yahoo’s offices. For the survival of the company, whose share price was tanking, she was revoking telecommuting privileges. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” read the memo that employees received from HR head Jackie Reses. “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.” The move sparked a firestorm: Some leaders (Jack Welch among them) applauded the move as an appropriate piece of discipline for the ailing firm; others (Richard Branson was one) condemned it as “a backwards step.” But Mayer had the courage to recognize that business as usual was not going to bootstrap Yahoo out of its death spiral. She made a bold, if unpopular, decision. She showed teeth. That display of confidence and courage boosted her gravitas and, consequently, her shareholders’ faith in her ability to turn the tide.

CTI research finds that 70 percent of leaders consider decisiveness to be a component of EP for both men and women, second only to confidence in a crisis, making it a core aspect of gravitas. Being able to make decisions isn’t so much the issue as needing to appear decisive in public—the difference, again, between doing the job of a leader and looking like one as you’re doing it, between demonstrating competence and exuding presence. George W. Bush clearly recognized this imperative when he zeroed in on being “the Decider” and built this as a central part of his brand. Mitt Romney similarly trumpeted his assertiveness on the presidential campaign trail; in his view leadership and “showing teeth” were synonymous. Better to get a reputation, as president, for being a hard-ass than a wuss—“soft” on terrorists, or illegal immigrants, or dictators.

Male or female, the way to walk the line between decisive and difficult may be, as Lynn Utter demonstrates, to dish it out very discriminately—to hide your teeth more often than you bare them. Real leaders don’t issue edicts just to look and sound like they’re in charge. Real leaders listen, gather critical information, weigh the options carefully, look for a timely opening (typically when everyone else is writhing in indecision), and then demand action. “Oftentimes it is just as important to know when being decisive is not the thing to do—to let events play out in a certain way and bide your time,” cautions Bob Dudley. “I see a lot of people trying to be too decisive too quickly.” When the moment demands a decision that you’re prepared to render, step forth and render it. Just choose those moments with care.

Christie doesn’t hesitate, that is, to speak his truth—however impolitic it may be, however mighty the audience he offends with it. And that candor marks him, paradoxically, as a presidential contender. Speaking truth to power, as more than 60 percent of our respondents affirm, is a potent affirmation of leaderlike courage. The higher you go in an organization, the more impressive you are when you demonstrate you have the spine to share your convictions. “I want people who will walk into my office and say, ‘Here’s where I differ, I want to talk to you about it,’ ” affirms Tiger Tyagarajan, CEO of Genpact. “I love that! This is the kind of courage I’m looking for, in addition to the given of stellar performance.” Make sure, however, that when you challenge authority, you’re coming from a core of unshakable values. Anything less and your actions will be perceived as insubordination and/or arrogance—the opposites of gravitas.

Financial powerhouse Sallie Krawcheck established early on in her career a penchant for telling it like it is. As a research analyst on Wall Street, she downgraded Travelers for its acquisition of brokerage firm Salomon Brothers, a move that earned her the fury of Citicorp’s Sandy Weill (Citicorp would acquire Travelers to form Citigroup). Impressed with her intellectual integrity as well as her analysis skills, however, Weill eventually hired her to head up Citigroup’s Smith Barney unit, promoting her within two years to be CFO of Citigroup. Krawcheck continued to tell it like it was, suggesting, at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, that the company partially refund its clients for investments positioned by Citi as low risk that had taken a nosedive during the downturn. CEO Vikram Pandit wasn’t appreciative of this piece of advice and fired her. The story doesn’t end there. In 2011, the integrity and courage Krawcheck exhibited at Citi won her the top job at Merrill Lynch, which had recently been taken over by Bank of America. Her brief: to make this much-revered wealth management house profitable again. Despite huge success on this front (revenues rose by 54 percent in her second quarter on the job), she found herself in the crosshairs of new CEO Brian Moynihan, whose leadership had resulted in losses of $8.8 billion across Bank of America during that same quarter.21 By September of that year, Krawcheck was out. “I’ve found that speaking truth has not always stood me in good stead in terms of my career progression,” Krawcheck told me when we discussed her extraordinary journey. “But it always, always, always stood me in good stead in terms of managing businesses.” She added, with heartfelt pride, “Had I to do it over again, I wouldn’t do it any differently. Not one thing.”

Mitt Romney’s compulsion to show teeth—to remind us at every turn that his tough leadership style had made him a phenomenally successful CEO—might have garnered him more votes in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election had he not, at the same time, demonstrated at every turn his utter insensitivity toward half the electorate. Like Tony Hayward, Romney was tone-deaf when it came to tuning his remarks for constituencies outside his war room. Comments such as noting that his wife had “a couple of Cadillacs” didn’t persuade voters of his love for American cars, but rather that he lived in a rich man’s bubble and was insulated from working people’s reality. In a similar vein, hi B6zqz*s comment that he h6’&ad consulted “binders full of women” to fill his cabinet as governor served to underscore how out of touch he was with the sensibilities of working women. The final blow, delivered at a private fund-raiser and captured on video that quickly went viral on the Web, was his sweeping condemnation of 47 percent of the electorate as freeloaders who pay no income tax! (Freeloaders, it turned out, included not-yet-employed returning veterans and the disabled.) Romney’s 47 percent comment “did real damage” to his campaign, as he himself conceded, underscoring just how important emotional intelligence—or EQ, as psychologist Daniel Goleman calls it—has become what we look for in leaders. A hefty majority of our respondents see EQ as very important, with 61 percent noting its importance for women’s executive presence, and 58 percent noting its importance for men’s. And here’s why: While decisiveness and toughness in a leader signal conviction, courage, and resolve, when untempered by empathy or compassion these same characteristics come off as egotism, arrogance, and insensitivity.

Making and enforcing unpopular decisions is indeed part of showing you’ve got the chops to be put in charge. It’s just that in today’s ever-flatter organizations, acting insensitively actually compromises your ability to create buy-in among employees and realize optimal outcomes for the firm. This was the conclusion two researchers from Harvard and Stanford reached after spending weeks on two offshore oil rigs studying the culture change that management had initiated to improve safety and performance. The research team expected that, in this most dangerous and macho of work environments, aggression, bravado, and toughness not only would be on display but would be embraced and rewarded. But as a result of management’s stated goals—bringing down work-site injuries and bringing up capacity—they witnessed a remarkable shift in attitudes and behaviors among the crews on oil rigs. Workers confirmed that, previously, the culture discouraged asking for help, admitting mistakes, or building community. The crew, in prior years, had been “like a pack of lions,” with the guy in charge being the one who could “basically out-perform and out-shout and out-intimidate all the others.” Once the emphasis shifted to safety, however, the company stopped rewarding “the biggest baddest roughnecks” in favor of men who could admit to mistakes, seek help when they needed it, and look out for each other. Over a period of fifteen years, this shift in values and norms helped the oil company achieve its goals: The accident rate fell by 84 percent and production hit an all-time high.

