In this lesson, we're going to explore your personal presence. What holds many of us back from becoming an executive is having the confidence to sound like an executive. And in this module, we're going to profile what personal presence looks like. Personal presence is kind of hard to define precisely because we know what to see it, but it's much harder to articulate. It's that intangible quality that makes a great executive standout and includes how an individual talks, how they look, how they act and how they frame their thoughts. Let's see if we can identify someone with personal presence.

Take a moment to think of the traits they give each of these people on the slide presented their personal presence. Okay, perhaps you thought about traits, like they look confident and comfortable, but they're not arrogant. They speak clearly passionately, and they are very persuasive. They clearly act with poise. Even under pressure, they act with intention and they are decisive in their actions. They keep their emotions in check, regardless of the circumstances.

They accept responsibility for themselves and the results they achieve. They're genuine and character and they're authentic in person. They say what they do and they do what they say. And they're able to listen to others and read others to be empathetic. People with presence feel what they say it comes through every pore of their body language, and those with presence connect their facial expressions with their body gestures to emphasize and magnify their message they command our attention. Generally speaking, we admire them.

We need personal presence in our executive careers because presence is one of those pillars of your own credibility. presence helps you sell your ideas and persuade others to approve adopt and follow you. In a survey of 200 executives. 75% of respondents indicated that personal presence and credibility mattered a great deal. The impact our presence has on others is profoundly important to our careers because having the self awareness to recognize our own presence, and then be that best version of ourselves in high pressure situations, poses very different challenges. Seeing it and being it are two entirely different things.

So let's go back to our workbooks for a moment, or you can follow along on the screen, and I want you to complete the following true or false quiz. This quiz comes from a wonderful book written by Amy Cuddy called presence. And the first question is, I'm afraid important people to me may find out that I'm not as capable as they think I am. Question two. Sometimes I believe that my success in life or in my job has been a result of some kind of error. Question three, when I've succeeded at something and received recognition for my accomplishment, I have doubts that I can keep repeating that success.

Question four, I often compare my abilities to those around me They may be more intelligent than I am true or false. And finally, if I received a great deal of praise for the recognition for something I've accomplished, I tend to discount the importance of what I've done. If you answered true to one or a number of those questions you suffer from what Cuddy refers to as imposter ism. And interestingly 70% of participants in the study experience some degree of imposter ism. And certainly it's present in females, but males as well, so it's not gender specific. We all feel like important imposters at certain points in our career.

And when we feel like imposters, we lack the confidence. We feel powerless and worst of all other senses. And as a result, we lose our executive presence. Cuddy has one of the most popular TED Talks ever, and she really attributes this lack of confidence that many of us feel and is labeled that the imposter syndrome. It's a feeling like we don't belong and it rises anything. time you feel as though you're not worthy at the position or it being in a particular situation or in the presence of someone important.

This is one of the most common reasons that financial professionals actually come to us for professional coaching. In almost all cases, these professionals we work with are highly proficient in technical competencies. However, they lack the confidence which holds them back from being the truest version of themselves when they get themselves into executive situations or opportunities to play executive roles. So it's common for our clients to come to us and say, Well, hey, I'm now a CFO, but I'm not really sure I have what it takes to be here, or whether I'm really ready to take on this role. imposter syndrome can be paralyzing for some people, it causes us to overthink the situation sometimes second guess ourselves. Often we fixate on how we're being perceived by others.

And we have this constant state of paranoia that we're constantly being evaluated and judged. Fear and rejection kind of lurk around every corner and ahead of important situations we obsess about perfecting our delivery. When the moment arrives, however we choke, and it goes nothing like we imagined it would. And afterwards, we keep replaying the situation over and over again in our head. Now, cutting defines presence as the state of being attuned to, and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, potential. So this is not necessarily a permanent state of being.

Instead, think of your own presence as rising to the occasion when it's required. When we're able to represent the truest form of ourselves. We come across as confident, we come across as enthusiastic and we're comfortable in our role. And ultimately, when we are present, we are more convincing, more influential, which is why it's one of those six traits of executive presence. So confidence also should not be mistaken for cockiness. You know, someone can be entirely confident without emoting an air of arrogance.

Confidence comes from compassion, empathy, and a place of commitment. cockiness, however, comes from a place of ego, competitiveness and a need for attention. Think of the moments in your life where you've acted where you've thought, and you've articulated your thoughts in a natural way, where everything you were saying, and everything you were feeling felt, right. Perhaps you were in a parenting situation, you found those right words to change the child's perspective so that they could correct the wrong behavior. Maybe you were in a boardroom where senior managers were hanging on every word you spoke, and the ensuing discussion kind of unfolds exactly as you hoped. Those are examples where confidence has brought about your executive presence.

The idea here is to find ways to repeat that level of presence anytime the need arises. Think about what might have helped you in these circumstances to achieve this. Was that the environment How did you prepare How did you read the situation? Was this a manner to which you had a particular interest or a high degree of confidence perhaps. So presence is the inner self showing up. being the most authentic version of ourselves most often comes from this inner alignment.

And when we have inner alignment, our body language is in sync with the message that we are conveying. And people notice, you can't fake presence. You can't fake confidence, you must become it. When we have presence, we feel powerful. And so now that we have a better understanding of what presence is, let's learn more about how we feel powerful and how we can overcome our own imposter syndrome.