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Understanding executive presence: Perspectives of business professionals
Abstract
Executive presence is an unclear concept but one that reportedly has a substantial influence on successful leadership. The purpose of this study was to understand the meaning of executive presence from the perspectives of business professionals with expertise in the effectiveness of organizational executives. From interviews with 34 professionals, 5 main findings emerged: (a) executive presence is based on audience perceptions of the characteristics of particular people, (b) 10 core characteristics affect executive presence (status and reputation, physical appearance, projected confidence, communication ability, engagement skills, interpersonal integrity, values-in-action, intellect and expertise, outcome delivery ability, and coercive power use), (c) perceptions are based on impressions made during initial contacts (first 5 characteristics) and on evaluations made over time (second 5 characteristics), (d) the characteristics combine in different ways to form 4 presence archetypes (positive presence, unexpected presence, unsustainable presence, and dark presence), and (e) the majority of the executives described as having presence were men. Based on the interview material, we suggest that a person with executive presence is someone who, by virtue of how he or she is perceived by audience members at any given point in time, exerts influence beyond that conferred through formal authority. The findings serve to highlight the complexity of executive presence, particularly in terms of the breadth of characteristics that underpin this construct and the influence of time on people's perceptions.
... Executive Presence é um tema relativamente novo na academia, definido por Bates & Weighart (2014) como a capacidade de mobilizar, influenciar e engajar pessoas e por Dagley & Gaskin (2014) como a habilidade de uma pessoa em exercer influência além da sua autoridade formal. Ambos autores estudaram o Executive Presence como um Skill para altos executivos de negócios dentro das organizações Diante da caracterização de sucesso em projetos e da importância da presença do Executive Presence nos executivos, a proposta desse trabalho é entender a relevância deste Soft Skill em gerentes de projetos que, não raro, necessitam mobilizar, influenciar, engajar pessoas e exercer autoridade, muitas vezes, acima de sua autoridade formal no desempenho de suas tarefas para o sucesso do projeto. ...
Study goals: The objective is to analyze the behavior of the project manager within the Executive Presence perspective during the project execution and its relationship with the project's result.
Relevance / originality: Executive Presence is a topic relatively new in the Academy, present relationship with the project's success and is still scarcely ever studied in the area of project management.
Methodology / approach: Technical Report with study case in a Brazilian airline company.
Main results: Sponsor recognition in improving the service level resulting from the allocation of a project manager with an Executive Presence profile.
Theoretical / methodological contributions: Executive Presence study, little explored in the literature, in the area of project management.
... Research on expertise has also indicated the significance of presence for learning processes and performance (Waitzkin, 2008). Presence has been studied as a significant factor in quality relationships in psychotherapeutic (Colosimo & Pos, 2015;Geller et al., 2010) and executive leadership (Dagley & Gaskin, 2014;Macaux, 2014) settings. ...
Every coach is on a journey. The moment they enter a coach training programme or begin coaching, they enter a path of exploration with clients as well as beginning self-exploration, discernment and experiencing profound shifts. This study investigates that journey through the lens of professional development, expertise, and a way of being. Through semi-structured interviews of a wide range of coaches, from novice to expert, a set of differences along a spectrum has been compiled, along with development strategies to assist coaches on this journey toward expertise. Also explored is how coaches stay fit for purpose and an assessment of the demand for coach education, the offerings for such education, and an assessment of the real needs for coaches to develop toward expertise.
... Prior to this study and the work of Talley and Temple (2015), there was no indication that specific hand gestures created meaning for the observer. An executive coach or training program can assist the leader in identifying hand gestures used, based on this research, that minimize the leader's emotional connection and, therefore, his or her ability to influence and achieve results and also those gestures that create influence beyond positional power (Dagley & Gaskin, 2014). ...