Our interviewees spoke of the importance of EQ in particular in “reading a room”—the room being a metaphor for your immediate audience, in person or virtual. What’s the vibe, or unarticulated emotion you need to address or temper? What do people need from you in order to move forward? Leaders who pick up on these cues know when to be decisive and when to hold back; when to show teeth, and when to retract their claws. “It may be more important to comfort a room than command it,” points out Kent A. Gardiner, chairman of international law firm Crowell & Moring LLP, “because at times it can further consensus-building and problem-solving.” Gardiner, whose career has encompassed RICO prosecutions and major civil and criminal antitrust litigation, describes how he cooled one particularly heated mediation session. “Everybody was unhappy, everybody was antagonistic, so getting up and pounding away was only going to increase the gulf,” he says. “I let a little venting occur, and then I got up and said, ‘Let’s think about it this way,’ very much respecting the other side’s position, but then trying to move us all beyond a litigation resolution toward a business resolution. And people listened. People felt like it was a discussion, not just a fight.” It’s not simply managing your own feelings, although restraint on that front, as Gardiner shows, makes an enormous difference. Rather, it’s recognizing and acting in accord with the feelings of others.

Make no mistake: Your reputation does precede you, either bestowing gravitas or bleeding you of it. Before you enter a room or open your mouth, your reputation speaks for you—never more so than today, when word of your latest blunder or scandal races at lightning speed around the globe in 140 characters or less. People will have formed an opinion of you before you’re in a position to help them form it, which is why 56 percent of leaders concur that reputation matters a great deal in establishing EP for women and 57 percent agree it matters for men. Managing your personal brand is almost a job unto itself, lest it be managed for you by people who don’t hold your best interests at heart. You’ve got to be proactive in asserting who you are, what you stand for, and how you’d like to be perceived. Even in Hollywood, where celebrities are fixated on honing their image, Angelina Jolie’s brand is viewed as a towering accomplishment. She’s clearly a standout beauty and accomplished actress, but she’s also a universally admired public figure with depth, heft, and clout. How did this happen? First off, she’s distinguished herself among movie stars by her dedication to underprivileged children the world over, several of whom she’s adopted. Her efforts seem to come from a deep place, and far exceed the photo-op moments that characterize celebrity “involvement” in good causes. After filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in Cambodia, she started traveling with UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, as a goodwill ambassador, a commitment that’s taken her on forty-some field missions since 2001 and won her, in 2012, a special envoy appointment. She started the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation to address conservation in Cambodia and the National Centre for Refugee and Immigrant Children to provide free legal aid to young asylum seekers, work that earned her membership on the Council on Foreign Relations. She does much of this work off the radar of the press, and yet the gravitas it has conferred is palpable.

If there’s one name today that’s synonymous with visionary leadership, it’s Steve Jobs. Jobs is also synonymous with innovation, but that’s because every product to emerge from Apple during his tenure demonstrated his commitment to machines and environments so beautifully and flawlessly designed that they supported an intensely pleasurable user experience. And Jobs consistently deployed his design values, applying them to Apple hardware, Apple software, Apple stores, and online Apple platforms such as iTunes. Even in his attire—black turtleneck, perfectly fitting blue jeans—Jobs telegraphed the simplicity and elegance of his creations. Jobs’s means of achieving this vision secured him equal parts loathing and reverence, to hear his biographers tell it. A perfectionist incapable of compromise, he hounded his team to rework the first iPhone even as the launch deadline loomed. He deemed it too utilitarian, too masculine, too task-focused to seduce users into plunking down five hundred dollars for an untried product. The beauty of line and touch needed to be more obvious. He was as ruthless in paring down his teams as he was in paring away extraneous features on Apple products, arguing that “A” engineers were not only fifty times better to have than “C” engineers, but also that “A’s do not like playing with C’s.” Jobs’s perfectionism and his impatience with people who didn’t share his veneration for design earned him a reputation as a control freak and an unfeeling boss. But because some of these very qualities aligned with Apple’s brand—flawless function, minimalist design, and a seamless marriage of the two—these traits served, paradoxically, to make Jobs revered by colleagues and customers the world over. In the decade leading up to his untimely death in 2011, Jobs secured an almost cultlike following. When he died he was deeply mourned. There were candlelight vigils in Shanghai, São Paulo, and San Francisco, and the glass walls of the Apple Store around the corner from my New York apartment were festooned with handwritten Post-its. I read two of the notes: A fourteen-year-old thanked Jobs for the fun she had with her iPhone, it was so easy to use and made her feel cool; a twenty-nine-year-old father wanted Jobs to know about his undying gratitude—his iPad was transforming the life prospects of his three-year-old autistic son.

Exceedingly few of us will conjure up or drive a vision as powerfully as Jobs did. Yet to communicate gravitas, it’s critical you telegraph vision. Fifty-four percent of the leaders we surveyed think “the vision thing” is key for men; 50 percent believe it matters a lot for women, too.

In focus groups and interviews we asked senior executives (and white-collar employees across the board), What are the mistakes? What gets you in trouble on the gravitas front? And how serious is this trouble? These were the top picks:

Sexual impropriety takes some kind of prize as a career killer—at least for men. Recent headliners include former congressman Anthony Weiner, former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former four-star general and CIA director David Petraeus, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd. A quick Google search turns up a raft of other C-suite-ers who all recently became “formers” as a result of sexual shenanigans: CEO Brian Dunn of Best Buy, CEO Gary Friedman of Restoration Hardware, and CFO Christopher Kubasik of Lockheed Martin are among the recent crop.

Gravitas is that je ne sais quoi quality that some people have that makes other people judge them born leaders. But born leaders are made, oftentimes through their own systematic efforts. They live intentionally, guided by a set of values or a vision for their lives that compels them to seize every chance to put their convictions into practice. We gravitate to them because they telegraph that they know where they’re going—a rare and intoxicating certainty that most of us lack. That is the real font of their gravitas. So consider what larger vision you’re here to fulfill, and make sure it informs each of your everyday actions. If you can articulate it, you’re well on your way to achieving it. People with a clear goal who show they are determined to achieve it exude gravitas, which in turn bolsters their chances of securing the support they’ll need to achieve their goals. You can be one of them. Here are some quick wins and inspirational stories to get you started.   Surround yourself with people who are better than you. “Best piece of advice I ever got,” says James Charrington, chairman of Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) at BlackRock. “Recognize your own weaknesses, and hire people who will complement your strengths by addressing your weaknesses. Those I’ve seen struggle to move forward invariably are those who have trouble recognizing their shortcomings. When you talk about what you’re not good at, it helps others see what you really are good at—and your gravitas grows for admitting it.”   Be generous with credit. As Deb Elam, head of diversity at GE, observes, nothing undermines followership faster than a boss who hogs all the credit for him or herself. Shining a light on those who helped you score a win underscores your integrity and sense of fairness, which in turn inspires others to give even more of themselves.

