Executive Presence

Drifting Thoughts on a Leadership Book

After missing a connecting flight due to the type of delay that has become the standard in late stage bureaucracy I found myself with an extra few hours to kill. As luck would have it I encountered another traveler in the exact same situation who was down to hang out to pass the time. At the time I was a bit rankled by the lack of candor displayed by some senior leaders at the conference I had just attended. At times like these I can trend towards cynicism, but the poise exhibited by my new found single-serving friend brought out my better angels leading to a great conversation that meandered across a wide variety of topics. This culminated in being gifted the book Understanding Executive Presence by Paul Aldo which I’ve had time to read in the intervening weeks. Since it is pertinent to the content of this ‘stack I figured I would share an overview of the content along with some of my thoughts.

The Nine Traits of Executive Presence

Recognizing executive presence is easy. Everyone knows it when they see it. If you’ve ever served under a great leader you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’ve served under terrible leaders you also know what I’m talking about, because in a way they’re simply failing to exemplify the traits that characterize executive presence to a spectacular degree. The challenge met by this book is analyzing the traits that comprise executive presence so that we may enhance it in ourselves and others in service of organizational excellence.

The nine traits of executive presence are evenly parsed into three broad categories:

1. About Us (Passion, Poise, Self-Confidence)

2. About Our Messages (Candor, Clarity, Openness)

3. About Our Relationships (Thoughtfulness, Sincerity, and Warmth)

I’ll elaborate on each of these traits sharing my thoughts and using myself as an example (the book uses 4 different characters to illustrate the points, if you want those examples definitely check out the book!)

Passion: Expressing purpose and drive that show we are committed to what we say and do

I’ve never been accused of lacking passion. Indeed, I can sometimes exhibit too much which Aldo notes can be a problem for executive presence by pulling other traits out of balance. We need our leaders to express genuine passion because it signals that what we’re doing as a team matters. If the leader doesn’t care, how are we supposed to care? I’m fortunate enough to have a job where I think I can make a material difference in the lives of Soldiers. There are large swaths of the Army where leaders have lost that hope which can’t help but be reflected as a lack of passion. I know this issue extends to many professional-managerial class (PMC) jobs in the post-West.

Poise: Projecting sophistication and composure that show we are comfortable in our surroundings and able to gracefully handle adversity

I could use work on this, most specifically the graceful handling of adversity. When I identify problems, I want to discuss them to wrap my head around the issue, but this can quickly turn into unproductive griping. I’ve also had a tendency to flaunt social rules that I think are stupid (and push the limits of grooming standards as evidenced by my recent mustache). The fact that doing so clearly detracts from poise provides welcome motivation to get over this admittedly immature disposition.

Self-Confidence: Displaying optimism and assurance that convinces others we have the personal resources and resolve to lead

I’ve got so much self-confidence I might just have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). That’s a bit of a joke, but in all seriousness I have what I think is a healthy level of narcissism. This makes it easy for me to demonstrate confidence and leaves me perpetually perplexed when people who are obviously competent exhibit fear, uncertainty, and doubt with respect to their abilities. This kind of thing is especially aggravating to encounter in a leader. Why did you take on the responsibility if you’re so unsure as to whether or not you can perform well enough? Don’t get me wrong, we can always be better, and striving to be our best is always good, but there are so many crappy leaders around these days you have to be pretty incompetent to be worse than average. I think the most important thing to keep in mind to have balanced self-confidence is hidden in the one sentence description above referencing optimism. Optimism is great, but it has to be realistic optimism. There has to be some evidence that gives you a reasonable expectation of a positive outcome. Interestingly enough I think it is this same demand for evidence that separates beneficial narcissism from pathological narcissism.

