Young Guns, New Bees or Veterans! Startups or Vintage! Culturally Progressive or Old School! Do take a note. The phenomenon of executive presence is gaining more prominence and permanence. Should you not exhibit executive presence, you could be on a career track that may derail soon enough than you comprehend the causes. The paradox looks like this – executive presence is strongly desired to be exhibited as it yields results, yet there is enough ambiguity in defining it conceptually.

“Executive presence is an unclear concept but one that reportedly has a substantial influence on successful leadership (Dagley & Gaskin, 2014).

Interesting though elementary, it is notable that what matters much ahead of how you conduct yourselves, is how your presence is perceived in the organization. Should you be the one who sets the tone in meetings, get on-board with confidence, has a sense of balance, composure, and dignity of manners, is functionally assertive to constructive conflict, can take a call upon and decide – you could be having it in you what the ‘Selectors’ are looking for in players to ‘play the big match’ and that might be Executive Presence.

Should you be one who knowingly or unknowingly is feeding to your cravings for control, dominance and popularity and realize too late that the bridges are being burnt before they are built – you would rather be perceived as the ringmaster. So good luck on any transformations that you attempt either on the people front or the process front.

Executive presence is subtle yet strong. Complex to define and measure but simple to feel and perceive. The best of the competency models and most of the validated and reliable psychometrics, not sure, if they can make an empirical presentation of executive presence.

Hewlett et al. established the “three pillars of executive presence: gravitas, communication, and appearance” (Hewlet et al). Gravitas is said to be the central feature that defines executive presence, and it consists of radiating “confidence” and “grace under fire,” working decisively with conviction and ability to be oneself respectfully, irrespective of anybody else’s presence. Gravitas is also about having the courage to do the right things and not land up doing the popular things. It is about being firm but being polite and sensitive with high degrees of emotional intelligence.

Communication is said to be the second most essential constituent manifesting in behaviors like fine conversational and articulation skills, having a ‘screen presence’ in a room to command a role and influence an audience.

The third but rather significant determinant of executive presence is the appearance and attire. It is not only about what to wear. It’s also about the way to wear it. The way you appear to others is what others see you as carrying yourselves and that casts the impression and judgements that people form about you. Can’t help! Organizations are made up of human beings and it is the rest. As Daymond John says – “Good grooming is integral and impeccable style is a must. If you don’t look the part, no one will want to give you time or money.”

Gavin R. Dagley and Cadeyrn J. Gaskin did research to understand the real meaning of executive presence. They drew insights from views collected from 34 professionals who were experts in efficacy and effectiveness of executives in business organizations.

The three key findings they had:

1. Perception is not reality, yet executive presence is built upon how others perceive you on ‘certain characteristics’ of yours.

2. These characteristics get visible as standing, repute, physical appearance, exuded confidence, communication ability, engagement skills, interpersonal relationship behaviour, integrity, intellectual depth in speaking and presenting, general competence and expertise, execution orientation, and sense of control in exercising power needs.

3. Impressions casted during initial entries and contacts and the direct or indirect influence that is caused

Executive presence suffers from a stereotype that it is only in the context of men. The definition given by Sarah Greenberg; a Forbes Council Member clears the cloud – “Executive presence is the capacity to connect with others in a way that inspires. An authentic executive presence means doing this by being yourself.” And thus, any gender bias to executive presence is falsehood.

So, is there a way to increase your Executive Presence Quotient?

Research by Human Processes Scientists and Organizational Development Professionals reveals that executive presence is associated with deeply held inner values that manifest as outward behavior, increased self-awareness to acknowledge one’s own needs and willingly working to manage those needs, seems to help.

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.

During my stint with IBM, delivering exceptional customer service during client interactions came naturally to me as I consider myself a service-industry child having been born and raised into a travel, tourism and hospitality family background. Naturally, my expectations of service delivered to me were always a notch higher than the people in general.

That was also because I was more focused on the overall experience that a brand generated for me rather than just a one-off instance. I have stuck by this over the years and wasn’t surprised when the whispers picked up about customer experience as opposed to customer service. This raises the popular question – “How different are the two?”

Well, I’d say they are interlinked and multiple instances of delivering customer service leads to the building of a customer experience. So, what exactly are the two? Customer service is simply each single interaction that a customer may have with a representative of an organization or brand in the context of a service request.

While customer experience is the overall experience that is generated for a customer across the various touch points with an organization or brand including interaction with a representative. Thus, customer experience is the over-arching umbrella that customer service falls under the purview of.

So, while customer service aims at a single opportunity to delight the customer and gauges it through a measure of the customer’s satisfaction levels with that interaction, customer experience is all about delivering customer delight at every single touch point with the customer and measures the outcome through a net promoter score.

Further while service is reactive and needs an interaction with a representative, customer experience is all about being proactive and may not require an interaction with a representative. For example, I was recently looking to buy some consumer electronics for my home and made an enquiry call to a multi-brand chain store.

Not only were my queries answered patiently, but I was also given a follow-up call to check if I was interested in visiting the store for a demo. Once I agreed to a store visit, I received a message mentioning the name of the contact person and the store address to make it convenient for me to reach and be attended.

Needless to say, I went ahead with my decision to buy but that wasn’t all. There were messages sent to me congratulating me for my purchases and also to update me about the delivery status, calls were received from the logistics team to check the time convenient for me to receive the delivery of the products and get them installed, follow-up calls made to check if everything went well and if there was anything I needed and how could I reach someone if need be.

So, what started as a simple customer service call for gaining some information turned into a wonderful customer experience and has turned me into a loyal customer who has been recommending this chain of multi-brand stores to everyone wanting to buy a consumer durable.

This is where the importance of delivering an exceptional customer experience comes in. Not only have they been able to retain me as a customer for the slightest of my needs including accessories that they stock, but also there has been an increment in the lifetime of the customer relationship they have developed with me. In the process, they have earned repute for their brand and gained my brand loyalty and developed a competitive advantage.

An important thing to remember is that aspects of a delightful customer service delivered feed into delivering a delightful customer experience. Customer Centricity or customer experience is a speciality competence yet does not get the same focus as sales training. Organizations should thus focus on developing their workforce’s customer centricity by taking them through customer interaction trainings. The focus should be to strike a fine balance through strategy that is all-encompassing and aims to deliver both a satisfactory customer service and a delightful customer experience.

This blog has been written by Namita Singh, Consultant & Project Manager at GrowthSqapes.