#223: Lawyers’ Guidebook To Executive Presence – Be An Inspiring & Influential Leader

[00:01:06] Hello. Hello, everybody. This is Heather Moulder, host of Life & Law. And I'm excited to have you here with me today.

So I have a question for you. I would love for you to think for a moment about what executive presence means to you.

Have you ever even thought about it? Have you wanted to have better executive presence? Maybe you do. Maybe you're like, heather, what are you talking about? What is this executive presence thing? So today we're going to answer that question. We're going to get into what I mean when I say executive presence and specifically what encompasses executive executive presence. We're going to get into what I call the three C's of executive presence. We're going to talk a little bit about EQ and how to utilize your emotional intelligence to turn executive presence into influence, which gets into that piece I mentioned at the beginning, right?

[00:02:06] Most of us would like to be more influential in the sense that we want people to listen to us. We want people to seek our opinions. When we state what our opinions are and when we're trying to influence our clients, we want them to really listen and take what we have to say seriously. And not just seriously, but often utilize it in their decision making. That's what I mean by influence. But we also want to be able to lead our team, to motivate them, to get them more engaged, to have them interested in the work they do for their clients.

That's all executive presence, y'all.

[00:02:39] We're also going to talk about the thing that really degrades our executive presence. Hint, hint. It's imposter syndrome. And then finally, we're going to get into a couple of practical strategies that you can start utilizing today to improve upon your executive presence. And for anybody out there who recently heard my talk of this, back in October, I was asked to speak specifically on this topic to some female general counsels. And yes, this comes from that directly. It was a wonderful conversation. It was really, really a great topic that I was asked to give. And I was like, ooh, I haven't talked about this on the podcast. We need to discuss. So this. Thank them for asking me to even talk about this to them, because we probably wouldn't be speaking about it today.

Defining Executive Presence

So let's talk really quickly about what I mean by executive presence.

[00:03:34] So let's talk about what it is not. It's not about performing. It's not about dominating. It's not about being a perfectionist. And although most people when. When they define what executive presence means, they don't use those words, I want to be a perfectionist. I want to dominate. They sometimes do use perform, but they don't mean it in a negative way. They just think it's about performing to the best of their ability.

Not really. It's not about performance. It's definitely not about dominating, and it is absolutely not about perfectionism.

Executive presence is about what I call the three C's: Confidence, composure, and communication. So let's get into what I mean for those three things now.

Confidence.

[00:04:16] We all know we want more confidence. I probably don't have to define what confidence means, but I do feel like that we talk about confidence in all the wrong ways. Oftentimes fake it till you make it.

You know, that's a big one that I hear from a lot of people. No, you don't want to fake it, because you can't.

Confidence is actually built in very specific ways, and it's built over time by you, by taking certain actions, by understanding yourself better.

[00:04:47] So here is how I define what confidence is. And these definitions are going to give you hints as to how to start building up your confidence. So it's about trusting your skills and judgment.

You know what you're good at, you know what you're not. Right? You know when to get help. This leads to the next piece. Knowing your resources and how to use them, and then, by the way, actually using them, which leads us to the next piece. Owning it. When you don't know. No apologies.

No one expects you to know everything. No one expects you to be a perfectionist.

[00:05:25] You just need to understand what, well, what are my skills? When do I know? When do I not? How do I use my judgment? When do I need to reach out for Help. What resources do I have? How do I use them?

And then the final piece is around communication. People are perceived more confidently when they communicate clearly and concisely. And when you're perceived more confidently because you're communicating clearly and concisely, it actually builds up you your confidence as well.

Because there's a reason people have confidence in you that you can get behind. You know, okay, I've communicated this clearly. I am very concise in this. I don't have more to say. I didn't overspeak, I didn't overthink, I came across as confident. And guess what? I am on this. So it helps to build it when you're doing it that way.

Now, I am going to note something.

[00:06:21] There is what I call the confidence trap. And this is what I like to call the bull in the china shop. We all know that person. In fact, you probably deal with this person almost on a daily basis because every organization seems to have this person, the blusterer, the person who gets easily defensive.

The person who might get more aggressive or over question when you're trying to present your own ideas or something new or different. The person who always insists on proving that they're right.

Here's what I would say, and this is where the confidence trap comes into play. People who are like this tend to be so overly aggressive that we start to question ourselves.