  Stick to what you know. Do not shoot from the hip; do not claim to know more than you do or possibly could know. Credit Suisse’s Michelle Gadsden-Williams learned this back when she worked for a pharmaceutical firm and asserted to the executive committee that the playing field for black employees wasn’t level. But she was careful to back up her assertion by offering concrete examples culled strictly from her own experience—and couched them as such. That way, she says, her insights were received as firsthand testimony and not a generalized indictment.   Show humility. Nothing signals you’re emotionally attuned more than your own willingness to admit mistakes and own up to failings and shortcomings. BlackRock’s Charrington doesn’t hesitate to point out that he lacks a college degree, a very disarming revelation in this age of resume inflation and hyperbolic CVs. Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg likewise disarms detractors by volunteering embarrassing details of her seemingly flawless life, owning up to her seventy-pound weight gain during her first pregnancy (“Project Whale was named after me”), her failed first marriage (“No matter what I accomplished professionally, it paled in comparison to the scarlet letter D stitched on my chest”), and even her fear of being number two in her children’s eyes (“Stay-at-home mothers can make me feel guilty and, at times, intimidate me”). Far from undermining her gravitas or tarnishing her reputation, her humility serves to bridge the gap between herself (the $1.6 billion woman) and her followers. It’s hard to paint a mother who discovers head lice on her kids on the corporate jet as an out-of-touch billionaire.   Smile more. This was advice Mellody Hobson received some twenty years ago from one of Motorola’s most senior women. At the time, eager to demonstrate her toughness as a female on her way up, she was flabbergasted at the suggestion. Now she spreads the word. “Smiling a lot projects happiness and likability, and people want to work with those who they like and those who are happy,” Hobson says. “There are energy givers, and energy takers. Who do you want to spend time with? Who are the people you run to the phone when they call and who are the ones you let go to voice mail? I want people to want to take my call.”   Empower others’ presence to build your own. Others will see you as a leader when you concentrate on making those around you act responsibly and win visibility for themselves, says Carolyn Buck Luce, a partner at accounting firm EY who recently retired. “Think about your impact, not in terms of deliverables, but in terms of realizing larger goals for the firm,” she says. “See the bigger picture: You’re a conductor of an orchestra. Executive presence is not what you do with your presence, it’s also what you do with other people’s presence.”   Snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Steve Jobs did it when he reclaimed his role at Apple after an eleven-year hiatus during which his successor nearly ran the company into the ground. But perhaps the most notable exemplar of this is Al Gore, who was, for a few days in 2000, president-elect of the United States before the Supreme Court snatched away his victory. Ten years later Gore secured himself a Nobel Prize, and a place in history, that the presidency might not have conferred: as a prophet willing to speak an inconvenient truth, and as a visionary whom we entrust not only to show us the future but also to guide us safely through it. In so doing, he utterly transformed his image from a wooden lifelong public servant into a Saturday Night Live host with a devilish sense of humor as well as a disarming sense of humility. He is, as New York magazine put it, the ultimate Davos man, a leader whose credibility and gravitas are held in global esteem. Drive change rather than be changed.

At bottom my accent signaled that I was uneducated or “ill-bred” (to use a particularly demeaning English term). And in a sense I was. I had very little knowledge of the world. My father occasionally brought home a local tabloid called the Western Mail but didn’t see the point in buying a national newspaper, so I knew next to nothing about current affairs. Our household boasted a motley collection of nineteenth-century novels, courtesy of my mother, who loved the Brontë sisters, but outside of that I was not well-read. At eighteen I’d never been to the theater, shopped at a high-end store, or traveled abroad. We spent family vacations in a trailer park in West Wales. As a result I had no small talk or cocktail patter. It wasn’t a personality thing—I was friendly and outgoing. I was tongue-tied because I didn’t have anything to talk about that suited my new milieu. I had no way of joining in conversations about, for instance, the Tory leadership struggle, the skiing season in Austria, or the latest in bell-bottom jeans. My fellow students weren’t openly rude or hostile—after all, they were “well-bred” young people—but they kept their distance. I wasn’t on the invitation lists for sought-after freshman parties, and I found it impossible to penetrate the cozy circles that dominated the interesting clubs. I remember being the awkward, ignored outsider at the Cambridge Union (the university-wide debating society). I soon realized that to survive and thrive I needed to strip myself of my accent and lose the most obvious of the class markers that set me apart from my peers. By January of that first year I was on the case and set about a transformation. I started with voice and speech—which were, after all, how I “betrayed” myself. I couldn’t afford elocution lessons or a voice coach, so I bought a tape recorder and spent long hours listening to, and then attempting to copy, the plummy voices on BBC Radio. I sought out the newscasters on the BBC World Service since they spoke a particularly clear and neutral form of Queen’s English. It took months, but I nailed it. Concurrently I set about elevating my conversation so that it reflected the caliber of my thinking rather than my class background. I subscribed to the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, bought cheap tickets to the Arts Cinema, and plunged into the literature on African liberation movements. I was about to spend the summer in Ghana participating in a professor’s research project, so why not develop some well-informed opinions about this intriguing continent? Africa was very “in.” By June I was trying out my newfound cultural and political fluency on my slowly expanding circle of sophisticated friends.

My makeover well under way, it was simply a matter of time before these improvements took and I could carry on conversations about a variety of topics without giving away my origins. This is not to say my struggle was over: For my family, my new accent was a different kind of betrayal, one that raised questions of authenticity. Yet the success I started to enjoy at Cambridge as a result of my transformation underscored for me two profound lessons. First, communication is not so much what you say but rather how you say it. And this you can condition and control. The tone and timbre of your voice; your choice and use of words; your inflection, articulation, and delivery; and even your body language determine what and how much your listeners take in—and what overall impression of you they will form and retain as a result. Other people’s perceptions of you are very much yours to shape.

Most of us tend to think of communication skills in terms of formal presentation skills. But when are you not onstage? When are you not being judged? No matter what your job title or how junior or senior you are, you are always presenting. Whether it’s a quick email to your boss, a casual comment you make to colleagues in the hallway, or a pitch you prepare for clients, you’re conveying who you are and what authority is your due. In the real world and very much in the virtual one, every verbal encounter is a vital opportunity to create and nurture a positive impression. Your communication skills, both verbal and nonverbal, are what ultimately win you the attention and mindshare of colleagues, clients, and friends.

In the arsenal of communication traits that confer executive presence—from how you stand to how you deliver your message—superior speaking skills above all mark you as a leader. Assertiveness and an ability to command a room emerge as critical tools as well. But less obvious things—such as your ability to read the room or banter with colleagues, even the way you hold yourself—contribute to your effectiveness as a communicator. These six behaviors boil down to one thing, really: How powerfully do you connect with your audience? How quickly can you engage your listeners, and how long can you keep their attention? Effective communication is all about engagement. And new research shows that, among the tools you bring to this task, content is the least important aspect. A 2012 analysis of 120 financial spokespersons found that what makes a speaker persuasive are elements such as passion (27 percent), voice quality (23 percent), and presence (15 percent). Content matters a measly 15 percent.