Candor: Being honest and engaging with the world as it is, even when it is not as we would like it to be

I’m solid on this one, I wish I could say the same for most other military leaders. For me, it feels like there is a perpetual conflict between candor and poise. If I’m being candid about the current state of the military and the challenges faced in the realm of holistic health and fitness it will come across as unsophisticated and borderline unhinged to many senior leaders. This extends to senior executives in the largest bureaucratic organizations as well. Now that Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores have supplanted profits as the most highly sought metric of these perverted institutions, honesty about the scope of the problem obviously rankles senior leaders. After all, they are the largest part of the problem. What a predicament. While this undermines the executive presence of these leaders they are nevertheless firmly entrenched in these positions. Typically such a disconnect from reality results in the replacement of such leaders or, failing that, organizational collapse. But when all of these organizations have been deemed “too big to fail” there is no incentive for anyone in power to see the world as it is. Adding further difficulty, the way in which the world and incentives are distorted is rather complex.

Clarity: Creating and delivering messages that others see as crisp and compelling

This one really stood out to me because Robert Barnes explained how the announcement speech of RFK Jr. follows the exact format recommended by this book in the section on Message Architecture. While excellent communication skills are obviously desirable and necessary for optimal leadership, the five steps of crafting compelling messages outlined in this book can probably be useful to everyone.

1. Know what you want from your message and why it’s important to the organization.

2. List the fears, concerns, interests, questions, and objections—the pushback—of your audience.

3. Create persuasive arguments that address the push-back of your audience.

4. Compose your message.

5. Refine your message.

The book goes on to explain the importance of crafting the message in the form of a story. This is another critical Robert Barnes trope that he in turn pulled from David Mamet. Human beings have a psychological need for narrative, if you want to communicate optimally your messages will need to take the form of stories that successfully address any and all objections your audience may have.

Openness: Projecting a willingness to consider other viewpoints without prejudging them

This is another one of those traits that provides essential balance to the others. If you have really high self-confidence it can be all too easy to discount the viewpoints of others. Although the book has its own great explanation of openness, I like to ensure some degree of this trait by retaining epistemic humility. If you always acknowledge it is possible that you are wrong about things you feel very certain about, it will allow you to consider viewpoints that challenge your preconceived notions without prejudgment. Nothing is more frustrating than a leader who won’t take five minutes to consider another viewpoint that you as a subordinate believe is critical to the success of the organization. This is where a little empathy goes a long way. You don’t have to change your mind, but if you can articulate an alternate view with enough clarity that everyone is satisfied you at least understand it, this converts the anxiety that something important isn’t being considered to some modicum of reassurance. This is something everyone should really consider prioritizing, but it really is an essential trait for leaders, especially in these volatile times.

Sincerity: Expressing conviction in what we say and do

The only thing worse than a hypocrite is a hypocritical leader. Nothing will shatter executive presence faster than demonstrations of insincerity by leaders. This one is tough these days with our society being so divided. Sincere interest and loyalty to certain values will alienate some significant percentage of most work forces. This is one of the reasons Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) initiatives are so insidious. To activists, these policies represent cynical attempts to advance the interests of certain groups at the expense of others. Leaders who support initiatives and training that constitute unethical violations of equal opportunity law and policy are forced into contradictory positions. These contradictions make the consistent demonstration of sincerity all but impossible for the leader intent on DIE bloviation.

Thoughtfulness: Showing interest in others and concern for them

I know this is important, but I struggle with this. Honestly, I’m pretty self-absorbed. I care about patients one-on-one, but I don’t spend a lot of time being concerned about other people. I kind of view concern as a tool to motivate good work. What good does my concern for someone’s wellbeing do if it doesn’t materially contribute to their life? In the case of patient care there is a clear nexus. If I care I’ll be able to do a better job. With others I never quite know how much I’m supposed to care. Since I can kind of turn it off and on it feels somewhat artificial if I turn it on without a specific reason that is useful. I suppose I’m concerned that I don’t have the bandwidth to show interest and concern for everyone, so I end up being selective in an effort to avoid being insincere. Yet again, we can see that optimal executive presence emerges as the result of a balance of these nine traits.

Warmth: Being physically and emotionally accessible

Being thoughtful and sincere doesn’t do much good if nobody feels comfortable approaching you. Extroverts have an edge with this trait because they intrinsically enjoy interacting with people. Those who don’t will struggle with this, but it is definitely an essential component of executive presence. One of the key insights in the book is that using humor is a way of demonstrating warmth, but specifically humor that isn’t at the expense of others. This is of course easier said than done.

