Your Authentic Presence
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We’ve wrapped up the research for our fifth book! Through interviews, focus groups and surveys, we’ve talked to hundreds of people who shared a current perspective about presence in today’s corporate setting.
Over 50% of respondents are working in companies with over 1,500 employees, and the majority of them are between 36-55 years old. The group was split between people who have experienced us in the last three years, people who experienced us more than three years ago, and 30% who have never worked with us at all.
And the unanimous perspective across all the inputs is…presence hasn’t gone away.
In fact, two in three respondents believe presence has grown in importance over the past five years.
Most of the people who gave input used the pandemic as an inflection point of change. It shifted how we work, it put looking out for people first and foremost, and it required all of us to see each other in a more holistic way.
Corporate norms changed, rules softened and guardrails widened. We began meetings by asking people if they were OK. We experienced our colleagues in vulnerable moments. Communication was often vulnerable and honest. And even though it’s a period that we’re glad to have behind us, the openness and vulnerability took hold. And it’s had a real impact on how we think about our expectations of presence.
While the book will provide a broader view of insights and consider the listeners’ perspective from different vantage points inside a company, here’s an overview of four themes we explored and what we learned.
IMPRESSIONS
Presence begins with impressions, and those impressions take shape for any communicator in a similar fashion. The statistics that suggest we can from 11 impressions in seven seconds still support how quickly we take someone in.
• Body Language: 36%
• Listener Engagement: 34%
• Voice Power: 30%
We talk about a communicator’s toolkit as the body, voice and listener, and as groups weighted the importance of each concept, the body was still the larger impression. But not nearly as much of the impression as it was been in the past. It dropped from 55% of an impression to 36%. Listener engagement was 34%, and the voice was 30%.
What’s different is the reduced number of situations where you can make a strong impression or reset a misinterpreted one. In-person meetings bring a strong advantage to a communicator over virtual meetings, and the hybrid meetings with people in a room and online are considered the most difficult to manage. The virtual and hybrid meetings were listed as the most challenging by all participants.
These inputs show up in current coaching sessions, and it’s put a heightened demand on coaching to diffuse impressions or find more intentional ways to set impressions as a virtual communicator.
ATTRIBUTES
The attributes of presence today look very similar to the attributes we began coaching more than thirty years ago. People want communicators to be confident and clear. They like conviction behind thoughts and a communicator who works to pull them into the conversation.
But when asked which group of attributes matter most, listeners are split between confidence and authenticity. And that means it isn’t enough to be confident and commanding from the front of the room. Listeners want less performance and more sincerity. They want a communicator to build trust, not just respect.
This has been building as an expectation, and it’s a hard one for communicators to consider because authenticity, like trust, builds over time not in a single meeting. But this sound bite shared by one listener says it all: Be the same person tomorrow that you are today.
SKEPTICISM
This theme may go hand in hand with what listeners describe as authenticity. There is more skepticism in most audiences and meetings, and it shows up in tougher questions. Listeners want more context with direction, and they want more than an email message as an explanation. In fact, communicators who are live or visible via video are twice as likely to be believed as a written note. “Talk to us frequently, tell us the truth, and admit your mistakes.”
Communicators say that they feel more challenged in settings. When they hit a skeptical listener, they feel defensive and need some guidance on managing through it. For some communicators, it’s getting comfortable with different perspectives in every setting. For others, it’s learning to hear it, acknowledge it and still move people beyond it.
Communicators feel the pressure to gain alignment. As one said: “Hearts and minds are still there as a focus, but the focus on outcomes has intensified.”
PERSONAL BRAND
Our 1:1 interviews went further in exploring how people think about presence related to their personal brand. And that’s what seems to bring authenticity into focus.
Personal brand is authenticity; it’s who you are and what you’re known for. It evolves over time, and if you’ve been intentional about it, it shifts from what you do to what you can do.
As we talked to individuals about their brand and their presence, it resonates that your brand is how people describe you when you’re not in the room. Brands take shape over time. Your presence is the experience of you in each and every moment.
And coaching someone to deliver on all of it is the focus on our fifth book.
Our observation is that people who have invested time in understanding and exemplifying their personal brand find it easier to bring authenticity to their presence. It’s broadened our coaching, and it’s all part of the communicator’s journey to presence.
We’ll share more as the book project continues.
Click here to schedule a call to talk more about this topic!
Also Read: Coming Full Circle: The Future of Executive Presence