Effective communication turns out to be about the medium and not the message. Your topic may be of intrinsic interest, but unless you minimize distractions for your audience—no easy feat in this age of the omnipresent smartphones—you’ll never manage to convey that interest. Look at the phenomenal popularity of TED talks, which spotlight some pretty arcane subjects. What makes a talk TED-worthy is not merely the topic but also the speaker’s ability to engage the audience, in person and online, for eighteen minutes without the benefit of notes, PowerPoint, music, or lectern. It’s no coincidence that what makes a great TED talk is a speaker who happens to employ masterfully all six of the core communication behaviors. To be heard above the din, to be seen despite the glitz, to be accorded authority and credibility, and to be remembered and heeded, you will need to master at least three of them.

Fundamentally, communication is about speech—a point made rather poignantly by Tom Hooper’s Oscar-winning 2010 film, The King’s Speech, which dramatizes the real-life transformation of Bertie (Albert), the stammering son of King George V, into King George VI after his older brother Edward abdicates the throne in 1936. Wife Elizabeth, keenly conscious of how her husband’s speech disability undermines England’s confidence in him as a leader, arranges for Bertie to work with a speech therapist whose tactics are decidedly unconventional. It’s an agonizing and humiliating process, but one that ends in triumph: Bertie overcomes his stammer to deliver the radio address that crystallizes the nation’s resolve to take on Hitler. Most of us, thankfully, don’t have to contend with a crippling stammer. But most of us do suffer from verbal shortcomings that turn out to be just as damaging to our executive presence. Executives I interviewed cited inarticulateness, poor grammar, and an off-putting tone or accent as examples of verbal tics that undermine EP. Other executives objected to “uptalk,” the tendency of younger women (and some men) to end declarative statements on a high note, as if they were asking a question versus stating a point. Still others complained of people who punctuated every third word with “uh” or “you know.” Everybody, it seems, recalled an annoying voice, one that was too high-pitched or too mousy, too breathy or too raspy. In particular, those we interviewed mentioned “shrill” women: women who, whenever they get emotional or defensive, raise the timbre of their voice, turning off coworkers and clients, and losing out on leadership opportunities. These are verbal cues that can be adjusted. The painful part is that you’ll probably need to be told you’ve got a problem before you can begin to address it.

Top attorney Kent Gardiner, chair of law firm Crowell & Moring, recalls how, when he left his native Long Island, New York, to work for the federal prosecutor in Texas, his mentor took him aside to share some difficult advice. “You have to fundamentally change how you speak,” he told Gardiner. “You have to flatten your accent. You have to work on it; you have to videotape yourself. You have to change, or you cannot survive in this state.” Gardiner didn’t seek outside help: “Nobody had any money, and the government didn’t have a program for rehabilitating New York accents.” But he did work on modulating his Long Island accent, and in doing so he developed the habit of listening to his own voice as he spoke. “Every time I speak to my partners, I think about it before I get up,” he explains. “And as soon as I sit down, I re-listen to how the talk went. I just replay it mentally. It’s very conscious. I work at it constantly, because nothing is more important in this profession than oral communication skills.” Sounding provincial can “destabilize your authority,” says Gardiner. A British accent, on the other hand, does wonders for your gravitas, according to our focus groups, perhaps because speaking the King’s English automatically sets you apart in global commerce, as a group of Standard Chartered managers told us in Singapore. “Maybe it’s the weight of history or the depth of ancestry, but a British accent adds to the impression of heft,” concurs Dr. Jane Shaw, former chairman of the board for Intel and former CEO of pharmaceutical giant Aerogen Inc. Before you rush out to acquire one, however, let me reference my own experience to point out that a British accent is complicated. There are good ones and bad ones, and even the good ones can get you into trouble, making you seem snobbish or even out of touch.

Sounding uneducated likewise undermines your gravitas and marks you as an outsider to the inner circle, as I discovered. Indeed, 55 percent of our respondents identified it as a top communication blunder. And yet it’s the rare person who will risk correcting your word usage, as such correction calls attention to chasms of socioeconomic class, education, and ethnicity. Katherine Phillips, the Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School, describes how thankful she was to have found a sponsor who, early in her academic career, stepped in to correct her improper English. “You’re saying the word wrong, Kathy,” her sponsor, who was her thesis advisor, told her. “It’s ‘ask.’ Not ‘aks.’ ” Reflects Phillips, who is African-American: “A lot of white people would be concerned they’d sound racist if they pointed these things out to an African-American colleague, but she realized the deleterious impact of how I spoke on other people—and on my career.”

Not only does the sound of your voice matter twice as much as what you’re talking about, as the 2012 Quantified Impressions study of financial spokespersons found, but a voice in the lower-frequency range will encourage others to see you as successful, sociable, and smart, according to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Voice. Our research confirms that a high-pitched voice, particularly for women, is a career-stunting attribute. Indeed, to hear our interviewees and focus group participants tell it, nothing is more destructive of a woman’s EP than shrillness. Crowell & Moring’s chairman Kent Gardiner told me of his travails with a female litigator whose tone was so strident and shrill that the client demanded she be taken off his case. Lynn Utter of Knoll described the “fingernails on a chalkboard” effect of a senior female leader who was well-spoken and effective until emotion got the better of her, causing her voice to rise to a shriek—“and then everybody tuned her out.” And here’s why: “Shrill voices have that hint of hysteria that drives men into a panic,” says Suzi Digby, a British choral conductor and music educator. “Women with a high-pitched tone will be perceived as not only unleaderlike but out of control.”

Margaret Thatcher was fortunate to grasp and act upon this insight early in her political career. As a new appointee to Edward Heath’s cabinet in 1970, she was pilloried for having, as one journalist put it, the “hectoring tones of the housewife.” When the BBC dropped her from a political spot because her voice was too harsh, Thatcher recognized her career might depend on fixing that voice. So she turned to Hollywood voice coach Kate Fleming, who’d given Laurence Olivier the lower-register tones that established his gravitas in Othello. From 1972 until 1976, Fleming worked with her, transforming what biographer Charles Moore called “her annoying shrieking” into the voice that won her Heath’s seat as prime minister in 1979 and helped establish her as Britain’s Iron Lady, a woman renowned for “a smoothness that seldom cracked.”

The lower your voice, the greater your leadership presence, which correlates to an increased likelihood of running a large company and making a substantial salary.

Say what you will about Arianna Huffington’s politics, but she knows how to command attention—whether her audience is a room full of left-leaning movie moguls or a voting bloc of religious conservatives. With the Huffington Post, she commands a readership of some 5.7 million devotees per day. Powerful people as well as the hoi polloi hang on her every word. What exactly is it about Arianna that makes her such a commanding presence? Erik Hedegaard, who profiled Huffington for Rolling Stone in 2006, suggests it’s her “capacity for intimacy.” Other profilers have stressed her seductive charm, a Bill Clinton–like capacity for making the listener feel as though he or she is the most interesting person in the room. And then there’s her voice and accent—that mesmerizing overlay of erudition, honed during her student days at Cambridge, commingled with Greek sensuality. But it comes down to this: Arianna is never boring. And if you aspire to lead, you, too, must mesmerize your audience—or, to use the language of our survey research, “command a room,” whether that room be a TV studio, a concert hall, or the team hang-out space. Nearly half of our respondents said it enhances a woman’s executive presence, and more than half said it enhances a man’s.

