This is a follow-up to one of our most popular posts, which contained practical advice on executive presence. As a refresher, I define executive pres

A Practical Guide to Executive Presence: Earning Respect

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2024-11-21 13:00:03

This is a follow-up to one of our most popular posts, which contained practical advice on executive presence. As a refresher, I define executive presence as a set of behaviors that will influence others to fully listen to what you say – because they respect you, view you as reliable, and otherwise think that listening to you is important for the company’s success.

It can be somewhat circular, but one of the best ways to build executive presence is for other executives to obviously care about what you have to say. This time, we’re going to dive into the behaviors that earn respect from other executives – the traits that help make them allies, and that prevent them from resenting you or taking you for granted.

People respect strength. At the end of the day we’re all just mammals trying to map every organization we’re a part of onto a primate dominance hierarchy. And since it’s generally not acceptable to club your coworkers over the head or bare your canines at them, the measure of strength that most teams revert to is expertise.

To have strong executive presence, you need to have skills, knowledge, or capabilities that are beyond everyone else along at least one dimension. What is the one thing that you know how to do, or that you know everything about, where nobody else is remotely close to your level? It doesn’t have to be something huge, but it has to matter. There must be a domain where you are the king or queen.