Good morning, everybody. I am delighted to have you all here with me this morning for me, miss this morning and then for the rest of you. Clearly, we're joining from all over the world.It's so great to have you here in this session where we're going to talk about building your executive presence and personal brand so that you can get to where you need to go and want to go in your career. I'm gonna give you just a little bit of background. Uh I come to you this morning after having a long career as a television journalist, I covered the news in cities across the United States for 20 years and then left that business to start my own agency where I did a lot of professional development work and continue to do so.

I work with everybody from C Suite all the way to mid-level managers and emerging leaders on how to really make sure they are ready to shine when it's their time to speak up in meetings to present at an annual review or for their department meetings. Whatever that opportunity is, I want to make sure you have the skills to shine in your moment. And so I do a lot of this one on one small group, as well as large group virtual training across the world. I also do a lot of conferences and keynotes at conferences, everything from tech to health care, to women's conferences all over the world as well. Happened to be lucky enough to have done a TED talk a couple of years ago. So let's talk about executive presence. Hey, Christa from Raleigh and Daniella from Brazil. All right, I'd love for you to share in the chat. What do you, what is your definition of executive presence when you hear that term? What do you think it means? Would love to hear your definition of it. Please share in the chat. There are a lot of different thoughts behind it but there tend to be, there tends to be a lot of agreement about what we think of. Yes, confidence authority gravitas. Yes, indeed, empathy, empowered leadership, respect how others perceive you, professionalism, power, inspiring someone that people look after and look up to as well. Yes, someone who with confidence gravitas and immediate connection, visibility. Yes.

All of these descriptors are exactly what leads to having that description of executive presence in the research that I have done over the last 15 years. What we found is that executive presence has three main pillars and a couple of you mentioned this gravitas, communication and appearance.

And when I say appearance, please don't take that the wrong way. I don't mean the the uh you know, so so much about the vanity, I mean, appearance as in what is your confidence level when you walk into a room? What is that confidence when you stand up in front of the room or on camera for a virtual meeting? The appearance is more so about how you're showing up. Not again the vanity piece of it, but what we also found that executive presence really reflects how you act, how you speak and how you look. So those are those three pieces when you put them together and why does this matter? It's because leadership roles are often given to those who look and act the part, haven't you in your career? Known other women or other peers in your organization who had every single box checked to get that promotion and yet they didn't get it. Why is that often times there is a missing piece? So presence alone won't get you promoted, but it's absence will impede your progress. And this comes from the Center for Talent Innovation. And that's the piece that we're talking about today. You might have every bit of experience and, and results and you got your head down, you're working hard. Why are you being overlooked? And so let's talk about what are those elements that leaders c suite folks decide they're going to promote someone.

So the center of talent innovation did AAA long range study and a survey with CEO S from 260 different companies and asked them, what are the characteristics you're looking for in order to promote someone into a leadership position? 26% of the respondents said those high priority folks that were going to promote 26% of it is their executive presence. That's a lot, that's a quarter of how you're showing up to work and it seems like a puzzle like what, what all those things with the executive presence? How do you become that person who can be described as having executive presence? What are the actionable things we can do so that people view us and that we view ourselves as having executive presence. Sometimes I call it the X factor. Someone walks in the room and you say, gosh, they just got it all together and what are those things? But here's what we know about women. 60% of college students in the United States and for Western Europe are women. 57% of college graduates are women. Women are outnumbering men in graduate school by a hefty amount. And women earned the majority of doctoral degrees over the last 11 years in the United States. Yet only 15% of the CEO S at the Fortune 500 companies are women. Now, according to the World Economic Forum, we are making progress in 2002. It was just seven women at the helm of Fortune 500 companies 2012, we were up to 1820 2141 and 2022. Right now. Halfway through the year, we're at 74.

