I have what is affectionately known as a “baby face,” which is another way of saying I get asked about student discounts more often than seems statistically likely. It’s an inconvenient feature to have as a facilitator of leadership development, where much of my job involves walking into a conference room with a long table, too many chairs, and silence from a group of people who haven’t yet decided whether this will be worth it.
I was, for example, recently presenting to a group of senior administrators within a major hospital system. Before we started, they asked: Why are we spending two hours with this person?
Fair question. One answer could center on my résumé: a PhD in behavioral science and years working with C-suite executives at Boeing, Pfizer, Anheuser-Busch, and FEMA. But experience alone doesn’t always settle a room like that.
Executive presence
It often takes something called executive presence. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, whose research tracked 4,000 professionals and 300 senior leaders over more than a decade, breaks executive presence into three main components: gravitas (the depth of your knowledge and conviction), communication (your ability to get that depth across), and how you present yourself. The three matter, but not equally: Gravitas accounts for roughly two-thirds of what experienced people read as executive presence, according to the research.
Hewlett identifies the core of gravitas as grace under fire: “keeping your poise, your calm, your wits about you when the going is rough,” as she told Big Think. That requires performance, though not in a phony sense. Every leader who has walked into a difficult room with uncertainty in their chest and delivered with conviction has performed, at least a little. The problems arise when that performance isn’t backed by a genuine conviction that you have something useful to say.
Most people, including leaders at the tops of their organizations, experience imposter syndrome at some point. But Carla Harris, a Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley, told Big Think that one way to quell those anxieties is to remind yourself that “if you’ve made it into that room, you know what you’re supposed to know.” She suggests one way to boost confidence is to ensure you know what you want to say, and that you understand your subject matter inside and out.
As far as how you present it, Hewlett’s research found that professionals want to hear leaders speak compellingly, concisely, and extemporaneously. “In other words, lose the security blankets, endless notes, checklists, hugely long PowerPoints; all of this gets in our way,” she told Big Think.
Go through what you know
So how do you find that kind of confidence and authority when you’re standing in a room full of people who you think might be questioning why you’re there? Ultimately, I think it’s arriving at the conviction that you have something genuinely useful for the people in front of you.
Before I walk into a room where I look like I might be someone’s intern, I go through what I know. The times with specific people in specific rooms where I’ve made a difference. A nurse moving into hospital administration who realized everything she already knew about tending to people under pressure was exactly what the role demanded. The stories from the retired generals in a breakout room. I remember where the knowledge came from, and I settle into what I’m actually there for: These are people who want to get better at something. I have learned things that might help. That’s the transaction.
I still walk into rooms where I look like someone’s child they brought alongside to watch them at work. But I have spent enough time at the front of enough rooms to know that the leaders who earn a room do it by arriving at something internally before they try to signal it to the audience.
In that hospital conference room, the shift happened about twelve minutes in. I stopped trying to convince the room that I belonged in front of it. I just started teaching what I knew to people who wanted to learn it.
Before you walk in, get clear on what you actually have to offer and for whom. The room doesn’t need settling when that’s clear.
This article How to stop trying to convince a room you belong in it is featured on Big Think.