What One Thing Would Help Leaders With Presence?
I received this question on my YouTube channel in response to the video, “What is Presence?“: What one thing do you think would help leaders with presence? I couldn’t answer it fully on YouTube as I was limited to 500 characters, so here’s my full answer…
It depends on what you mean by presence. Do you mean real presence or what looks like presence?
What I mean by “presence” is something no one can fake. It’s the real you, embodied, in action. But “charisma”, as I explain in the second video in the series, “Presence versus Charisma“, is different. I use the term charisma to mean faked presence. Charisma can mimic presence, but it’s usually found out either because of the charismatic person’s negative effect on others or because he/she crumbles under pressure.
I’ll assume you mean real presence. Now your question was, “What one thing do you think would help leaders with presence?”
In my view, at the early stage of a leader’s growth, there’s no ONE thing that would help leaders begin to express their unique presence. Anything that raises people’s confidence… their connection with their values and ability to express those values in the choices they make… the way they stand, move and behave (especially the way they talk) … and their capacity to choose their responses to other people (not blindly react)… will help. You see, I believe there are degrees of presence and many ways to start expressing more of it.
But if you’d instead asked, “What one thing do you think would help leaders express their full, pure presence,” I’d have said something different. I’d say, work on your sense of inner wholeness.
That’s because presence flows from an inner state – a state of wholeness.
By “wholeness,” I mean freedom from fear, inner conflict and the constant need to compare yourself against other people. It’s a sense of fullness; that you’re not driven to achieve something from a sense of lack. You experience an inner wholeness and yet also, at the same time, a desire to creatively express more of it. So you don’t stagnate. And you live your life with no fixed expectations about the future and what should or shouldn’t happen. (That’s not to say you live life with no intent or plans, but you have no emotional attachments to the specific way life unfolds.) Similarly, there’s no unhappiness about your past; no feelings that this or that shouldn’t have happened.
This is what I call pure presence and I describe it in more detail in chapter 5 of The Three Levels of Leadership.
Now I believe the path towards this state is narrower. It’s about realising that the self-image you thought was you, isn’t real, but is just a mental construction… that instead the real You is a centre of pure will, pure awareness and pure imagination. It’s also about realising that while you’re a distinct individual, you’re connected to everyone around you, not separate.
So if someone wants to express their pure presence, I believe they have to practise self-mastery. This means seeing and disidentifying from their limiting beliefs, taking control of their mind and going beyond their old self-image – many times – in a upward spiral. That’s when leaders will realise they don’t just HAVE presence, but that they ARE a presence.
I suggest ways of working on self-mastery in chapter 9 of The Three Levels of Leadership.
The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach. His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011. You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com. If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews. If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.
