Leadership today doesn’t come with the luxury of guesswork.
Intuition, charisma, and old habits aren’t enough to carry us forward. In a hybrid world, where hallway conversations and informal cues have all but disappeared, small signals carry outsized weight. Your words, your silences, your facial expressions, how quickly or thoughtfully you respond to an email—these become the cues people rely on to interpret how you feel, what you expect, and how much they matter to you as a stakeholder.
Add in constant Slack messages, Zoom calls, and email threads, and every interaction becomes a moment of truth. Communication gets dissected quickly, often without full context. Each moment can either build—or erode—credibility and trust.
As a result, it’s no surprise that executive presence (the way your leadership is perceived) is under a brighter spotlight than ever. And yet, it remains one of the most misunderstood dimensions of leadership. Leaders hear it matters. They’re told when they have it, or don’t, but they rarely receive clear, practical insight to help them understand what it is or how to build it.
Why leaders struggle to see themselves clearly
Over the years, I’ve had hundreds of coaching conversations with senior leaders. And nearly every one has reinforced the same truth: even the most capable leaders rarely get honest, useful feedback on how they come across.
Most of what they hear is filtered: shaped by hierarchy, team dynamics, or the desire to keep the peace. They may get regular input on business results or performance goals, but often they get very little feedback on presence itself.
That makes executive presence hard to improve. You can’t shift what you can’t see. And when feedback is vague or inconsistent, it’s easy for leaders to default to habits that may no longer serve them.
That’s where tools like the Bates Executive Presence Index (ExPI™) come in. The ExPI™ is a 360° assessment designed to help leaders understand how others experience them across 15 distinct facets of executive presence from Authenticity to Vision to Concern.
“You’ve got to name it to tame it”
One conversation about executive presence with a leader we’ll call “Maya” stands out.
After we reviewed her ExPI™ results, celebrating what was working and exploring a few areas rated lower, I asked how the session felt. She paused for a moment and said:
| “I know this wasn’t therapy, but it felt like it at times. And you know what my therapist always says? ‘You’ve got to name it to tame it.”
That stuck with me, because it’s true: awareness is the first step to change.
Before this, Maya had never had a clear picture of how she showed up with her manager, her team, or her peers. For the first time, she had language for the things she’d sensed but couldn’t pinpoint. And with that, she could make small, intentional shifts that would strengthen her leadership impact.
Executive presence isn’t vague, it’s visible
While executive presence often feels hard to define, that’s usually because it’s talked about in broad, subjective terms like “gravitas” or “charisma.” In reality, executive presence is grounded in visible, measurable behaviors. The challenge is that most people don’t have a shared language for what to look for.
It’s not about being the loudest voice or “commanding the room.” It’s about how you build trust, communicate with clarity, and bring others with you, especially in high-stakes moments.
Once you know what to look for, executive presence becomes less of a mystery and more of a skill you can practice and refine. So, let’s define it:
Executive presence refers to the qualities of a leader that engage, inspire, align, and move people to act. Based on research, we have organized those qualities in a set of leadership behaviors that appear across three dimensions: Character, Substance, and Style.
These are observable signals that shape how others experience your leadership.
A framework for turning awareness into action
Awareness of how others experience your leadership is a crucial first step, but it’s not enough: Leaders need to know what they can do to take action on this awareness. Here’s what we recommend:
- Where do I stand?
Start with a reliable mirror. A structured tool like the ExPI™ helps you understand how others perceive your presence across key traits like Practical Wisdom, Composure, and Assertiveness. - What strengths do I want to protect?
Your superpowers are likely already serving you, but they can also become liabilities if overused. Appreciating both the upside and the risk of overusing it helps you use them more skillfully. - What’s getting in my way?
Common blockers include being too guarded, reactive, or intense under pressure. The goal isn’t to eliminate them but to recognize patterns and adjust intentionally. - What small shifts could make a big difference?
Executive presence isn’t about reinvention. It’s often about dialing one behavior up and another down in critical moments. Flexing just enough to shift how you’re experienced—without losing yourself.
What leaders often learn from the ExPI™
When leaders first see their ExPI results, it’s rarely a total surprise. More often, they find that something they suspected to be an issue is having a much bigger—or different—impact than they realized. Here are some ways that might show up:
- The ripple effect you missed. You may know you’re blunt or reactive, but not realize it’s keeping people from bringing you problems or ideas.
- The missing detail. You might know you need to improve Vision, but the ExPI shows whether the gap is in strategic thinking, inspiring others, or both—and with whom it shows up.
- The “happy blind spot.” Others may rate you higher than you rate yourself—a sign that you may be need to focus less on that quality and more on another that is truly an area of opportunity.
- What got you here won’t get you there. Traits like decisiveness or bias to action may have served you well as an individual contributor, but they can backfire in a leadership role if they limit collaboration or inclusiveness.
- Character vs. Substance and Style. Many leaders score highest in Character (formed early in life) and lower in Substance and Style (skills built over time). Leaders are always pleased to see those high scores in Character but fret about the lower scores in the other dimensions. It helps to be reminded that what they are seeing are perceptions—and they can be changed over time.
- Everything’s connected. Improving one facet often boosts others—for example, raising Resonance can lift Concern, Humility, Practical Wisdom, Interactivity, and Inclusiveness.
Insights like these turn vague impressions into concrete starting points for growth—without asking leaders to become someone they’re not.
Presence is perception in action
Many leaders spend a lot of energy trying to read the room, manage perceptions, or recover from moments that didn’t land well. When you understand how your presence is being read and have a language to interpret and adjust it, your work gets simpler. You stop worrying about how you’re coming across and start operating from a place of calm clarity.
Perception equals impact, and your presence is a shortcut to help you understand how others interpret your leadership. Those around you are picking up on how grounded your thinking is (Substance), how you engage in dialogue in the moment (Style), and what your behavior reveals about your values and intent (Character).
Whether you need to show up as a strategic partner, drive growth, or shepherd people through change, how you show up shapes how your ideas land. Even small improvements in presence can unlock major shifts in influence, trust, and results.
Try this to shape your executive presence
Ask two trusted colleagues: “When have you seen me at my best as a leader?”
Listen closely. Then ask yourself: “What was I doing that made the difference, and how can I do more of it on purpose?”
When you name it, you can tame it, and that’s when your executive presence becomes a catalyst for impact.
Want deeper insight into how you’re showing up as a leader?
- Explore the Bates ExPI™ to get clear, actionable 360° feedback from a certified expert.
- Contact us to get certified to use the ExPI™ with leaders across your team or enterprise.
→ Read Part 2 of this series to explore the ways you can fine-tune your executive presence, authentically.
