Many articles about Executive Presence assume “your presence” starts in a meeting and it talks about how you should conduct yourself. Asking open questions etc.
Your Executive Presence starts way before that, in fact people may cancel the meeting based on your online Executive presence.
Executive Presence starts online. After all, your passive and active presence online people see as an extension of yourself. It’s simple. Whenever people have a meeting with people, they check them out online. From the passive and active presence they form a judgement.
If you social presence is “empty” then what judgement do you think we jump to?
You couldn’t be bothered? Maybe.
You are lazy? Possibly.
The service you will offer me is rubbish? Again, possible.
There is one “sales expert” in the US who has no sales experience on their LinkedIn profile, what judgement do you think people come to? There is also a person who sells that they will make you a LinkedIn expert, but from their LinkedIn profile, it’s clear they are no LinkedIn expert. Now these people may have “success” but think about how more successful they would be if they took the time and effort to demonstrate their leadership on social for everybody to see.
Your social presence is like a shop window. If your shop window is empty, then we assume the shop is closed for business and we move onto the next shop.
If you take two social profiles, one that is inspirational and educational and the other is empty and you give people the option to choose which person they would like to meet. They always pick the inspirational one. Go figure.
Now at this point people reading this will sigh and think, do I really have to put the time and effort into Linkedin? The answer is yes.
We all know if you are taking short cuts and will judge you for this.
We will know if you are using profile writers and will judge you for this.
We will know if you write something salesy and will judge you for it.
We want the real authentic you. In fact, in our research it shows that the more authentic you are, the better.
If you are will to take short cuts then we will assume you will take short cuts in business. If you use profile writers we will assume you are happy to be fake. If your profile is salesy we know you will try and push your product on us, whether we want it or not. Yes, we will judge your executive presence and how we judge you is totally up to you and in your hands.
Of course, you might want us to see if that inspirational you. The person that wants to inspire, to educate, the growth mindset. The person with positive energy that when we look you up online, we want to meet you.
We will look forward to your meeting.
Then in that meeting we will listen to you and be inspired. Because you set the expectation before the meeting how great things will be.
Maybe it’s time to work on your social profiles. As 95% of LinkedIn profiles are rubbish, I’m sure yours will be too!It’s your choice and any change is down to you!
One of the most elusive, confusing pieces of feedback that one can get is "You need to work on your executive presence." What does that even mean? And who’s defining it? And how does one know when they magically have it? Help! As an executive coach, this tends to be one of the most common goals set by managers for individuals they want me to coach. Although it’s a great target to work on, it’s often vague and confusing and requires some fleshing out.