According to British choral conductor Suzi Digby, you’ve got all of five seconds to “touch the audience,” or get them to invest in your message. It’s all about making yourself human, she says: not oversharing, not indulging in self-revelation, but unveiling just enough of your inner core that your listeners feel connected to you and start pulling for you. Ironically, this can prove difficult for women, who find it easy to be forthcoming in private but are often self-consciously withheld in public settings, Digby points out. But getting an audience to like you, to root for you, while at the same time giving the impression that you don’t need to be liked—this is the wire you want to walk. I can speak to the power of this. At a large conference in Los Angeles sponsored by GE’s Hispanic leaders, I delivered a keynote that presented CTI’s cutting-edge findings about the challenges confronting Latinas in the U.S. labor market. While I was confident the research could withstand scrutiny, I was conscious that I might not: Here I was, an elite-sounding English speaker appearing before them as an authority on Hispanic issues. So I didn’t launch right into the research when I took the stage. Instead I shared my own story: how I struggled to overcome my accent and the issues I faced as someone born a girl child on the wrong side of the tracks. The effect this had was quite magical. In minutes I felt a palpable dissolution of tension as my audience put aside any reservations they may have had to join me in better understanding the research I wanted to bring to their attention.

Phrasing, inflection, and pace are what distinguish you as a person worth listening to, says Suzi Digby. As in music, it’s important to deliver your words conscious of your narrative arc, lifting and dropping your cadence to emphasize key passages or points, paying particular attention to how you end a phrase—what musicians call “phrasing off”—so that your listener senses closure and consequently hangs on to the last word and retains it before making room for the next. The uplift that younger speakers impose on the ends of their sentences, she observes, “undermines their whole message” by denying this closure. The speed with which you deliver words impacts, in turn, the effectiveness of your phrasing. Digby, who in addition to leading the Queens’ College choir coaches those selected to read passages from the Bible, says she’s always amazed at how often eminent leaders rush their delivery. “Ninety-eight percent of the time even a good speaker will go way too fast trying to cram things in,” she says. She coaches them to slow down, but also to surround the text with pauses and silences to heighten their power—again, a tactic composers employ to heighten drama and emphasize preludes and codas. “A musician’s impact lies in the rests,” she explains. “It’s the moment where you establish the tension and the seduction. Don’t be afraid of silence.” I’ve seen this advice put to powerful effect by Sallie Krawcheck, who has learned to command the room by not speaking. “There is nothing so powerful as silence to make people sit up in their seats,” Krawcheck told me. “It’s loud. It’s unexpected. It’s dramatic. And it’s confident.” Then to demonstrate the effect, she paused a full second before adding, “Very confident.” Deliberate silence is a trick she learned sitting at boardroom tables with titans like Sanford “Sandy” Weill, Vikram Pandit, Dick Parsons, and Robert Rubin, where men, she says, were accustomed to getting heard by being the loudest, most expletive-inflected voice in the room. To stand out as a woman, and to give heft to her thoughts, she started to punctuate her weightiest words with silence. “Those spaces give gravity to your most important pieces of advice, your most important insights, your most important messages,” she explains. “It heightens drama because people are literally hanging on your words.”

Stories, not bullet points, are what grab and hold an audience. Ronald Reagan, an actor by training, earned the sobriquet “the Great Communicator” because he was a colorful storyteller and natural entertainer, not because he wielded facts like a policy wonk. Unfortunately, most newcomers to the stage attempt to establish their gravitas by aping the policy wonk rather than the actor. It’s a common mistake among both men and women, particularly young professionals, to assume that an exhaustive and fact-laden presentation will bolster their gravitas, when in fact it does just the opposite: Going by the book underscores a lack of self-confidence and highlights an absence of individual spark. Remember, it’s the TED talk, and not an MIT nuclear physics seminar, that you’re trying to replicate.

Though she holds a Ph.D. in Asian studies, Rohini Anand, Sodexo’s global chief diversity officer, has learned to be highly selective with how she delivers her messages, especially the positioning of facts and figures when presenting to different audiences. In some parts of the world, including her native India, she says, “you build up to your conclusion with data,” whereas in the United States, “people just want your conclusion, the bottom line.” So rather than build to the point, she gets to it quickly and limits herself to just a few data points that support what she’s saying. Getting to the Q&A quicker, she finds, boosts interaction and ultimately provides her the platform to share her data.

Last year, less than a month after my friend Elaine was passed over for a C-suite promotion, I moderated a panel of executives that included the firm’s chief financial officer. He knew that Elaine and I had worked together, so I asked him why she hadn’t made the cut. After all, she’d been with the company twenty-five years and had an incredibly impressive track record. He nodded, not in the least surprised by my inquiry. “She was one of the top three contenders for the job; indeed, in some ways, she was the most qualified,” he affirmed. Emboldened, I persisted. “So why didn’t she get it?” He sighed. “You’re not going to believe the real sticking point, Sylvia, but you and I have known each other a long time and I’ll come clean—the poor woman just makes too many lists.” I was bewildered—what was he talking about? Seeing the puzzled expression on my face, he tried to explain: “Picture this,” he said. “At our monthly executive committee briefing Elaine would always whip out a long list and meticulously consult it. Instead of looking you in the eye and talking compellingly about her team’s wins and losses, she’d have her head in lists, notes, or some dreary PowerPoint. It’s as though she didn’t command the material—or trust herself to remember the thrust of her presentation. Now, you and I know she’s as sharp as a razor and knows her stuff cold, but she doesn’t present that way. She comes across as some kind of glorified executive assistant.” My eyes must have widened, because he added, “We can’t put her in front of the board. We can’t trust her with our important clients. Don’t you see? It’s about her ability to impress as well as perform.” As our focus groups affirm, constantly referring to lists, reading your notes, using eighty-seven PowerPoint slides, shuffling papers or flip charts, and putting on your glasses the better to see what you’re reading are all actions that detract from your gravitas because they focus attention on your lack of confidence. If you cannot command your subject, you certainly won’t be able to command the room. Know your material cold so that you needn’t rely on notes, and needn’t rely on your glasses to read notes. This will free you up to establish eye contact with the audience. And nothing is more important than eye contact, says Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan, because it telegraphs to your audience that you’re utterly in the moment. “There are such multiple tugs on people’s attention that distraction is the norm,” he observes. “Eye contact shows I have your complete attention, which I deeply appreciate because it’s so very rare. In an important meeting, nothing boosts your leadership presence more than signaling that you’re totally present.”

“Executive presence is not necessarily about being formal or abundant in your communication, but rather straightforward and brief,” says Kerrie Peraino, head of international HR for American Express. “The more you keep speaking, or explaining yourself, the more you cloud or dilute your core message.” Women seem especially prone to this blunder, she observes, perhaps because they’re less sure of how they’re perceived and seek to prove their expertise by overselling their case. According to Moody’s Linda Huber, women also feel compelled to validate what they have to say by invoking all the people they consulted. “They go through five conditional clauses before they get to the point,” she observes. “It’s okay to say, ‘I have a different point of view,’ and then back it up with two or three reasons you can support with data. Don’t start with, ‘I’ve spent hours staying awake thinking about this and talked to thirty-seven people.’ Get to the point, and then people will give you their attention.”

