Leadership Presence Series – Post 4 of 16: The Seven Qualities of Presence (An Overview)

What are the seven qualities that define leadership presence? Do you know? If, like most people you don’t, you’ll struggle to grow and express your presence. Here’s what you need to know.

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 part 4: The Seven Qualities of Presence.

Seven Qualities of Presence: An Overview

As I said in part 1, leadership presence doesn’t show as one predictable set of behaviours. It’s unique to each individual. But I believe there are seven underlying qualities of pure presence:

1. Personal Power: accepting full responsibility for – and exercising your will over – your life direction, how you experience your life and your responses to inner psychological forces and outer events, including others’ behaviour. Gives freedom to choose how to be and act.
2. High Real Self-Esteem: feeling good about yourself, leading to a sense of empathy with, respect for and positive feelings towards others. Essential for connection, resilience and behavioural flexibility.
3. Drive To Be More, To Grow: the urge to fulfil your potential, to continually surpass your previous level by seeing, understanding and rising above the often-hidden limiting beliefs and mindsets behind present limitations and difficulties. Then practising new thinking and behavioural habits.
4. Balance: a strong sense of purpose from connecting with your highest values and the vitality flowing from it, balanced with a concern for others’ needs and respect for their free will. Expressed as a drive to serve a cause that’s bigger than you.
5. Intuition: expressed as creative insight or as foresight, vision, wisdom and perceptiveness in complex circumstances.
6. In The Now: being fully present to the here-and-now, not limited or distracted by memories, beliefs and feelings about the past or hopes and fears about the future.
7. Inner Peace, Flow & Joy: the enjoyment and natural spontaneous flow that comes with freedom from doubt and fear and the feeling that you are living a fulfilling life.

Together, these qualities lead to the inner wholeness described in part 2.

Now you’re being who you really are, powerfully, wisely, fearlessly, lovingly and creatively as you experience your freedom from inner divisions, while raising yourself and inspiring others.

We’ll look closer at each quality in the next seven posts.

Key Takeaway

Leadership presence is built on a foundation of seven qualities. They are unique to each individual yet, I believe, they apply universally.

Next post in the series: Quality #1: Personal Power

[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”.