Leadership Presence

Pete shares what is likely the most important and least understood aspect of leadership - presence. What is it? How does a leader activate it?

Pete goes back to the basics to provide a clear definition of leadership presence and through story share how leaders can improve their presence.

Transcript

Pete Behrens:
What is leadership presence, and how does it impact my effectiveness?

Welcome to another episode of (Re)Learning Leadership, where we explore a specific leadership challenge and break it down to help improve your leadership, your organization, and possibly your personal life.

I’m Pete Behrens, and today we’re going to explore the concept of leadership presence.

Let me start with two stories, contrasting stories. The first story is one where I was leading a workshop. Probaby forty-plus leaders in the room; this happened to be overseas. And I got to the hotel where it was being hosted, and the hotel room—and I usually don’t worry too much about hotel rooms, but this was a nightmare. The lighting was terrible, really dim. This was one of these hotels that was kind of an architectural landscape, and they had these old, classic, huge pillars in the room, all over the place, with Y-connections holding the ceiling up, blocking everybody’s view from different angles. Something you hate as a trainer, that people can’t see you or the slides or videos, whatever. And then they oriented the room in such a way—not what I had asked for, but it was a vertical, long room. I’m on one end, and that’s—you know, it was like, “Oh no, terrible, right? I wanted to be realigned!”

So all morning—right?—I’m trying to adjust this; I’m trying to fix this. Because I want to be present when I’m teaching, you know? And I want to be there. And this morning, I just—I was lost, right? Even to the point where people came in, and I was really short and agitated with them. In fact, somebody, later in the day, said, “Pete, I came in the room, and you just said, ‘Hey, go find a seat. Let’s start.’” And I was like, “Oh, my God! Fail! Total failure.” I think the entire day was not my best moment.

Now, contrast this with a class I attended. Bill Joiner, author of Leadership Agility, was leading a 360 class for some of us coaches and educators. And I remember, when I walked into the room, Bill Joiner came up to me and was incredibly attentive to me, as an individual. And then I noticed that, throughout the morning, before the workshop started, he did this with every single participant, right? This intentional connection and attention he’s giving these people. And there was a point when we did sit down, we did start talking, that we realized, “Oh, crap!” The books weren’t prepared right, or they weren’t printed, or something. And there was this moment of panic, but he was able to recover fairly quickly, and it did not have a negative impact on that session.

So, what do we think of when we hear the word presence? Well, presence is actually a fairly complex word with many different definitions. Let’s look at a few of these and how they might relate.

1. In attendance. It’s showing up. It’s just, “I’m here. Bueller? Bueller?” It’s that concept of just being there.
2. In existence. Okay, so I’m here, but am I mentally here? Am I engaged in the process of being here? Am I connected to what’s going on here?
3. A demeanor. Now, what’s demeanor? Demeanor is more of our body language. How are we carrying ourselves? Do I strut into the room with confidence and authority? Do I sulk into the room? “Don’t call on me!” You know? “I’m just here.” Right? A demeanor is the way we carry ourselves, that body language.
4. An aura. Aura is a little bit more about our emotions. Like, what’s going on? How is that projecting? Am I happy and excited, or am I sad and a bit down on things? This concept of confidence. And that starts to tie into:
5. A composure. Confidence is a bit of composure. Composure is also self-control. Composure is also a little bit about how calm you are. The difference between myself and Bill Joiner, that calmness and composure. Which, a lot of times—we are products of our environment, right? And so, how we’re showing up is also a reflection of what’s going on in the moment, in our lives, and other meetings that we’ve gone through, etc.. And the last one I want to throw in here, kind of a tweak:
6. Presence—or present—is a gift. And you think about all these other things. Being at attention. Being in existence. Having a positive demeanor and a collectiveness, right? Our aura. That’s a gift. It’s a gift you can bring to a meeting that says, “I care. I care to be here.”

Okay. So, we’ve laid out the definition of presence, but now let’s just explore why presence is so important to our leadership.

Well, think of—catalyst leadership, at its core, is really the ability to sense and respond in the moment.

Now, something I learned from Bill Joiner in one of the workshops we did was to imagine a camera lens. So, I encourage you to zoom your hands out in front of you like a square. Almost like you’re taking a picture. And when you’ve got your hands out there, what do you see? Okay, I can see Pete, or I can see a camera, or I can see a light or a picture. Right? I can zoom in, and I can look at something, right? And it’s really focused and narrow. And I start to pull back, and I start to come in. Now what’s happening? I’m getting that wide-angle lens. And what do I see? I’m starting to see everything. Monitors and bookshelves and lights and a microphone and the computer. I’m seeing all sorts of things interrelated. So we’ve got this narrow view, and we’ve got this broad perspective view.

Now presence, and indeed catalyst leadership, is this ability. It’s not one, right? Here I get the detail. I see what’s going on with the individual. Here I get the broad perspective. But you notice what I lose in each one! When I’m focused on the individual, I lose the wide angle. When I’ve got the wide angle, I lose the details. And yet, if I’m going between the two, I’m task-switching a little bit. This is an art form as much as a science. This ability of leadership in the moment—right?—is core-ly connected to your presence. And that awareness and recognition of what’s going on is central to your effectiveness as a leader. 

So, how does presence relate to Emotional Intelligence (EI)?

Hm. When we think of emotional intelligence, really this is kind of rooted in two things, right? First of all, am I emotionally intelligent of my own emotions and feelings. And secondly, am I emotionally intelligent enough to be able to perceive and pick up, notice, other emotions and feelings in the room. Now, while this is something I can teach, this is not something that I would suggest is one of my competencies, right? This is something that I’ve had to work on for quite some time. In fact, I’m gotten coaching on this through a couple of coaches who really helped me work through a couple of these things.

One of the coaches that I had—actually one of our ALJ Guides, Sara Bigwood—she said something to me that stuck. She said, “Pete, feelings are facts”. Now, as a trained engineer, this stuck out to me. This kind of threw me back. Like, wait a second! Facts are data points. Facts are tangible. Facts are real. Feelings, on the other hand, are fuzzy, and feelings are fluid and manipulable and things like that. They’re a little softer. And she said, “Pete, yes, emotions are under that surface. But think about the feeling as really just a body’s data point. Feeling is a connection to the emotion. Feeling is a fact. It’s there. It’s present.” And that—as somebody who thinks more logically, that was really a key indicator into a little better EQ about not only the importance of my own feelings and how it’s representing something, but also maybe how others are feeling and how that might be pointing to something else. So think about—emotional intelligence isn’t really possible without a presence. And so I believe leadership presence is core to activating that EQ.

So, how does presence relate to power style?

Now, we learned in another episode that power style is a dynamic rooted in two sources. One is power from within, and the other is power from others. The within is the assertive power; the others is the accommodative power. So, how does presence play? I want to take you back to a coaching relationship I had with the leader I was working with. This was a fairly high ranking company officer. She was in charge of multiple product owners and products. It was what’s called a product manager. She was strategically responsible for the strategy and direction and execution of multiple products in software. So she had a lot of responsibility and a small team of people that she directly related to. But then she would also be involved in meetings with product teams as well. But what she heard in feedback from her own leaders and even some others was that her voice was muted. They didn’t hear enough from her. They didn’t feel they had enough connection and direction, and things were a bit vague and open. She talked a lot about being rooted in servant leadership, and that servant leadership is often perceived as an accommodative power style. We put others first, and we support them. That’s a really respectful sense of leadership and can be really powerful in many ways. But for her, it was becoming a bit one-sided.

So we talked, we explored, we looked at different areas in her leadership. And one of the things that started to emerge was just her presence in meetings. Where did she sit? She often would sit at the back or side and let others come to the front and center. She would sit back and down. You know, in a sense, her presence in the room reflected her intentions. And so we said, “What would it be like if we experimented sitting in a different place in the room? Sit at the center! Raise your chair up a little bit. Sit a little bit more forward. Maybe, once in a while, let’s stand and facilitate a dialogue at the white board.”

And what she found just by changing some of this presence, her demeanor, her confidence, her engagement—changed her power style. She became a bit more—what we might consider—respectfully assertive, just through changing some of her demeanor. And it was just incredibly powerful to see the transformation in her, in the confidence. Like, all these skills were in her, but this enabled it to maybe come out in a way it hadn’t before.

Okay, so where do we go from here?

I encourage you to start to explore your leadership presence in various situations and meetings. How are you showing up, and what is being projected, and how is that being perceived? And maybe even getting some feedback on your leadership from some others, to say how they are seeing your leadership.

And I’ll leave you with a checklist that might help, as you join meetings, to think about, to maybe expose some of your internal presence.

1. What am I feeling right now, and what emotion do I want to bring to this meeting?
2. Where is my energy, and what energy is needed in this meeting?
3. What is my body language saying, and what do I want it to project?
4. Where is my attention, and what is distracting me?
5. What is my sense of calmness, self-control, and confidence?

I enjoyed spending some time with you today. I appreciate you joining us, and enjoy the journey!

(Re)Learning Leadership is the official podcast of the Agile Leadership Journey. Together we build better leaders. It’s hosted by me, Pete Behrens, with contributions from our global Guide community. It’s produced by Ryan Dugan. With music by Joy Zimmerman. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review, or share a comment. And visit our website, agileleadershipjourney.com/podcast, for guest profiles, episode references, transcripts, and to explore more about your own leadership journey.