Skip to main content

Talking Presence

Read these lines on my LinkedIn feed and it was reconfirmation of all that ails the platform and a reminder that no true alternative exists. The person was claiming they rose to the level of X and company Y because they have the executive presence to command a room. Having known many execs from said company in the past, I am well-aware of the what that entails. It is about an aggressive diminishment of others who are way better qualified than the person at level X, more articulate and thoughtful than the person with the vaunted presence is but they are at level X-N which is their undoing. Also to their detriment, these folks are more human, relatable and therefore vulnerable to the passive-aggressive tactics used to undermine everything they say or do. But ofcourse this guy will not admit to any of that but it is unlikely he is not aware of what he does to maintain command of the room.

I have also seen in folks who are deeply trusted advisors to their client's executive leadership teams. They are asked for their opinion and encouraged be completely candid even if that means ruffling some feathers. My former co-worker S was in a league of his own. Once he started to present, a hush descended in the room. His facts were current upto the last 24 hours, he could hold all data points about the company he was advising even if the relationship went back a decade. He knew their business and competitors better than anyone else in the room, including the most tenured leaders. His word was often the final and got big decisions made and unmade. 

S was unfailing polite, treated everyone on the client's team with the same respect - junior business analyst two years out of college to the CEO. That is the definition of executive presence and being able to command the room. Not what this guy is posturing about. S posts on LinkedIn maybe twice a year and its totally worth reading what he has to say. I wish there was more like S in my professional network, they are the folks that make a person better and smarter. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more