An Increasingly Difficult Balance

In any organization large enough to have “executives” in the post-West exhibiting all of these traits will be incredibly challenging, if not impossible. This is perhaps why incompetent leadership is so pervasive these days. For those of us with passion and candor, it is very difficult to consistently project poise. These large organizations do crazy things regularly. For those of us that can see it that care about what we do, it is a perpetual struggle to accept the things we’re unlikely to change and focus effort where we can. For a great many others passion is impossible because so much of what PMC functionaries are expected to do is such transparent bullshit. This is easy to deal with if you’re a sociopathic executive who can demand others pretend to see the world as you do, but very difficult if you have candor.

The example used by Aldo in the book to illustrate how candor can win the day in tough situations was the CEO of Ford Motors’ reaction to being briefed a wall of green slides (green being good to go). His simple response to this bullshit was simply to say: “but we’re losing 17 billion dollars.” This gave at least one executive the gumption to start briefing the truth, specifically that almost everything was red. If organizations are chasing metrics like ESG scores that are based on perception in the first place, nobody cares if the true purpose of the organization isn’t being fulfilled. Can our military support and defend the constitution? Guess what color slides are being briefed across the services. Now imagine what anyone could say that might prompt a more honest assessment. Right now everyone is tempted to look at suicides and other such metrics. That is much easier to focus on than our true purpose: Warfighting. How would we do in large scale combat operations for real? All I can say is that I’m glad squaring that away isn’t my responsibility. I don’t think I could continue to draw a paycheck in good faith were it so.

Executive Presence is Rare

This goes against the egalitarian ethic that pervades the post-West, especially the types of institutions where “executives” reside, but it is obviously true. My entire life I’ve been subjected to messages about how important leadership is, and how we need to cultivate leadership everywhere and always. Do we though? Does everyone need to be a leader? Can everyone be a leader? Nominally, sure, anybody can be anything, but the type of person that exhibits the optimal balance of these nine traits is exceedingly rare. It requires a very particular constellation of personality traits for a start. After that, certain life experience plays a critical role in developing these traits into well rounded executive presence. The better suited the personality, the less work it will take to develop robust executive presence. For some, personality characteristics make achieving an executive presence of any kind prohibitively difficult. This is probably most people, in fact.

Leadership and Purpose

Something not addressed in the book directly is whether or not you should be a leader. Are your ideas worth a damn? If not, developing executive presence might be counterproductive. Really, you’re not going to be able to develop full and robust executive presence unless you have exceptional judgement, because this is interdependent with the nine traits, but it is worth considering off the bat. The way leadership was fetishized throughout my public education experience makes me wary. In the natural order leaders are conferred additional prestige and money because of the responsibility they hold and the economic value they generate, both of which are balanced by risk. The idea that everyone should be a leader, or even can be, comes across as a perversion of nature. More troubling is the removal of the risk that should naturally accompany leadership. These perverted incentives suggest that additional caution is warranted when considering dedicating time and effort to developing executive presence. Will enhanced executive presence better enable you to achieve your purpose? Keep in mind opportunity cost here. You can get good at anything, but you can’t get good at everything.

Closing Thoughts

If you’re a leader trying to cultivate executive presence then this book is probably worth your time. You’ll immediately recognize areas where you are strong and weak, and the back of the book has exercises that provide some direction on how to work on your weaknesses. I know I can definitely work on poise and clarity in that order, and I’m confident that if I put the work in, my executive presence will improve. All that said, when I first started reading it I imagined a sociopathic nameless, faceless bureaucrat reading this book looking for another tool to help climb the corporate ladder. Interestingly enough, this book wouldn’t work very well for such an individual. Even though the book is focused on external behaviors, there are internal factors that would need to be aligned for it to be effective. Put in a less abstract way anyone who has undeniable executive presence is almost assuredly a damn good leader that I’d want to follow.

Where do you think you’re strong or weak? Do you think cultivating executive presence is worth the effort for you? How about for leaders of organizations you interact with? Leave a comment if you’re so inclined. I’m curious what others think about this concept and its utility and applicability.