When Barbara Adachi was promoted to regional head of Human Capital Consulting at Deloitte—the first woman to win such a position at the accounting/consultancy firm—she asked a partner we’ll call Doug if she could sit on the firm’s management committee with the other business leaders of audit and tax. He told her the seat was occupied by the regional director she’d reported to, who wasn’t about to give it up. “We can’t have two people from Human Capital at the table,” he added. Adachi persisted. “But I’m a partner and now leading this region,” she said. The other partner shook his head. “But people just don’t see you as a leader, Barbara.” It was like a punch to the gut, Adachi recalls. A million responses came to mind, she says, including just storming out of the room. Instead, she managed to retort, “That’s because I’m not on the management committee!” Doug laughed, and conceded she had a point. “That broke the ice with him,” she relates. “But I could see his point, too: I wasn’t viewed as someone who was well connected with other leaders in my region and office. I didn’t have a powerful circle of sponsors, either. I may have been a partner, but nobody perceived me as one because I did not project executive presence.” So Adachi, a Japanese-American woman who was raised to listen, not talk, made a decision that would change her life. She went back to Doug and delivered an ultimatum. “If the regional director won’t step down from the management committee, then I don’t want to be the leader in Northern California, because I’d have all the responsibility and none of the authority. To do this job well, I need to be respected as a leader. And if I can’t be on the committee, then I won’t be viewed as a peer by the other leaders.” Ultimately Doug put her on the committee.

Being forceful and assertive is a core executive trait, for both men and women (as 48 percent of our survey respondents agree). But for women, it’s a decidedly more difficult trait to embody, as assertiveness in a woman often makes her unlikable (the B-word is rolled out and she’s seen as overly aggressive). Adachi feels in that moment of confrontation she proved herself a leader by arriving at a bold decision and showing she was ready to act on it. “I wasn’t making an idle threat,” she explains. “I was willing to walk away from the leadership role because having the responsibility without the authority would be comparable to being asked to hit a home run without a bat. And he saw and heard my resolve.”

To command a room, you’ve first got to read it. Sensing the mood, absorbing the cultural cues, and adjusting your language, content, and presentation style accordingly are vital to your success as a communicator, and succeeding as a communicator is vital to your executive presence. Deploying your emotional intelligence and then acting on what it tells you absolutely boosts your EP—especially if you’re a woman. Indeed, 39 percent of respondents told us this emotional-intelligence skill mattered for women, whereas 33 percent said it mattered for men. Being oblivious to the needs of your audience will undermine perceptions of your authority. Here’s why: First, it intimates you’re a closed circuit, someone who can’t or won’t take in new information (the woman who introduced me at Newcomb College being a prime example). Second, it implies you don’t care about your audience, destroying any chance of connection, which is after all the foundation of any communication. Finally, and most damning, it implies you’re simply not nimble enough to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. Agility in a leader is increasingly prized in a global economy characterized by relentless change and persistent volatility. What does it take to effectively read a room? You’ve got to tune yourself out in order to tune in to the needs and wants of others, and then course-correct on the spot to establish connection. Demonstrating that willingness impresses people: It shows you have absolute command of your subject matter, and it signals to your audience that you’re so invested in the importance of your message that you’ll scuttle your carefully prepared speech to make sure they grasp it. That’s a recipe for engagement.

On her second day of work for a leading insurance firm, one female focus group participant recalls how she was taken aside after a staff meeting and chided for doodling and slouching in her chair. “I don’t want to ever see that again,” her new boss told her. “You should be sitting up straight, pulled up to the table, making eye contact, and taking notes. You should be paying attention!” She tried to assure him she had been listening. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, waving a hand impatiently. “What matters is that your behavior told everyone that you weren’t.” Never underestimate the communicative power of body language. While 21 percent of senior executives we surveyed recognize that how you hold and carry yourself affects your EP, anecdotally the evidence around body language suggests a much greater impact. “People gauge your EP the second you enter a room: how confidently you walk in, how firmly you shake hands, how quickly you make eye contact, how confidently you stand,” observes Deloitte’s Adachi. “In those initial seconds, you’re going to be judged on what they see, not what they hear, and your body language and poise are what they see first.”

When Catherine, a corporate senior executive, enters a room, people don’t even need to know she spent more than twenty years in federal law enforcement to accord her awed respect. Tall and elegantly dressed, this African-American woman radiates gravitas in her posture, stride, and stance. “I’ve been told I don’t demand respect, that my presence expects it,” she says. “Some of that came from growing up in the South and having to fight and wrestle with a lot of issues. When you are the first black person in a school classroom or at a company meeting, you learn to walk in with that Condoleezza Rice attitude of having to be better than the best. That conditions everything. Because I walk into every meeting with that attitude, holding my head high, I leave a positive impression behind. People want me at their table.”

Crying is just one of a menu of communication blunders that, in a mere instant, can suck the executive presence right out of you. Others, as identified by our focus groups, include breathlessness or any other sign of nerves, constantly checking your iPhone for the latest messages, being obviously bored, being long-winded instead of getting right to the point, and relying too heavily on notes and other props. These flaws are fatal for one simple reason: Whether you’re speaking to a small group or a large audience you need to fully engage your audience’s attention, so that they both hear and remember your message.

