Leadership Presence Series – Post 16 of 16: How To Develop Your Presence

Leadership presence – how do you develop it? Can you develop it? Or is it innate? If you can, what are the keys? It’s time to address the last piece of this series on presence…

Introduction

If presence is a key to leading successfully – and it is – we need to understand it. So what is it? What’s so great about it? How does it show itself? What’s the source of presence? How do you develop it? That’s what we’re covering in this 16-part series.

Welcome to the final instalment – part 16: How To Develop Presence.

Everyone’s Potential

All of us have the potential to exude presence – if we but knew it.

I’m not saying everyone has the same potential for leadership presence.

Nor that everyone’s signature presence is the same.

But I am saying presence is within us all and that everyone can – with steady effort – release and express their unique presence enough to help them in a leadership role.

The “How”

(1) Grow your sense of connection to others.

(2) Practise self-mastery.

Growing Your Connection To Others

• To become a leader with true presence you need to see yourself as a servant of those you lead.
• That’s where your connection starts.
• How do you grow that connection? Start with the right attitude and it’ll flow through to the right behaviour. That attitude and behaviour has five characteristics: (1) interdependence (2) appreciation (3) caring (4) service and (5) balance.
• If you feel connected to your colleagues – meaning their needs and the group’s goal are your priorities – they’re more likely to trust you.
• And if they trust you, they’re more likely to follow you.
• If they don’t trust you, the opposite is true.

Self-Mastery

From coaching leaders, I’ve found three practices matter more than any other:

1. Mindfulness meditation: learning to see the core “You” as distinct from the mind’s contents and flows.
2. Guided self-enquiry: limiting belief hunting and dissolving.
3. 4R: a habit change technique that builds on practice 2 by updating your neural circuits.

I’ve described them in The Three Levels of Leadership. In applying them, I suggest you observe these seven principles:

• Accept the usual pattern of personal change, notably its early discomfort.
• To maintain motivation, move towards your values, not away from the state you dislike.
• Concentrate on what you can control.
• Remember the mental hierarchy – all transformation starts with your self-image.
• Keep an open mind (“beginner’s mind”) and never assume you hold a belief you can’t transcend.
• Have the humility to ask for and accept help.
• Grasp the 8 psychological laws governing habits and change.

I could say much more but this post would become unwieldy and I don’t want to obscure the main points. If you want more detail, why not read chapters 9 & 11 of my 2016 book, The Three Levels of Leadership?

If you’ve found this series useful, please recommend it to someone you know that will find it interesting.

[This post uses content from my 2016 book, The Three Levels of Leadership.]

Are you a visual or audio-orientated person? If so, you might prefer to see and hear me talking about leadership presence in my eleven-episode video series on YouTube at my YT channel, The Leadership Mastery Suite. When you arrive at the channel page, scroll down until you come to Created Playlists and there you’ll find the series, “On Leadership Presence”.