Is Your Executive Presence Scaling with Your Role?
Are your leadership responsibilities growing? Either from moving up the corporate ladder or from navigating a role that demands more leadership, even without a formal increase in authority? If so, then the demands on how you show up are changing. Not just what you know, or what you can execute—but how others experience you in the moments that carry weight. The more visible your role becomes, the more your presence acts as a force multiplier—or a quiet liability.
Executive presence isn't about prescriptive polish or style. It’s not about sounding like other leaders or about specific non-verbal cues. It’s about how people feel in your presence. Do they feel steadier? Clearer? Safer? More aligned? Or do they feel tension, confusion, or the need to second-guess?
This becomes increasingly important as you move from managing teams to influencing systems. Early in your leadership path, presence is often centered on the ‘me’. Regulating yourself under pressure. Staying calm when stakes are high. Listening with intention. Delivering messages with clarity and conciseness. That kind of presence builds confidence in those around you.
As you rise, presence really has to scale. It’s no longer about whether you can handle pressure—it’s about whether your presence brings steadiness to the people and systems around you. When the stakes increase, does the room feel clearer because you’ve entered it? Can you hold competing agendas without adding heat? Do others feel anchored because you are? Can you influence systemic change?
Why Adding More Skills Won’t Close the Gap
Vertical ‘readiness’ is a critical part of vertical leadership. It’s the shift from being a capable contributor to becoming a centering force. It’s not about acquiring more knowledge or adding new tactics. It’s about evolving how you lead, how you communicate, and how you create movement—especially in complex or high-risk environments.
We define executive presence through three capacities that deepen as your role expands: Compose, Communicate, and Catalyze. You develop your composure not by staying calm for appearance’s sake, but by learning to regulate your internal state in a way that creates clarity and trust. Your communication shifts from simply delivering updates to shaping the strategic narrative that others can rally around. And your ability to catalyze becomes less about making things happen yourself and more about moving systems and people—with discernment and precision.
The Rising Leader vs the C-Suite Catalyzer
Each of these capacities shows up differently depending on where you sit in the organization. If you’re a rising leader—say, Director or VP—the key question is whether your presence communicates steadiness, trustworthiness, and readiness for greater visibility.
Take Lara, for example—a Director in a global healthcare company with strong technical credibility and a solid track record. Her team respected her, and her results were consistent. But in cross-functional meetings, she had a tendency to over-explain, jump into tactical problem-solving, or become visibly uncomfortable when challenged by more senior leaders. Her execution wasn’t in question—but her presence left others questioning whether she could handle broader scope. With some help, she didn’t just “improve communication.” She learned to pause, regulate urgency, and speak with more executive brevity. Her presence shifted. She was promoted into a VP role six months later. The difference wasn’t what she knew—it was how she showed up.
Now contrast that with Michael—a seasoned C-suite leader in a financial services firm. He had decades of experience, a sharp intellect, and strong board relationships. But as the company entered a period of uncertainty, with shifting markets and internal restructures, his team began to feel the strain. His communication, while technically sound, created confusion. His presence in tense meetings—marked by clipped tone, rapid pivots, and a visible sense of urgency—was unintentionally signaling instability. He wasn’t losing control, but people were absorbing his pressure instead of his clarity. The shift for him wasn’t about managing stress—it was about embodying stability in a way that kept the enterprise aligned. Once he learned to regulate not just himself, but his effect on others, meetings became clearer, decisions got easier, and momentum returned. The system got stronger because his presence did.
Making the Shift Takes Intention
If you're sitting at the executive table, the questions are different than they were five years ago. You’re responsible for system-wide clarity and influence. Can you speak in a way that settles a room without diminishing complexity? Can you carry ambiguity without collapsing it into false certainty—or panicking the people around you? Are you able to hold tension, field dissent, and still move the organization forward?
These shifts don’t happen automatically with a title change. They’re internal shifts that require intentional development. You may find yourself stepping into rooms you’ve earned the right to be in, and still wonder why you feel slightly off. You may notice that the things that once made you effective don’t carry the same weight—or that people are responding differently to the same behaviors. That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It usually means you’re due for an upgrade. Not in skill, but in presence.
Has your executive presence grown as your role has grown? Are you being experienced in a way that builds confidence, not just in your expertise, but in your ability to hold space and lead through complexity? Do the people around you move with more clarity and alignment because of how you show up?
We’ve developed a practical, scalable framework for assessing and developing executive presence - across leadership levels. If you're curious to explore what this might look like for you or your team, we’d be happy to start a conversation.
Eileen