HOW TO POLISH YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS   Ditch the verbal crutches. Fillers such as “um,” “like,” and “you know” get in the way of and undermine your message. Tape yourself. Allow yourself to pause when you’re giving thought to something mid-sentence. Moments of silence give greater import to the words that precede and follow them.   Broaden your small talk. Kalinda, a real-estate analyst at a financial-services company, affirms the usefulness of being able to contribute to casual conversations: “One of best things ever to happen to me was managing the NFL budget,” she says, referring to a former job. “I didn’t know a thing about American football when I got there, but I recognized I needed to, if I was ever going to be considered one of the guys. So I read Sports Business Daily every day. The teams, the games, the analysts—I could talk about all of it with anyone. Even now, if I hear football being discussed, I insert myself in that conversation, because I have something to add. For the same reason, I picked up golf a couple of years ago. I’m not good at it, but I can talk about it, and that opens a door with my managers.”   Get control of your voice. Lord Bell, the advertising guru and PR maestro who masterminded the British Conservative Party’s 1978 campaign, helped tone down the Iron Lady’s speaking voice with a simple concoction: water tinctured with honey and lemon. “Because she did so much talking, her vocal cords got stressed and it made her sound shrill,” he says. “We found that if she drank some hot water with lemon and honey it lowered her pitch and took the strain out of her voice.” Sallie Krawcheck makes sure she breathes, consciously and deeply, before taking the stage, to eradicate any shakiness in her voice. Kerrie Peraino sips water to relax her throat muscles, as tight muscles can produce a squeaky, raspy, or breathy tone.   Overprepare. Barbara Adachi finds that by dint of careful preparation, she can overcome her inclination not to speak unless spoken to. “I used to go to meetings and just not say a word,” she recalls. “People wondered why I was even there. Unless asked to comment, I wouldn’t volunteer. Speaking up was so hard for me. And I still need to push myself in new situations. But if I go in well-prepared and knowing I know more than I need to, I find it easier to speak up and not go back into my cocoon.”   Less can be more. Jane Shaw, former chairman of Intel’s board, affirms that you can’t afford to be a wallflower at meetings. But she cautions against speaking up just for the sake of it. “Inject a comment when you have something fresh to add. If you’re asked for an update, stick to new items. Invite others to add their opinion rather than babble on. If someone has not weighed in, you might throw it to them when you finish,” she advises. Invoke your vertical. Anne Erni, who today heads up human resources at Bloomberg, describes an incident early in her career on Wall Street where her body language helped her pull off an unpopular decision with a hostile crowd. “The other executives were ganging up on me, literally yelling and cursing. Meanwhile, forty people were waiting for us to come forth with a decision. I had to focus on getting to that goal. I sat there and, with every ounce of energy, just kept pushing my feet into the floor, sitting tall, and making my spine and head straight. Then I leaned forward and spoke. It not only got me through that awful moment, but I won their confidence, and we moved forward.”   Lose the props. It bears repeating: You will exude executive presence if you establish and maintain a direct connection with your audience, whether you’re addressing two or two hundred. Learn to present without props.   Do not allow challenges to your authority to go unanswered. Hecklers are looking to rob you of your command of the room by getting under your skin. Don’t let them. Parrying with humor is your best defense, as it demonstrates that your confidence can’t be shaken and makes the heckler look petty for trying. You can also declaw a barb by acknowledging a germ of truth in it—and then annihilating that germ with counterevidence. Sometimes, however, it’s important to reassert your authority by going full frontal. Dwight Robinson, chief of diversity at Freddie Mac, describes how his first sponsor chose him as his deputy to run the state housing authority committee. Robinson knew he was utterly qualified to win the position, but as both he and his sponsor were African-American, he knew the decision would come under fire. Indeed it did. But Robinson’s sponsor did not flinch. To the builders, the developers, and the mayor who questioned his choice, he countered, “You’ve got twenty-seven other departments with two people of the same race in charge. They’ve solved their problems, so how does it signal something negative when two white people are running twenty-seven agencies and two black people are running one?” Robinson says it was a “life lesson” for him in exercising courage and asserting authority.

When Aileen, an executive at a pharmaceutical firm, assumed leadership of its global medical division, she conducted a review of her U.S.-based staff that included 360s, performance evaluations, and one-on-one assessments. As the December holidays approached, she met with all of her direct reports to share what she had learned and discuss either their opportunities to advance or the gaps they needed to close. The meetings went well: Aileen’s assessments aligned with feedback her direct reports had already received. But at one meeting, an African-American woman who’d been assured of a promotion by Aileen’s predecessor took exception to the news that she had neither the skills nor the leadership presence to qualify for a higher role. Not only did she take exception, but she threatened to quit on the spot. Alarmed and concerned, Aileen urged her to take some time over the holiday break to think about her next steps and come back to her in the New Year to discuss a plan. “Quite honestly, I was terrified we were veering into EEOC territory,” recalls Aileen, referring to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “I was prepared to stand by my assessment but wanted time to review it with legal before meeting with her again.” In January, they reconvened in Aileen’s office. “I’ve done some careful thinking,” the woman began. “I realized over Christmas that, in all the years I’ve worked for this firm, not one person has taken issue with my performance or questioned my leadership capabilities. When I’ve asked for constructive criticism on my presentations, everyone has told me I’m doing just fine. In fact, I’ve been handed every promotion I’ve asked for—up until recently, when you arrived.” The woman paused. Aileen held her breath. “If you would work with me,” she continued, “I would very much like to work with you to develop myself as a leader and get to the next level.” With that meeting began an extraordinary alliance. “I talked her up to colleagues who could pull her onto teams where she could get the client exposure and training she needed,” Aileen told me. “And she was fiercely loyal to me throughout my own transition here. Today, she’s heading up our marketing team.”

Feeling stalled in her career, Sylvie, a budget analyst working in television, turned to the National Black MBA Association for mentoring help. The female executive assigned to her took one appraising look at her and shook her head. “If you want to advance, you’re going to have to do something about your appearance,” the executive told her. “You look like a little kid, and people are not going to trust a little kid to do a grown-up’s job.” She suggested Sylvie get her hair cut and styled, wear more makeup, and upgrade her attire, advice that Sylvie promptly acted on. Within less than three months, she was given oversight of a new hire and a major stretch assignment. Today, she is a senior analyst at her mentor’s firm.

Sponsors are not mentors. Sponsors are powerful leaders who see potential in you and, provided you give them 110 percent, will go out on a limb to make things happen for you. Because sponsors have a vested interest in how you turn out (your reputation now being linked with their own), they will give you the kind of feedback that mentors can’t or won’t. Tim Melville-Ross, formerly CEO of Nationwide (as I mentioned earlier, the biggest building society in the United Kingdom, equivalent to a U.S. savings-and-loan institution), describes how one of the nonexecutive directors on the board sponsored him in his candidacy for the role of chief executive officer—by telling him what he could not otherwise have known about his standing in the race. “You are very agreeable and well liked, and others enjoy your humor,” Melville-Ross was told, “but we need to see your challenging side in the boardroom.” How to do that? “Pick the most senior nonexecutive member of the board”—the director named the member—“and pick a fight with him. Make a challenging remark. Point out something as absolute rubbish.” Melville-Ross did precisely that, provoking horror around the table. But a good kind of horror, he says. “When I looked at the director, who was sitting next to this member I’d just attacked,” Melville-Ross recalls, “he gave me an enormous wink.”

Not all feedback is accurate or well-intentioned, and occasionally you will be the recipient of off-base, ill-timed, vague feedback. But don’t dismiss it out of hand. As Suzi Digby, the British choral conductor, told me, there’s no such thing as a bad review—not if you tune your radar for that ping that can help you course-correct. “I’ve had good reviews and the odd negative one. The reviewer is not always right, but sometimes you recognize the ring of truth in a critical comment, and it’s important to allow it to be processed.”

It’s one thing to nod agreeably to constructive criticism; it’s quite another to change your behavior as a result. Yet unless you show superiors that you are willing to course-correct, they might conclude you’re not worth the time and energy it takes to impart difficult feedback in the first place. Rohini Anand suggests getting a reality check if you’re hesitating to act, as sometimes hearing criticism from peers as well as superiors can bring your next action into sharper focus. With one boss, the feedback Anand received was somewhat oblique: “When I come in with something at a later phase, your mind is already made up,” he told her. Only when she got the results of a 360, which pointed out that she tended not to consistently allow other ideas to bubble up and gain traction, did Anand understand she needed to do a better job at listening to and eliciting late-stage innovations from her team. “I now hold my comments and views until I’ve heard from everybody,” she says. “I want to be sure I model receptivity.”