Nonverbal immediacy is a core element of a leader's ability to lead followers. Nevertheless, there are no empirical studies regarding a link between a leader's hand gestures and followers' perceptions of immediacy (attraction to someone) or nonimmediacy (distancing). Guided by Mehrabian's theory of nonverbal behavior, this study included one independent variable segmented into seven levels (positive hand gestures defined as community hand, humility hands, and steepling hands; three defensive gestures, defined as hands in pocket, arms crossed over chest, and hands behind back; and neutral/no hand gestures) to test for immediacy or nonimmediacy. In this experimental study, participants (n = 300; male = 164; female = 143) were shown one of seven pictures of a leader. Four hypotheses were tested for main and interactional effects and all were supported by the results. Immediate communication received strong support, meaning immediacy on the part of a leader is likely to lead to increased emotional connection to achieve desirable outcomes. This study advances theory from previous research that specific hand gestures are more effective than others at creating immediacy between leaders and followers.
... In addition, interpersonal skills become an increasingly important aspect of leader capabilities as employees ascend into higher levels of management (Mumford et al., 2007). These "human" skills strongly and positively relate to others' perceptions of manager effectiveness (Tonidandel et al., 2012) as well as perceptions of executive presence (Dagley and Gaskin, 2014). ...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of interpersonal skills (emotional and political skills) and work engagement on transformational leadership and leader well-being at work.
Design/methodology/approach
– Emotional control, emotional sensitivity, political skills, work engagement, transformational leadership behaviors, and job satisfaction were assessed in an empirical study of 278 employees. The relationships between emotional skills, political skills, work engagement, and transformational leadership were evaluated using participants in managerial positions (n=159). The combined influence of interpersonal skills and work engagement on job satisfaction was examined as a comparison between managers and non-managers (n=119).
Findings
– In addition to the positive effects of work engagement on outcome measures, results showed political skill is an important capability contributing to transformational leadership and leaders’ job satisfaction. Findings also showed the interaction of emotional skill, political skill, and work engagement contributed to job satisfaction among managers.
Practical implications
– Organizations must provide managers with opportunities to develop political skills or modify selection processes to identify candidates who possess political skills for management positions. Organizations will also benefit from implementing ways to engage managers in their work to facilitate transformational leader behaviors and promote their well-being. In addition, organizations can work to identify and develop managers’ emotional control and sensitivity skills specific to individual needs.
Originality/value
– Research investigating personal attributes that influence transformational leadership as an outcome is limited. This study contributes to the leadership literature and sheds light on the literature on the microfoundations of management competencies by examining managers’ skills and engagement on their leader behaviors and job satisfaction. Insights are discovered regarding the combination of emotional skills, political skills, and work engagement that indicate interpersonal skills and engagement have supplementary effects on transformational leader behaviors and leader well-being.
Digested key message
What are the critical components of Inspirational Leadership and Executive Presence? These are two ambiguous concepts that are both hard to define and difficult to achieve within business. There is a wealth of research pertaining to the strengths and characteristics of leaders. However, the distinct qualities exuded by those leaders identified as Inspirational, and what it means to have Executive Presence, remain relatively unexamined.
In this research we attempted to identify those qualities and explore the differences in concept of both terms. We also looked at the perceived value of having leaders with these qualities in an organisation. We found that although there are four main qualities of Executive Presence such as Gravitas and Confidence, Inspirational Leadership actually consists of intrapersonal (Emotional) qualities (e.g. Integrity, Vision and Charisma) as well as interpersonal (Social) qualities (e.g. Inspiring and Engaging).
RESUMO Este artigo é uma Revisão Sistemática da Literatura, um trabalho de caráter exploratório, sobre o conceito de Executive Presence, termo sem uma definição única na literatura, porém sua importância como habilidade fundamental em posições de liderança é um consenso entre os autores mais profícuos, que relacionam habilidades interpessoais que destacam o indivíduo entre os demais, potencializando suas competências sociais. Em uma perspectiva aplicada, o tema é abordado como habilidade de liderança, que legitima o líder. O objetivo deste artigo é realizar uma revisão sistemática da literatura sobre o tema Executive Presence descrevendo o conteúdo e a evolução da pesquisa nesse campo. Palavras-chave: executive presence, liderança, habilidades interpessoais. ABSTRACT This article is a Systematic Review of Literature, an exploratory work on the concept of Executive Presence, a term without a single definition in the literature, but its importance as a fundamental skill in leadership positions is a consensus among the most successful authors, who relate interpersonal skills that make the individual stand out from the rest, enhancing their social skills. In an applied perspective, the theme is approached as a leadership skill, which legitimizes the leader. The objective of this article is to carry out a systematic review of the literature on the topic Executive Presence, describing the content and the evolution of researches in this field.