So we're making good progress, but we sure have a long way to go. And we did a survey with the North Carolina Chamber and there a force in Business conference which is a women's conference. And we asked respondents to ask, what is the one thing you are looking for in your career? Overwhelmingly, the largest amount of women surveyed, they want a promotion to leadership. The next piece is equal pay, then having work life balance or integration, respect from colleagues and then a small amount of people of women looking for better maternity leave and paternity leave for that matter. And that's in the United States that continues to be a critical problem that we are the only country in the developed world that does not have paid maternity leave or paternity leave. It is solely dependent on the companies. So we have a lot of work to do in order to be able to create that pipeline and pathway to women in leadership. So they don't have to always act like a man to get that place in leadership. So as we drill down to these three tenants of what it is that creates that X factor. Let's begin with gravitas. And when we look at the definition of gravitas, reserved dignity, propriety, and good taste and behavior and speech of a leader that all sounds very fancy.

But really when we break it down, it's exuding confidence or grace under fire, acting decisively showing integrity, demonstrating emotional intelligence. I know you all were saying that as well, projecting vision burnishing reputation because we know nowadays you make one false step and it's all over the internet.

It's tough. It's a challenge. What I like to say as well with gravitas, we have to know our stuff. There is no excuse for not being prepared, reading, studying, learning, continuously, being prepared to speak up and present when you have the opportunity, having a really good amount of self-awareness and then aiming to be a thought leader. I'd like for you to share in the chat right now.

What are you doing as a continuous learner? The fact that you're here today at this global conference is one way you're doing this, but I'd like to hear from you. What other things are you doing to continuously learn? We know that growth mindset is so important. Yes, I will uh I will share the powerpoint at the end and if I can't get it up quickly enough in time, I'll make sure Anna has it so she can share it. Eva Yes, the slides do match my jacket. It's called branding, right? So I, I talk a lot about personal branding, so it's recognizable. Um So tell me in the chat, what are you doing? Cole a learning committee at work. Yes, continuous professional learning program, self reflection, peer group supervision, facilitating, I am remarkable workshop by Google. Yes, linkedin.

Learning, making sacrifices to, to get where I need to go. Yes. Courser networking events, Udemy or Udemy. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. I know there's different ways connecting with a mentor. Networking. Yes. All of these things are necessary. Here are some other things I'd like for you to put in your toolbox to continue as a learner and to develop yourself. I don't know about you all, but I'm a busy working mom. And so I have two kids that I'm constantly juggling the busyness of life. And I have, I have a stack of books on my nightstand that I have full intentions to read. But I tell you what, by 10 o'clock at night I lay in the bed, I pick up the book and lo and behold, I'm asleep by page two. I don't mean to be, but I'm so tired. I give and give and give all day. And so what I did a couple of years ago for my birthday, I asked my husband, can you please get me a subscription to Audible? Anybody? Uh Quick. Uh Yes. Love audible senna. Yes, I listen to my books. So when I'm driving places, I listen to a book when I'm taking a walk, when I have a little alone time and I'm busy doing other things around the house, whether it's chores or whatever it is. I listen to those books so I'm finding ways to do it. The other thing I love this app called Blinkist. Has anybody heard of Blinkist? Ok. For those of you in the United States back in high school, we had this thing called Cliff notes.

It was kind of like cheating. You'd be assigned to read a book and then you'd go by the Cliff Notes version, which was a shortened condensed version. Well, blinks is like the same thing. But for grownups with blinks, it will take a book, the Blinks company and they shrink it down to the highlights and you can get basically an overview of a book in 15 minutes. You can both read it or listen to the overview of the book in 15 minutes. So that's another way to continuously learn. And then the other thing that I love is Otter. I'm holding up my phone because I want you to see it. It's an easy app. You can download Blinkist is also an app you download to your phone. Otter is a free app and Otter like the animal O tt er where I use this for productivity. When I go to meetings, whether virtual or in person, I really want to make a connection with the person I'm conversing with and I want to look at them when they're speaking. And so rather than constantly taking notes, I ask permission in advance and I ask if I can record our meeting, the audio of it on order.

And then at the end of the meeting order, transcribes all the audio into a text document and then you email yourself the notes. How amazing is that? Now, you have the entire meeting in notes that you can go back and look at the highlights. I think it's an amazing tool that you can use. Now, let's talk about the self awareness piece. Are you doing one on ones with your supervisors? Yes. Abso you have to be doing that. Yes. It's difficult at times to hear challenging feedback, but it's in that uncomfortable moment when you're hearing areas of improvement that must take place. That is where the growth happens. We have to be ok with hearing feedback, both positive and negative in order to make that next step.

The other thing for those of you leading teams, are you doing one on ones with your direct reports? Because that's also where you're going to get feedback from them about how they feel about your leadership qualities. We need to think about it in a 360 way. So that leads into 360 evaluations. Has anybody ever done a 360 evaluation? There are many tools on the market that allow for you to get feedback from your peers. Wow. Can it be helpful? We only see ourselves from a very art? It's, we're all inside our own heads sometimes and we don't often see how others see us. So I'm so glad to see. Yes, Lattice Grow. That's one. Yes. Uh There are a number of different ones. One of the programs that I'm using that I'm certified in is called Tilt 365. And it allows for you to get great feedback from your team. It also allows you to do your own evaluations which are truly helpful in your own personal growth. All right. So please pop in the chat. What are you doing to increase your self-awareness? Are you doing those one on ones with your supervisor with your direct reports? Absolutely. I love hearing this. Yes. And, and we can all share you the, the one on ones. That's, that's the, the first key to getting that self-awareness. It is a gift to get that true feedback. I'm so glad that you all are doing these regular one on ones. Daisy. That's amazing. Yeah. Having weekly, awesome and awfuls meetings. I love that. So Jennifer, yes.

Regular one on ones but not a 360. I would talk to your hr folks or your learning and development people in your organization to see if they offer any kinds of three sixties. So now as we think about that gravitas part, let's move into communication, Mirielle Guano, who is the former CEO of one of the world's largest champagne companies, says intelligence knowledge or experience are important but might and might get the job done. But strong communication skills are what will get you promoted. Just think about that. Warren Buffett says it, the one easy way to become worth 50% more than you are now is to hone your communication skills, both written and verbal. There is an interview that Warren Buffett did a couple of years ago. He was asked, what would be your number one advice? He said you must get your communication skills built up. He also talked about when he was in high school and in college, he was so terrified of public speaking so much so that he would actually have to run to the bathroom and throw up before his presentations. He was so paralyzed by fear. So the first thing he did when he graduated from college is he signed up for public speaking courses. He and, and look at him, I mean, good Lord. It's just in his incredible is on his career. Is incredible.

Uh Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Atlantic Company and the all the different virgin brands. He also was a terrible presenter early on in his career, he was told if you don't fix the communication piece, you'll never be successful. Clearly, he addressed that. So why does this matter?

I like to say every time you have the opportunity to speak in the workplace, you are auditioning for your next promotion. I'm gonna let that sink in for a second. Every time you have the opportunity to speak at work, you're auditioning for your next promotion. Now if you speak and it doesn't go well, raise your hand and do better. The next time speak, people are not born good speakers. They work at it. They practice. Here's the thing that we all have to get past is the human attention span and it's getting worse. By the minute we know this. Is it the chicken or the egg? Did we create a smaller attention span with all of our technology? or have we always had poor attention spans? The reason I'm showing you a picture of a goldfish is because researchers studied goldfish to see how long they could pay attention at the side of a tank before swimming off. I'd love to hear in the chat. How long do you think a goldfish can pay attention before swimming away? How many seconds? Three seconds, five seconds, three minutes, three seconds, one second, one second, about six seconds. All right. Here's what the answer is in this research. They could pay attention for eight seconds before swimming away. Second question. How long do you think humans can pay attention before our minds start to wander? Please put in the chat. Six seconds. One second. 1510 seconds, two minutes, one minute, three seconds, 30 seconds, three seconds, 12 seconds.

Ok. Here's the answer a decade ago. 12 seconds. We're now down to nine seconds. RR Oh, my goodness. So what are we going to do to engage the mind? Now, here's the thing you're sitting here thinking, well, that's ridiculous. Sharon. You've been sitting here talking for 20 minutes and I've been paying attention to you. But here's the deal, folks, goldfish are simple creatures. They only have a one track mind but humans have the incredible ability to multitask. You're sitting here right now and depending on what time zone you're in, you might be having a second script in your mind saying, oh, I wonder if I'm gonna have time to go to the bathroom between her session and the next one. Can I grab a cup of coffee to so and so have practice after school today, right? Our minds are incredibly complex and we can think of so many things at once. However, when you're speaking, particularly in the workplace, we don't want our audience's minds to be going all over the place. We want them right here in the palm of our hand. We can move hearts and minds if we can connect. And so that's why it's essential that we become better communicators. And step one in the process is to know your audience. Who are they, what do they want? What problem are you solving for them?

And only when you can begin your preparation for your next presentation by answering these questions only then will you be able to understand, connect and resonate with that audience? People skip that step and you shouldn't, the next thing for any of you all who took public speaking maybe in college, university or high school. You might remember the four main foundations of public speaking, the purpose. Are you informing, persuading, inspiring or motivating or entertaining?

Oftentimes in the business world, we're doing a couple of these things, especially in tech. We're usually informing, right? We're, we're giving data, we're, we're giving company updates, we're giving project updates. Sometimes we're persuading because we're presenting to our supervisors or C suite because we need investment into our project. So you're you're persuading and then inspiring or motivating. If you're leading a team, you need to be constantly motivating your team to action entertainment. That's good.

Sometimes you can use entertainment as well, but a really strong presentation often contains several of these parts of purpose. So you need to embrace your purpose. Are you solving a customer or a pure challenge? What is the impact of your work? And for nervous speakers? If you can put this front and center, you can start to get past and out of your head of that negative self talk, put the mission front and center and stop thinking about, oh my gosh. I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. Stop thinking that, stop the self negative talk, think about and embrace your purpose and that will help you get out of your head. Now, the next piece we all have to think about when we are preparing for our next presentation is that it's the spoken word. So your content needs to be written conversationally your audience is hearing you, they're not reading. Otherwise you might as well just print out your slide deck and email it to them. You are speaking so spoken words are not the same as written words. You need to hold your audience's attention. And the way you do that is with conversational speaking. Now, if you have a ton of charts and graphs, which in technology, we often do. It's important that you are explaining those in conversational ways. You can always add all the details into an appendix in your presentation. Otherwise you might as well just email it to them, connect your data with narrative, tell a story, connect those dots. I like what Alan Weiss says.

Logic makes people think emotion, makes them act impact comes from stories. When you want to inspire action, you need to invoke an emotion. First, here's the other thing you have to think about with your audience. They're all thinking what's in it for me, time is precious. It is the one resource we absolutely cannot get back. So you must think in terms of your audience and how you are serving them. Now, I like to teach this quick, easy to learn format. When I do my presentation coaching, I work with companies all over the world and with leaders and in our workshops which are expanded, we actually do a lot of this work virtually and in person. But I teach the set format because it's an easy way to get to the point of your message. This can be used as an elevator speech. It can be used as a five minute, 10 minute, 20 minute 40 minute presentation. Basically, when you're asked a question, I'm gonna show you a couple of very simple examples. The set format is the s the solution or the short answer. The first thing out of your mouth, the e are the evidence points or proof points that support that answer. And then the T is like your conclusion, how you're transitioning out of your statement or presentation. Now in technology, you have so much data as your evidence points, lots and lots of things. You also oftentimes have third party credibility that you can use within your presentation.

Use examples that starts to help get to the point of storytelling and connecting data through narrative using comparisons. Where were we last quarter? Where are we this quarter? And then again, story, you become an advanced level presenter. When you can incorporate story into your presentations.

Can you use a client case study to exemplify your team's work? Here's a quick example. If your boss were to ask, how's that ABC project going short answer? It's right on schedule. Here are my evidence points to support that we've completed phases one and two and we'll start phase three on Monday, we anticipating having a draft of the project ready for your review next week. Does that work for you? This is truly important for a Q and A after a presentation as well. Here's the the rabbit hole that I fall into. I love to give all the details. Oftentimes I have a hard time getting to the point and just answering the question because I want to give you all the information. And so I'm constantly having to edit out some of the details. And so this is a way that I use to help get to the point. Now I'm gonna show you another example. If someone were to ask, why is executive presence important? Here's my answer. If you want to make an immediate impact in the workplace, you should aim to build your executive presence to do that.

You'll need to focus on developing three key principles, gravitas communication and your appearance by growing in each of these areas, you'll be seen as having executive presence and your career opportunities will benefit as a result. Now, when I put this into the set format, you can see here that short answer the s that's my statement. If you want to make an immediate impact, you need to build your executive presence. And then those are those evidence points that show you how you can make that impact with gravitas, communication and appearance. And then my tea is my conclusion, bringing it home, you will be seen as having executive presence if you can grow in each of those areas. So that's a quick down and dirty example. Of how I use that format in my messaging. All right, I'd love to know how many of you get into these meetings and get man interrupted or interrupted or do you get bro propria? Do you know what that is? You give an idea? You get no feedback or you might get interrupted and then two minutes later, someone else on the team, most of the time a man says basically the same thing and you're like, hang on a second. I just said that I just gave that idea. That's called bro, appropriating. When someone else takes your idea, particularly a bro. And in tech world, there's a bro culture. Let's be honest. All right. Yes, mansplained. Oh my goodness. It's everywhere. So here is a technique that I learned from reading many blog posts about Doctor Susan Rice.

Do you see Doctor Susan Rice is the African American woman the third on the right in this picture, she worked in President Obama's 1st and 2nd administration. She got mansplained interrupted, bro, appropriated all the time and she was sick of it. This woman is an incredibly powerful woman.

In fact, she was one of only a couple of women on his cabinet. So she came up with a technique called amplification. Has anybody heard of that? You can Google this the amplification method and this is how it works when a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author and this forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.

Yes. Now this also happens and it's not always women. There are plenty of male allies who are soft spoken or who are also interrupted. This is a technique that you can use to help people get heard and seen and not interrupted and appropriated. This is an incredibly powerful technique that Doctor Susan Rice employed and what she did here's how you also do this. You have to prepare to amplify by having an informal preme with your ally or your allies. You go to the women or other allies in your circle and you say I'm going to be bringing this idea to today's meeting. I need you to jump in right afterwards and build upon it and say yes, Sharon, can you tell us more about that? And then the idea is yours and no one else can claim it. You have to make sure you're clarifying the true purpose of the meeting. You've got to go in with that one big idea and have all the evidence points to support it. And here's another thing that I like to say, especially for women, whether it's in person or virtual, arrive to the ear, arrive early and stay later to make connections. Guess what? I'm a working mom. I can't go to happy hour after work. I'm running around town, bringing my kids to tennis practice, wrestling practice. I can't go to those happy hours with my male colleagues.

And so I make sure I try to stay late or arrive early or hopefully both to all these meetings to make sure I'm starting to build connections. Now, let's talk about how we're communicating. So we've talked about knowing your audience. We talked about clear concise communication.

Now, let's talk about the how of communication. Look at this babe, who look at her. That's me in the 10th grade. I was 15 years old and my mother let me out the house looking like this. What kind of hair do is that? That is called the mullet. Good golly 19 eighties. Right back at you. It's business in the front and a party in the back w the reason I show this folks, it's, yes, it's a little levity but it's because you have to be comfortable in your own skin no matter what you look or what you feel like because you can only fake it for so long. You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable and speaking up. Even if you don't feel like you're prepared, you gotta do it, you gotta rip the band aid off and the more you do it, the more confident you'll become. And so you have to just lean into being the real you. Here's what we know the way you communicate and how people perceive you. This work has been ongoing for more than three decades by Doctor Albert Moab and who's at UCL A and he's been studying how people perceive you when you are communicating. Now, I first looked at this pie chart and said this cannot be true.

55% of my message is my body language, how I'm moving and, and what my face looks like. 38% is my vocal delivery. My tone modulations, pausing and only 7% of my words. No. How can that possibly be true? I've worked so hard on this presentation and then I show them a video. But first, I'd like for you to if you haven't seen this quote, I love it. One of my favorite, favorite shoes, I've learned that people will forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel and that is true. Just watch this for a moment.