And when we start to question ourselves, we either mirror them, which means we take the bait and we fight fire with fire, which degrades our own confidence and degrades how others see us, or we get defensive, with which further degrades our confidence and degrades how others see us.

[00:07:21] So be aware of who these people are and always prepare yourself when you're going to be in a room with them and you know you're presenting an idea, you're going to be negotiating or arguing or anything opposite them or even, even on behalf of the same client. But they always have to come in with their two cents. You need to visualize and be prepared for that so that you're ready to be calm, respectful. All right, Calm and respectful.

A calm, respectful response signals true authority. Don't take the bait. Don't mirror. Don't get defensive.

Composure

[00:07:57] The second piece to executive presence is composure. So this is that steady anchor in the storm. It's actually confidence embodied.

We all see these people and all want to be these people. And you can become this person, FYI, and we'll talk about that in a second. We want to be the calm, clear thinking person when under Stress and pressure. We don't want to be the person who overthinks, who thinks out loud. And others question, what are they even saying?

That's not composed. We want to stay focused, we want to stay less stressed. We don't want to get overwhelmed.

That's composure.

[00:08:40] The thing I would note about that to watch out for is how your brain works. Okay, so we have survival mode, we have stress management mode. And that mode can get turned on with a flip of a switch when unexpected things happen. And then the brain will whisper things like pretty prove yourself, which can cause a ripple effect, right?

You know this because we've all been subject to this upon time and then we always, this will happen. And then we'll look back later and go, oh, why did I, why did I take the bait? Why did I do that? Why couldn't I have just stayed calm and composed?

[00:09:20] Just know this, this is a pre wired response within your brain. And the good news is you can retrain your brain.

So how, how do you retrain your brain, your mind for more composure, use proven strategies and tools that are designed to do three things. And yes, we'll get into some of this later, but I also have lots of resources and lots, and I mean lots of podcasts on this. So I will put my top, maybe two or three, probably two on the this very thing, retraining your mind for composure for less stress, for being focused, for staying cool as a cucumber, no matter the pressure around you. I will go ahead and put a couple of those podcast episodes in the show notes.

But here's what you do.

[00:10:13] It's about stress awareness, it's about emotional awareness and it's about self regulation. So stress awareness is being aware of your stress triggers and symptoms so that when stress presents itself, when things start to go crazy and get chaotic, you can catch yourself more quickly.

The second piece is emotional awareness that's getting behind the underlying causes of your ripple effect stress. So ripple effect stress is not the trigger that happened. It's not the client called with an unexpected emergency.

It's not. The deal is blowing up and we didn't expect it. That's the trigger. But then you've got thoughts and beliefs and feelings going on and those feelings relate to thoughts and beliefs that you have that cause more and more emotions and can take a whole ripple effect and stress spiral of their own.

[00:11:13] Which by the way, most stress is caused by that, not by the actual trigger that we think of.

So it's becoming more aware of those things so that you can then move into the third area, which is self regulation, using tools to get behind the thoughts and beliefs, to challenge them, to lessen those emotions so that you can refocus and stay calm.

Communication

[00:11:38] And now to the third piece, communication. So this is about being present, this is about being brief, and this is about being clear.

It isn't about how much you say or how loudly you say it, it's about the way you communicate your thoughts.

And by the way, brief and clear is part of it. But presence is another piece, fully present, fully attentive, fully focused, and with confidence and composure. So these three things are very interconnected.

[00:12:15] Confidence, composure, communication. They're all interconnected.

A quick note about communication. Communication isn't just about words. So let's get into that presence piece a little more. It's about your eye contact. It's about your pacing, your tone, the inflection within your voice. It's about your appearance. And appearance can mean how you're dressing, but also, are you fidgeting? Are you looking like you're stressed out? Are there clear signs?

[00:12:50] It's about being curious and interested when others are speaking. It's about active listening. It's not just about your words.

The Role of Emotional Intelligence

[00:13:01] Okay, so let's get a little bit into emotional intelligence and how this plays a part into the three Cs, because I would just say emotional intelligence is the core of executive presence. So if you're not even sure where to start to improve your executive presence, emotional intelligence is the place. And it feels like I've already got like numerous, probably three or four podcast episodes from the past that I'm going to be putting in the show notes. There's going to be more, because I've talked about emotional intelligence before, and twice I talked about the specifics of emotional intelligence, which we're going to go over here Very briefly. I've gone more in depth, and I will put a link to that episode in the show notes as well.

