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The Executive Presence Wheel
You walk out of a leadership meeting where your proposal has been deferred again. Your numbers were right and nobody challenged them. On the way out your manager tells you the room needed more from you, and when you ask what that means, the answer is that you need more presence.
Figure 1. The Executive Presence Wheel
What it is
The Executive Presence Wheel breaks executive presence into eight components you can look at one at a time. Four of them sit under Be, which is how you show up, and they are Energy, Confidence, Assertiveness and Appearance. The other four sit under Do, which is what you deliver, and they are Communication, Strategic Thinking, Execution and Relationships. The wheel builds on Sylvia Ann Hewlett's work, which described executive presence as gravitas, communication and appearance.
Judgements about presence reflect what a particular setting expects, and they can carry bias. Use the wheel for your own development, with specific examples from more than one observer, and work on one or two components at a time.
How it works
Energy
Does my delivery show that I care about this?
Let your interest in the work be visible. If you speak about an important decision in a monotone, say why it matters, look at the people you are talking to and slow down for the key point.
Confidence
Can people tell what I think and why?
Keep your composure and use a clear voice. Take out the habitual hedges, such as "I might be wrong, but", and keep only the uncertainty that really affects the decision. When you don't know something, say who will find out and by when.
Assertiveness
Have I given a recommendation or only a list of options?
Take a point of view and state it before you walk through the alternatives. Hold it loosely by saying what would change your mind and inviting challenge while there is still time to use it. When the decision is yours, make it.
Appearance
Can people see and hear me properly on a video call?
In this wheel Appearance is mostly about remote presence, meaning your camera, lighting, audio and backdrop. Record a minute of yourself on the setup you will actually use. Give this component more weight if most of your meetings happen on video.
Communication
Will my audience know what I am asking them for?
Say near the start whether you want approval, are giving direction or are exploring a problem. Cut the buzzwords and the jargon. Watch the people you are talking to, and check what they understood before you finish.
Strategic Thinking
Am I looking beyond the task in front of me?
Zoom out to how the decision affects the rest of the business, and ask what you are choosing to prioritize and what you will stop doing. Resist the most urgent item long enough to make time for those questions.
Execution
Does the work move forward after I leave the room?
Delegate the outcome with enough context for people to make decisions, and put your own effort where it has the most leverage. End every meeting you run with an owner, an action and a date.
Relationships
Who inside and outside the organization needs to be able to trust me?
Build relationships on trust by keeping your commitments. Put the organization ahead of your own area, and say so openly when a decision helps your team at someone else's expense.
When to reach for it
Someone has told you to work on your executive presence and you don't yet know what they meant
You are being considered for a bigger role and want to know which part of how you lead to work on first
You have an important presentation or all-hands meeting coming up and want to choose one thing to do differently
“I want to speak more from the heart, but I need a plan.”
A worked example
Harlow Freight is a fictional logistics company. Its operations director had taken a proposal for a second distribution center to the executive team twice, and both times the decision was deferred. Afterwards the chief executive said the director needed more presence before trying a third time.
The director asked the finance director and a peer who had been in both meetings to look at the wheel and give an example for any component they would change. The finance director chose Assertiveness. The director had presented three possible sites and the costs of each, and had never said which one they wanted. The peer chose Strategic Thinking, because the proposal said nothing about how the sales team would need to change. On their own scoring the director had rated Appearance lowest, but both meetings had been in person, so they set it aside.
The director decided to work on Assertiveness first. The finance director's example matched how both meetings had ended, with the chief executive asking which site the director recommended. For the next meeting they opened with their recommendation, its cost and what would make them reconsider, and they added a paragraph on the sales team's part to the proposal. They asked the peer to watch and to tell them afterwards whether the recommendation had been clear within the first two minutes.
Try it this week
Pick a meeting or presentation you have coming up in the next two weeks. By the end you'll have one component to work on, one specific change you have tried, and feedback from someone who watched you try it.
Score yourself from 1 to 10 on each of the eight components and note your two lowest.
Ask two people who have seen you lead which component they would change first, with an example of something you did.
Compare their answers with yours and choose the one component that the examples support best.
Write down one specific change you will make in the upcoming meeting, such as opening with your recommendation.
Ask someone in that meeting to watch for the change and tell you afterwards what they saw.
Put a date in your calendar to try the same change again before you pick another component.
Try it with AI
Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or any AI assistant and fill in the part in square brackets. It will walk you through the model one step at a time, using your own situation.
Prompt
I want to work on my executive presence: [describe your role, the settings where it matters most, and any feedback you've been given].
If you can open links, read https://www.colincox.com/library/executive-presence-wheel first. It explains the Executive Presence Wheel, which has eight components. Energy, Confidence, Assertiveness and Appearance are about how I show up, and Communication, Strategic Thinking, Execution and Relationships are about what I deliver.
Take one component at a time. Ask me one or two questions about each one and wait for my answers before you move on. Ask me for a specific example from a real meeting, and push back if I'm vague, if I'm only being hard on myself, or if my rating is higher than my examples support.
Finish by helping me choose the one component to work on first and one specific change to try. Then ask me which meeting I'll try it in, who will watch and give me feedback, and the date we'll talk about what they saw.
Leave out names and anything confidential before you paste in your situation.
From Colin's work
When I co-led a business with a colleague, our styles were very different. He had to read from a script. There's nothing wrong with this. His style was to prepare his talking points, get up in front of the company, and read from his script, and it worked for him.
That doesn't work for me at all. I want to speak more from the heart, but I need a plan. So instead of a script, I would draft my message and then outline it. I would have a small piece of paper with just my outline on it, with key point one and a couple of notes, key point two and a couple of notes, and key point three and a couple of notes. I kept it in my pocket as a safety net.
