I see you faking it... and so does everyone else.

Mimicking some other inspirational leader or motivational speaker isn’t going to help you develop authentic leadership or executive presence.

You’re making a mistake if you’re following an influencer or guru and trying to be like them, because you are not them. Yes, take their advice, follow their principles for doing the work they did on themselves to get to where they are today.

But don’t try to be ‘just like them’ try instead to ‘be just like you’ because leadership and executive presence means letting who you are shine through in all your interactions.

It means having the courage and the steadiness to feel everything; your doubts, fears and excitement as well as the doubts, fears and excitement of your team from many different angles. You need to be able to process all of that emotional data and combine it with the physical data about project viability, pipelines, feasibility…

To lead well you need to be able to carry all of that input within you. All of the concerns, all of the excitement and all of the enthusiasm, within you and stand steady so that your team can get on and do the work.

Your work is to carry the load so that your people don’t have to.

I was reading a post from a connection last week who expressed something very well. They said that “when sitting with colleagues face 2 face you hear the pride behind success, the worry behind a challenge, the idea someone has carried for months.”

That’s because when we communicate we transmit all of that subconsciously; and that’s the place where leadership or executive presence comes from.

When you haven’t come to terms with all those human feelings of insecurity, doubt, anxiety, frustration, and even anger it adds another layer of emotional charge to your communication. When you try and mask the worry, fear, anxiety and insecurity, and when you feel guilt and shame about having those emotions and not being better, it further undermines your confidence and robs you of your presence.

It’s why fake it till you make it and confidence hacks aren’t the answer, because in the long run, they undermine your confidence. It’s also why real confidence, the sort where you feel grounded and unshakable in the knowledge of who you are, can ’t be easily shaken by unforeseen questions or circumstances.

When you’ve done the work on yourself and are solid in your identity, any errors you do make, which are inevitable because we’re all human, just add more clarity and strengthen to your sense of self.

How you deal with that only adds to your reputation rather than damaging it.  I’m not talking about huge disasters with financial consequences for the whole company, here although they also develop resilience and courage. I’m talking about getting something wrong and having the courage to say so and learn from it rather than passing the buck on to someone else. That’s what the great leaders have learnt and the example they set.

It’s also why true leadership presence starts with knowing and accepting yourself. Anything else is just acting.

Ready to start doing the work?

I work with multilingual leaders to help them to develop their confident English persona so they stand tall rather than shrinking when they walk in the room. Click the link for a free consultation call to find out what working together could look like. Free consultation call