This study investigated the potential effects of CEO gender and ethnicity on crisis communication efforts in Japan. Literature on how Japanese perceive male/female and Japanese/non-Japanese leaders was examined, followed by a discussion of three major mechanisms through which gender and ethnicity can influence audience perceptions: (1) ingroup bias, (2) role congruity considerations, and (3) shifting standards and expectations. A 2 (crisis response) × 2 (CEO gender) × 2 (CEO ethnicity) between-subjects experimental design was employed to assess the impact of CEO gender and ethnicity on audience perceptions of the CEO and the organization in crisis. Results showed no negative effects of deviating from the stereotypical image of a male Japanese CEO. Rather, both being female and non-Japanese positively influenced perceptions of the CEO. However, only the effect of CEO ethnicity was reflected in judgements of organizational reputation.
Study goals: Present the scenario about the academic production for Executive Presence.
Relevance / originality: Bibliographic Study of a soft skill with an increasing number of publications in the last three years.
Methodology / approach: Bibliographic Study
Main results: Presenting the classic authors, the scientific journals with the largest publications, the most used constructs, the most referenced areas of interest and the most recent works of authors with a greater number of publications on the topic.
On an annual basis, Fortune releases the top 500 revenue-generating companies in the United States, referred to as the Fortune 500 collectively. The leadership team of these organizations is under scrutiny for their lack of diversity at the upper levels of management. In fact, in the history of releasing this report, there has only been one out lesbian in the CEO position (appointed in 2018). This phenomenological study of lesbians who are the senior executive levels of Fortune 500 companies seeks to understand their lived experiences within corporations to better understand what barriers, if any, exist for lesbians at the highest levels of corporations. What resulted was a discussion and insight into how these high-level leaders are redefining executive presence to incorporate more of who they are authentically versus the mold of a leader that they have been coached to or observed during their ascent to the top of corporate leadership ranks. The goal is to challenge the academy and corporations to utilize theories, such as queer theory, that push outside of traditional research to understand and fix issues related to gender more thoroughly.
Leadership capability is a source of authority; professional credibility is a source of legitimacy. A combination of both will create respect and trust by peers and engagement with followers. The challenge is how to do so in health sector organisations which operate with often complex people and process dynamics. This chapter will analyse a meaning for the term professional credibility and identify how health sector leaders incorporate it into their leadership identity—a particular issue because they operate in a world that spans managerial and clinical logics, managerial and clinical objectives, and managerial and clinical decision-making processes. In this environment, health leaders are often faced with a balancing act between the two sets of priorities: building on strengths when they converge and resolving tensions when they don’t. In practice, this implies that not only do they require the ability to envision a compelling future but also the capacity to realise that future, to develop innovative solutions, and to get others to rally round to implement these. Professional credibility complements leadership capability in achieving these stretching goals.
In a dramatic scene in the film Miracle on 34th Street, the idealistic lawyer asserts that we should “not overlook those lovely intangibles, as we'll find out in the end they are the only things that really matter.”¹ Presence is one of those intangibles, an abstract concept that cannot be measured directly. According to Merriam-Webster,² presence is defined first as person-to-person physical presence, or in her/his direct vicinity, or being with a thing that is “visible and concrete.” But more importantly, another more elusive presence is “something (as a spirit) felt or believed to be present.”