When feedback is confusing, says Carolyn Buck Luce, it’s almost inevitably a symptom of cultural misalignment. “You need to be more vulnerable” was her manager’s way of saying, she realized, “Your personal style is clashing with the culture of this organization.” To better understand that clash, Buck Luce asked her boss, “How is what I’m doing getting in the way of my job?” Her manager explained that, by never asking for help and not explaining to others what she was doing, Buck Luce was inadvertently signaling that (1) her agenda was more important than theirs and (2) she didn’t value other perspectives. “That made a lot of sense,” she says. “I realized I wasn’t forging enough strategic alliances, that to be effective at a more senior level, I needed to widen my pool of go-to people.” She adds, “Women take this sort of thing personally, but they need to realize, when your manager asks you to change, it’s not because there’s something wrong with you: It’s the culture crying!”

You may decide, upon hearing negative or critical feedback, that it’s time to seek a job elsewhere. This does not entitle you to unleash your anger or give a vindictive response, cautions Garcia Quiroz. Rather, concede the point and show you’re interested in preserving everybody’s well-being. Work with your manager to have a seamless and mature transition. You need him or her to be supportive of your transition and may even need a recommendation to secure your next opportunity. Be proactive and honest if you know this is not a work situation that you can turn around. “What’s important,” says Garcia Quiroz, “is that you show you’re going to take responsibility for your career—by managing the terms of your own exit.”

GIVE FREQUENT, DISCRETE POINTERS RATHER THAN SEMI-ANNUAL DOWNLOADS If by the time you sit down to impart feedback you’ve accumulated a laundry list of criticisms, then you’ve waited too long. Criticism cannot be constructive when it’s too lengthy. Inventorying someone’s shortcomings in one sitting is more likely to paralyze or demoralize than incentivize that person to change.

DON’T IMPART FEEDBACK WHEN YOU’RE ANGRY Wait twenty-four hours, or until you’ve cooled down, before calling someone to account for a massive blunder. You’ll both have gained much-needed perspective on what happened. If you give feedback in the heat of the moment, observes Garcia Quiroz, you risk exposing yourself as someone not in control of your game—and that lapse in leaderlike behavior gives your subordinate license to shift more of the blame to you. “People will blame everybody except themselves when they’re hurt or angry,” she observes. “For criticism to be constructive, it has to be delivered without the emotion that signals ‘personal attack.’”

PUT THE GOOD THINGS OUT THERE FIRST Recognize what people have achieved or are achieving before pointing out what they haven’t delivered. You’ll appear to be a more credible critic, one worth heeding, if you demonstrate you’ve observed the good in measure equal to the bad. Communications exec Christina says she always starts a feedback session by soliciting the other person’s self-assessment first. “Tell me the three areas where you think you’re doing great,” she opens. “Then tell me the three areas where you want to improve.”

EMBED CORRECTIVES IN YOUR CRITICISM In a postmortem with one of her personnel trainers, AT&T’s Debbie Storey detailed not just those aspects of the woman’s delivery that needed improvement but also those actions that might improve her delivery. Storey had observed that this trainer lost her audience before she ever won them, first by jumping right into the material and then by talking very fast in a low monotone. So she couched her feedback in what to do, rather than what to stop doing. “Think about how to get the audience with you before launching into the content,” she began. “Let them get to know you, and understand where you’re going, before you go there. Then help them keep up: Talk more slowly. Pause more often. Try to inject humor, because this material is dry by nature and you’re funny by nature. Let people see there’s more to you than dry content, and they’ll come back for more.”

CATCH PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE GETTING IT RIGHT Especially when the wisdom you’re trying to impart concerns a person’s appearance, pounce on any opportunity to congratulate that person for having made good choices. Christina describes one woman whose “completely showstopping, inappropriate attire” had caught the eye of everyone in management, but whom no one had confronted. Watching her manager struggle over this, Christina waited until this woman arrived one day dressed more appropriately and then pulled her into her office to rave about her appearance. “This is a wonderful look for you, a really good look for you as a career professional,” Christina gushed. It worked: Overnight, says Christina, the woman seemingly bought new clothes to continue eliciting Christina’s praise. “You want to think about the outcome before you pull someone into your office and say, ‘I can see through your dress.’ Nobody is going to feel good about that conversation.”

PREFACE FEEDBACK WITH THE ASSURANCE THAT YOU HAVE THAT PERSON’S BEST INTERESTS AT HEART AND WISH TO ENSURE THEIR SUCCESS “This may not be easy to hear,” Rohini Anand will begin by saying, “but please depersonalize it. I’m telling you this because I want you to be successful.” Better yet, if you’re that person’s sponsor, establish the ground rules for feedback before you deliver any. Kent Gardiner, chair of Crowell & Moring, “struck a deal” with an African-American attorney in whom he saw great promise. He asked him if he wanted feedback on his courtroom manner and style of delivery. Assured that he did, Gardiner further asked if he’d be willing to hear criticism from the chairman of the firm in the spirit in which it was intended, in other words, as an EP tip and not a threat to his standing in the firm. “Feedback works only if there’s mutual trust and respect,” says Gardiner. “Our agreement assured him that I had his best interests at heart, and he assured me he could listen to what I had to say without taking offense.”

DISCUSS APPEARANCE IN THE CONTEXT OF PERSONAL BRANDING Storey situates any comments she may have about an employee’s wardrobe choices in a larger conversation about that employee’s personal brand. “Help them identify that brand first,” Storey says. “Then you can afford to point out how their personal style may clash or support that image.” For example, talk about their skills and passions, and discuss what distinctive value they add to the team, as in ‘You’re known for your analytical skills, and your ability to see the trend behind the numbers.’ Then stress how every interaction, every verbal and nonverbal message they send, including their clothing and overall appearance, should serve to reinforce that image.”

ENLIST A THIRD PARTY If you’re concerned in the least that your feedback might be misconstrued as discrimination, share your concerns with an HR or diversity specialist. That third party might refer you to legal counsel, or counsel you directly on ways to handle the conversation so that it doesn’t veer into EEOC territory. At the very least, you may find it helpful to role-play with a trained professional to ensure that feedback is received as constructively—and nonlitigiously—as possible. Good feedback on executive presence is hard to come by—it’s difficult to give, difficult to elicit, and difficult to receive. The issue is even more sensitive for women, people of color, and LGBT employees. The good news is that improving the feedback loop is a central part of EP workshops and training sessions that have been developed by CTI over the last two years.

Stella did another thing to ensure her remarks enhanced rather than detracted from her gravitas: After the meeting concluded, she sought out her boss to explain that she hadn’t been contradicting him but rather ensuring he had the knowledge he needed to render the right decision. “I just want to make sure you had the whole picture,” she told him. “If you go in a different direction, okay, but it’s my responsibility to put the facts on the table so that every one of your decisions is fully informed.” He told her he appreciated her intent, and admired her for her courage. “His respect for me probably tripled as a result of that encounter,” Stella says.