And then I've also talked about getting started with emotional intelligence, how to start building the foundational pieces that you need to become more emotionally intelligent. So I will also put that into the show notes as well. And I highly recommend you go and listen to that. But quickly, let's talk about the impact and why. And it really comes down to the five pillars of emotional intelligence. So pillar one is self awareness, which hopefully won't be a surprise because we've already started talking about it. So again, recognizing your emotions, recognizing your stress triggers, recognizing your symptoms. You cannot change anything if you are not self Aware, you do not want to be that person who gets stressed and then like sprays it out on everybody else and causes a stress spiral, not just within yourself, but within your whole team. So that is why self awareness is so important. And then that leads us to the next piece. Being self aware is obviously not enough. You have to self regulate. You need to learn how to manage your emotional and stress responses so that it doesn't impact everyone else and the work that you're doing. The third piece is motivation. So what drives you? This is about being driven by something that's more purposeful, not pressure oriented. So motivation relates to the mission you know, and values that you hold dear, that your team are working towards in any given deal. And then just generally as a team, and then also the overriding culture of your section, group, law firm, etc. What motivates people, right? It's not enough just to make good money, it's not enough just to be pressured into it. That can work for a short period of time, but over the long haul it does not. So to be more emotionally intelligent, you need to have better motivation factors. And you want to also be able to have the right motivating factors that not don't just motivate you, but help to motivate others to do their best.

[00:15:46] The next piece, and this goes into motivation is empathy. Now I do think empathy is sometimes very misunderstood. What we mean by empathy within the emotional intelligence realm is this understanding others emotions and others perspectives. Not because you agree with them, you do not have to agree. It's about understanding. And the reason that you want to understand is so that you can utilize that in the next piece, which is social skills. Having healthy relationships, being able to read the room, being able to read another human being so that you can connect with them and know the words to use, know how to respond to them, given their emotions, given their perspectives, all of these things kind of go together. I'd say self awareness and self regulation go together. Obviously those are required for motivation.

They're also required for the other two. But the motivation, empathy and social skills all go together.

[00:16:45] And the reason for this is so that you can get to a place where you can diffuse tension before it escalates. You can build trust across all levels, functions and personalities. You can influence and motivate others. Improving organizational and team performance, getting engagement higher. You communicate decisions with credibility and empathy. And that is what this is all about.

What Gets In The Way: Impostor Syndrome

[00:17:12] So before we get into a couple of practical ways to start improving your executive presence, let's talk a little bit about the thing that I see getting in the way the most for us attorneys, and that is your mindset. And specifically, it's about imposter syndrome. So if you take nothing else away from today's episode, I want you to really take this away.

Executive presence is not so much about doing, it's about a way of being. And what steals from us the most is that lack of confidence. And where I see this coming up all the time with lawyers is imposter syndrome.

So here is the thing I want you to understand about imposter syndrome. And this is also something I've talked about before and will put my favorite episode around imposter syndrome that we've done here at Lifeand Law, which is into the show notes as well. So you can dive deeper if that is something that you deal with. But if nothing else, and before you have time to go to that, I want you to listen to this. So understand how the brain works. You have a negativity bias. You have survival wiring.

[00:18:23] Basically, what that means is your brain scans for danger before opportunity, and it's looking for what could go wrong as opposed to what could go right. Because, look, it wants to plan for what could go wrong. This is, again, a survival instinct. And it's fine if you learn how to control and manage it properly, because it can take over.

And that is often when imposter syndrome really comes into the. Into play.

[00:18:50] The other thing to understand is your legal training. You're trained for risk hypervigilance, which makes this even worse for us lawyers. And then finally, every lawyer I've ever known is a high achiever. Okay, we just are. High achievers suffer from imposter syndrome. It is a high achiever ailment.

Dealing With Impostor Syndrome

So what does that mean for dealing with impostor syndrome?

[00:19:14] Well, except that it means you're being challenged. We lawyers want to be challenged. We like to be challenged. We enjoy a good challenge. Well, that's a good thing then. So accept that. That's what it means when you're feeling sensitive symptoms of imposter syndrome. It means you're being challenged. It means you're subject to something new. It means you're a little uncertain because you haven't done it before. Okay, that's not bad. That's good.

And then take it further and reframe.

[00:19:41] Reframe proactively by saying, okay, not only do I accept that this means I'm being challenged, but let's identify how I'm being challenged. Let's identify what growth and learning is coming from that. Let's identify the opportunities that could come from this.

[00:19:56] And then, and I've talked about this before, share how you feel with peers and mentors. There is something really freeing when you share with others who are in similar situations or have been where you are and are even ahead of you, and you look up to them. When you share with them how you feel, I guarantee you're gonna find out, oh, yeah, I deal with that too. Or I've dealt with that recently, or here's when that's happened to me. And then it's gonna ratchet those feelings down and you're gonna be like, okay, this is all right. This is normal. I'm good.

3 Practice Strategies To Improve Your Executive Presence

All right, so let's get to the practical ways for developing executive presence.

[00:20:32] I am going to cover three today. There are many more ways, but I will be honest, there are way more than I can really cover in the timeframe that we really have here.

So I picked my top three.

One is going to deal with the stress management piece.

[00:20:51] Another one is going to deal with a communication piece that is often ignored. And then the third is going to deal with something I hear all the time from attorneys around. How do I speak with more confidence?

The 3 R Reset: Regulate, Reframe & Refocus

So let's get to the first one. The first one is what I like to call the 3R reset. It's basically utilized when you need a mental reboot. This is a stress management technique that also will help you to get more refocused and just back on track when things feel like they're going crazy. And I would say this, there are many more ways in which to do this. If you would like more ways in which to do this, you can either reach out to me directly and I'm happy to point you to a couple of resources or even just email you back. Or I also highly recommend that if you are not part of my newsletter, you join it. Success without sacrifice is what we call it. That you join that because that will give you access to a whole plethora of of resources, including the one that I like to call the Legal Mindset Mastery Toolkit. And that has even more things in there like journaling and reframing and some other things, more specifics around the reframing, gratitude, all kinds of things that really helps with the stress management piece, but also the mindset piece. The get it becoming more aware and then being able to better self regulate.

Okay, so the 3R reset.

[00:22:19] There's three things. Regulate, reframe, and refocus. So step one is to regulate your body through your breath work.

So breathing slowly through your nose stops the stress response. That is your first order. Whenever you are stressed, pressured, overwhelmed, you want to self regulate through your breath.

There's a couple of ways in which you can do this. The easiest is just breathing through your nose slowly. In for a count of six, out for a count of eight. The key here is always to breathe out for a longer period than you breathe in. When you are under a stress response, it's usually the opposite. So you want to flip it and you want to slow things down.

Another way is to try what I call the four, seven, eight breathing technique. So that's breathing in for a count of four, holding your breath for a count of seven, and then breathing out for a count of eight.

[00:23:12] So you do that. And you can do this anywhere, by the way. You can do this when you're in a meeting. You can do this when you just need a two minutes to go to the bathroom and calm down, whatever. You know, you could do this anywhere, no matter who's around.

So regulate through breathwork. The second one is to reframe your mind. So this is where we do what we talked about earlier, reframing. Identify the positives, identify the opportunities. This experience is going to grow my leadership skills under pressure.

Okay, I may not have wanted this information, but I truly needed it. So now we can move forward, understanding the full picture. Right? So that would be a reframe when you just got really bad news that you didn't want, but you need it anyway.

[00:23:51] And then the third is to refocus. This is about refocusing your presence by asking specific questions. Now, the questions you need to ask should be tailored to your specific, you know, experience in that moment.

So what resources do I have? What resources do I need? What's most important right now? What is my next step?

[00:24:10] You want to refocus by asking a question or two that will help you get into action. Once you've regulated and reframed, you're going to be able to ask better questions and get back into action and get more refocused. So don't skip to the third one. Always regulate through breath work. Always reframe. That will put you in the right mental state to be able to refocus, to be able to ask those right questions, to have a proper refocus.

Active Listening Framework

[00:24:39] All right? The second one is what I call the active listening framework. So most people do not listen well, and I will say most of us lawyers really don't. Because when we're listening to our clients and we're listening to other people, we tend to go into this, oh, I want to solve problems which gets our mind going around, oh, they've identified this, I can help with that. Or here's how I would help them. And we go, our mind is just going crazy into what it wants to do next instead of fully listening.

So in order to improve your executive presence, in order to become more aware of others, in order to become more build that empathy piece and then frankly be more present with people, you are going to want to start practicing more active listening. And you can do this with clients, colleagues, peers, those you're working with and also in your personal life very much helps with that as well. So there are four keys to active listening. Number one is eye contact. You want to maintain comfortable eye contact. You don't need to stare, but you do want to have more eye contact than some people tend to have. This builds trust.

[00:25:46] Number two, you want to hyperfocus in on what they're actually saying. So you've got to learn to turn off that inner voice, not thinking about what to say next. This will deepen your connection. Now a note about this. You're going to start when you start trying to listen more actively, you're going to start noticing that your mind does wander. It's all right as long as you've noticed that it's wandered and you bring it back to your focal point. Every time that happens, you are training your brain to notice more quickly and to bring it back to the focal point and eventually you will improve your ability to focus on what others are saying. So start with where you are and just work on it and don't judge yourself. That's really key here because it's not going to work very well if you're judging yourself.

The third piece are your non verbals and their non verbals.

[00:26:36] So you want to make sure you're really attentive. You have open body language, you're looking at them, you're not, you're not fidgeting, you're grounded, right? So that you seem more present and are more present and you're not taking away from what they're saying or getting them the person who's talking to you, distracted.

[00:26:56] You also want to start paying attention to their nonverbals, notice their tone, notice their inflection points, notice their body language. This is going to help you increase awareness around their perceptions, around their emotions, around things that are really important for you to start noticing, to be fully present with them and build that empathy piece we talked about earlier.

And then the final thing on active Listening is to mirror key phrases and words.

[00:27:23] When you talk to people, utilize their language. When you repeat back to them what you've heard. Utilize their language as you ask deeper questions to understand what they're talking about.

This shows you're actually listening, and it really builds quick rapport and trust.

Speak With Confidence Framework

[00:27:43] Final thing, now we're getting into the Speak with Confidence framework because I hear about this also often about how do I speak more clearly and more confidently? Okay, this framework has four pieces.

Number one, start with asking questions. Now, you may not need to all the time, but you always want to ask yourself, do I have questions? You want to make sure when you're talking to people, whether it's in a presentation, whether it's in a meeting, whether it's one on one with a client or with a colleague or with your spouse, that you're fully on the same page, that you understand what it is they're asking of you or wanting from you that you're understanding what they've just told you. So to the extent you have any questions or any thoughts about. Hmm. I'm not sure we're clear here.

[00:28:33] Ask clarifying questions. Okay, the second piece. Give your take in one sentence and then support it if needed. This opens a compliance issue. The risk seems manageable.

That is the upshot of what you're telling them. Start with that. Don't start with, well, we might this or here. No, no, no.

Very brief, very concise. Here's my take then. If you need to explain the why, and many times you do, sometimes not, that's when you give the supporting. So the risk seems manageable. But we should confirm with privacy counsel. Or this opens a compliance issue and then say why. Maybe it's one main reason. Maybe. Are there three things? We'll give the three things, but do it almost like in bullet points. You don't need to over explain. It's just your take and your brief explanation.

[00:29:30] Then you give next steps if it's applicable.

So let's say we're going back to okay, the risk seems manageable, but we should confirm with privacy counsel. This is, by the way, if you're GC or maybe you are corporate counsel, this risk seems manageable. But I need to confirm this with my privacy folks.

I'll verify with them and loop back with you later this week. That's your next steps. This opens a compliance issue. Here it is.

I need to go look that up and follow up with you around it tomorrow. Those are your next steps and that is it.

Go silent.

[00:30:11] Never be afraid of the silent pause. I find that most people who, when they speak that don't come across very confidently start off fine. They may ask some questions, they give a quick take, and then they just start talking more and more and more as if they need to justify what they've just said. That degrades your confidence more than anything, so you're probably going to have to work most on this. Go silent. Never be afraid of the silent pause. And remember that silent pause is actually quite necessary to allow the people you're talking to, you're presenting to the person you're talking with to have a moment to process what you've just said and then have a conversation with you. So never be afraid of silence.

All right, y'all. That is the upshot of today. You have learned the three Cs of executive presence: Confidence, composure, and communication, and what each of them actually means. You've learned why eq, also known as Emotional Intelligence, is the core of executive presence. It helps to motivate and influence. You have learned the role of mindset and how to reduce the impact of imposter syndrome so that it doesn't reduce your executive presence.

[00:31:27] And then you've learned three tools for building your executive presence that will help you improve your three Cs and your EQ levels. I hope you learned something again. There are many resources out there to further this and they will all be in the show Notes. That's it for this week. Bye for now.