Self-confidence has two aspects: general self-confidence, which is a stable personality trait that develops in early childhood, and specific self-confidence, which is a changing mental and emotional state associated with the specific task or situation at-hand. We develop both types of self-confidence through automatic, mostly unconscious, internal dialogues whereby we make judgments about ourselves based on our experiences and others’ feedback. While both types of self-confidence profoundly affect our thoughts, emotions, and behavior, our levels of general self-confidence are important primarily in new and unusual circumstances while our specific self-confidence is pertinent to our everyday performance. High levels of both types are essential for effective leadership and enable the leader to influence his collaborators, or followers, to build task-specific self-confidences that can strengthen their job performance. This chapter includes instructions for a conscious mental process called self-leadership, which effective leaders routinely employ and through which we each can learn to positively influence our internal dialogues so that we, too, can build on our innate abilities and develop specific self-confidences to do what we choose.
This study examined the predictive ability of emotional intelligence (EI) to predict impression management. It is assumed that EI, as an intrapersonal and interpersonal ability of recognizing and managing emotions in one's self and in others will have a significant impact on impression management behavior. The sample consisted of 250 middle-level executives from four two-wheeler manufacturing organizations located in northern India. Results based on step-wise regression reveal that Reality Awareness and Controlled Problem Solving dimensions of EI had a positive impact on impression management behavior. However, the Positive Attitude about Life dimension of EI was found to be a strong negative predictor of impression management behavior. The implications of the results are discussed in terms of relevance of emotional intelligence in creating positive impression within the organizational context.
This article concerns the real-world importance of leadership for the success or failure of organizations and social institutions. The authors propose conceptualizing leadership and evaluating leaders in terms of the performance of the team or organization for which they are responsible. The authors next offer a taxonomy of the dependent variables used as criteria in leadership studies. A review of research using this taxonomy suggests that the vast empirical literature on leadership may tell us more about the success of individual managerial careers than the success of these people in leading groups, teams, and organizations. The authors then summarize the evidence showing that leaders do indeed affect the performance of organizations--for better or for worse--and conclude by describing the mechanisms through which they do so.
This research sheds light on the role of the dark side of leadership in employee creativity by examining how and when department leader abusive supervision may flow down organizational levels to undermine team member creativity. Analyses of multiphase, multisource, and multilevel data show that team leader abusive supervision mediates the negative relationship between department leader abusive supervision and team member creativity. Team leaders' and members' attributions for the motives behind their own supervisors' abusive supervision, which we classify as performance-promotion and injury-initiation motives, determine the extent to which team leader abusive supervision accounts for the effect of department leader abusive supervision on team member creativity.
In this article, we provide a brief review of the current and past research on leadership perceptions and performance. We then describe four principles that have emerged from many decades of research, which can provide new directions for future leadership theory and research.
This article provides a summary of work done by Raven and his colleagues on bases of power. It ranges from the initial work in 1959 of French and Raven through decades of follow-up work, and ties the work to that of others doing work on power bases. After the summary, the author responds to a series of questions that probe the work in greater depth, allowing explication of much of the thinking underlying and leading to publications of Raven and colleagues that are well known to social psychologists.
While leadership is indisputably one of the most pervasive topics in our society, the vast majority of existing research has focused on leadership as a positive force. Taking a follower-centric approach to the study of leadership, we integrate research on the Romance of Leadership and the dark side of leadership by examining followers' perceptions of aversive leadership in the context of public high schools. Although Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich (1985) demonstrated that the Romance of Leadership also includes the overattribution of negative outcomes to leaders, subsequent research has failed to explore the implications of this potentially darker side of romanticising leaders. Specifically, we examine perceptions of principals' aversive leadership and traditional affective, behavioral, and performance outcomes of followers in a sample of 342 dyads. Followers assessed their principals' leadership behaviors and self-rated their levels of job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and resistance, while principals assessed their followers' citizenship behaviors, complaining behaviors, and job performance. Results show that perceptions of aversive leadership are positively related to follower resistance and negatively related to followers' job satisfaction. In addition, a usefulness analysis revealed that follower-rated variables were significantly related to perceptions of aversive leadership above and beyond leader-rated variables, suggesting that the relationship between negative outcomes and aversive leadership may be more constructed than real. In sum, the tendency to romanticise leadership may also lead to a proclivity to readily misattribute or overattribute blame to leadership as a convenient scapegoat for negative outcomes. © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation