All the Leader You Can Be

A Bigger Stage

Every time an executive’s career advances, the stage he or she must fill gets bigger and the stakes grow larger. The traits that worked for an executive in the past may not prove sufficient at higher levels. The challenge of a new role or promotion – an “inflection point” – calls for “executive presence,” or “the ability to influence, engage, align, mobilize and inspire people to act.”

Some businesspeople act as if executive presence is a nice career extra – icing on the cake. But that view ignores the real-world power that executive presence conveys. Senior positions demand people with executive presence. Employees work harder for bosses who live up to public perceptions of what an executive should be: someone whose actions motivate others. On a purely personal level, in most companies you must demonstrate executive presence to get a raise or higher position. While industry knowledge and management expertise are basic requirements for joining the executive ranks in the corporate world, moving up is impossible if you lack presence, which joins more identifiable skills as fundamental requirements for top jobs.

The “Mysterious...