My name is Phil Davidson and I am seeking our party's nomination for the position of Stark County treasurer in terms of elections across Starr County. I have represented our party twice on the county ballot in both the primary and the general elections when I ran for Stark County clerk of courts in 1996 and Stark County commissioner in 2000. And I will not apologize for my tone tonight. Who

Mr Stark County? Ok. Do we agree? Yes, Arleta. He sounds so angry. All right. If we forget politics, if we were to transcribe what he just said and read it. It wouldn't be outrageous. It's just, I've been a Republican in times good. I've been a Republican in times bad, but you can't hear any of that with him pacing and shouting at us. So, Doctor Mar Roban is correct, you can blow up your entire presentation if your body language, vocal delivery and message are not working congruently together. So it's incredibly important that we are doing that and it begins with purposeful, good vocal delivery and that means good breathing ahead of time, nice, deep breaths to quell those nerves before a big presentation. And I say nerves can be turned into good energy. If you are not a little bit nervous before a presentation, you're either on beta blockers or you're sleepy and your presentation will be flat. You need to have those nerves, those butterflies to give you the right energy channel them use proper volume. So you can be heard. Inflection, pacing and tempo, vary your delivery. And then we have to think about those filler words, try to stop using them. I'm a sewer. I begin many of my sentences with the word. So even when they're not necessary, I'm constantly trying to eliminate those phrases. You also want to avoid upspeak, which is when you end your declarative sentence sounding like a question and then you don't sound so so sure of yourself. You've probably heard that and unfortunately, it happens a lot with women. We also wanna eliminate vocal fry.

I, I feel like this is a problem with younger people. They fry their voice. If you've heard that who many senior leaders tell us? Please get people to stop that vocal frying. The way you fix it is with, with increasing your volume, you can't fry your voice with volume. The next thing, make sure your body language denotes confidence, stand tall or when you're sitting for a presentation scoop forward so that you're not using the back of the chair and that forces good posture, good posture leads to good breathing, good breathing leads to clarity of mind and then the words come out easier, make sure your gestures are in the safe zone.

One of the top questions I get is I don't know what to do with my hands when I'm presenting, think of baseball. If, if you're in the US, which the safe zone is between your shoulders and your hips, keep your hands there and use your hands, use your hands when you're speaking, it helps you deliver more authentically and smile when appropriate, especially at the beginning of any presentation when you're introducing yourself, because it helps take away some of that tension in the room again, sitting posture, sit up straight and then use your friendlies.

Those are the people in the room who are cheering for you non verbally, they're giving you that non verbal thumbs up that you're doing. OK. Ask them in advance. I'm a little nervous. Please make sure that you're giving me nonverbal active listening so that I can feel confident with my presentation. You gotta prepare, practice and present. I love to use my phone to record myself before a big presentation and then play it back. Also, Toastmasters International is all over the world where you can sign up to practice your pre presentations. Everyone there for the same reason. Now, I'm running out of time. So I'm gonna fly through these last couple of slides. The like. So app is another app that you can use to practice your presentations. It actually counts your filler words and tells you how many you used. It's an incredible app to help you do better. The other part of communication is being a great listener. It's half of the equation when you speak, you're only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you can learn something new and you gotta make sure that you're using good active listening, which is founding, which is a desire to understand not to fix. It's a dialogue, not a monologue. And then virtual communication. I've got a guide that shows you that I'm gonna, I'm gonna have here very quickly. I'll add uh I'm gonna show you how you can get my guide. This is my virtual setup.

I put my camera up on two thick books so that it's eye level and you're not looking up my nose or at the uh ceiling fan here's the guide. I'm gonna show you really quickly how to get in contact with me. And I'll send this to you to show you how to have best practices for virtual set up. It gives you step by step on how to do so. And then the last piece is your appearance. Everyone's parent used to say dress for the job you want, not the one you have. But guess what? Unless we're looking into the future where we're all wearing the same outfits. Why does every movie have a shit wearing all the same gray outfits? I think it's hilarious, but COVID changed everything with our wardrobe. In fact, forget dressing for the job you want dress for the environment you're in. But I still say at least dress professionally, business professionally. I'm not saying throw away all your suits show up and at least look professional. I did a quick survey on Amazon. You can get professional clothing for not a ton of money and look at this little number I got for 12 bucks from Marshall's here in the US. So just, but the number one thing you want for appearance is your confidence. That is the one accessory that you own and that you can continually improve. So here's how to get a hold of me.

Would love to hear from you, email me and I'll send you the tip sheet on virtual meeting presentation or interviews. Best practices would love have you follow me on all the socials. I'm busiest on linkedin, but I also participate in the other ones and would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to seeing more presentations. Thank you for joining me. And uh again, would love to connect. Hit me up DM Me would love to start a conversation. Thank you very much, everybody.