Nice Work: Unpacking “leadership presence”

Hi there,

You need to work on your leadership presence. 

I swear, almost every woman and nonbinary person I know—and a good number of men, too—have received this feedback. And I gotta admit: I hate it. 

First of all, it’s vague. What, precisely, does leadership presence look like? What behaviors does it include? How do I know if I’m getting better at it? Telling someone they need more leadership presence is about as useful as telling them they have bad vibes. Actually, less useful—at least if you told me that, it’d be kinda funny.

But that’s not even the worst problem with “leadership presence.” It’s also extremely fertile ground for bias and gatekeeping. Because often, when someone tells you that you lack “leadership presence,” what they’re actually saying is: You don’t fit the mold. You don’t look and act like the leaders I’ve seen before. And if you have an identity that’s historically underrepresented in leadership, you literally can’t fit the mold—your gender, race, disability, neurodivergence, or any number of other facets will always make you different.

Plus, a lot of those status quo leaders are…not the kind of leaders we need more of: ego-driven, overconfident, inhumane. I think we’ve all seen enough of that in the world.

Enter: the double bind

So here’s where things get really fraught. If you try to fit the mold—try to dress like and speak like and behave like the status quo leaders around you—you’re liable to be told that you’re too aggressive, and not likable enough. You should smile more!

But then if you follow that advice, you’re likely to get told that you need to be more assertive, or more visible. That you lack gravitas.

It’s a classic double bind: you’re always somehow too much, and yet not enough.

What a lot of people do when they hear this feedback is try even harder to hit the perfect balance: Confident, but humble. Smiling, but serious. Poised, but approachable. Firm, but easygoing. The list never ends.

Threading the needle isn’t only exhausting. It’s also ineffective. Because the more you focus on being “perfect,” the less present you become. You’re too in your head: overthinking, overpolishing, overpreparing. And when you’re in your head, you can’t be in the moment, connecting with the people around you. You’re too caught up in second-guessing and deferring and doubting yourself. And when that happens, you actually lose touch with the parts of you that are the most interesting—your sparkle, your edge, your je ne sais quoi.

That won’t get you that elusive “leadership presence” either.

So…now what?

I’m not here to be a downer, I swear! I just think it’s important to acknowledge that you can’t fix this double-bind. Not because you’re not good enough, or not trying hard enough.

But because you aren’t the problem. A biased, oppressive culture is.

I do have a path forward for you, though. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best one I know of: Stop trying to thread that needle.

Let go of the idea that if you were just more X and less Y, you’d stop getting this feedback.

Let go of the idea that there’s somehow a perfect way to have “leadership presence”—and replace it with your actual presence.

Because as weaponized and biased as “leadership presence” has become in workplaces, presence is real. And I guarantee you’ve experienced it. Think: A workshop facilitator with a knack for convincing groups to work through their differences. Presence. A street performer who can get a whole crowd clapping along. Presence. A podcast host whose voice is so captivating, you sat in your driveway for 15 minutes just to keep listening. Presence.

It’s not always loud, either. I often think of my friend Eileen as having a huge presence, even though she’s much quieter than me. Yet, every time we’ve run a workshop together, the audience has hung on her every word. I’ve seen teams that couldn’t go two seconds without squabbling become calmer, more collaborative, and more trusting with one another under her guidance.

You don’t have to be like Eileen to have presence, though. Trying to mimic her would be just as ineffective as trying to mimic those old-school leaders (except Eileen tells better jokes). Instead, you need to get comfortable with yourself. You need to believe that what you bring to a room is meaningful, that it’s valuable, and that you deserve to be there.

You need self-trust.

Self-trust doesn’t just come overnight, though—especially if you’ve been internalizing biased BS about how to look and act and be your whole life. It takes time to learn to untangle what you think about you from all those cultural messages and unfair opinions you’ve absorbed over the years.

In fact, what we’ve found working with people 1:1 and in Power Shift, where we go deep on this topic, is that self-trust doesn’t stand alone. It’s actually more like the top of a pyramid—and underneath it are two more foundational elements: self-management and self-knowledge.

• Self-management is the practice of noticing what’s going on within you—your thoughts and feelings—and then choosing how you want to respond, instead of letting knee-jerk reactions take the wheel. It’s the ability to regulate yourself under stress—instead of shutting down or getting defensive. Because if we want to have presence, we have to first be present: able to participate in the current moment from a place of calm, clarity, and curiosity, instead of at the whims of our fear or our hurt.

• Self-knowledge builds on self-management. Because once you’re able to gain some distance from those knee-jerk reactions, you have more space to see yourself clearly—and to get comfortable with what you see. You can figure out who you are—without getting hung up on what you think other people want you to be, or what you were told you should be. Self-knowledge is also about knowing your values and strengths—but also your weaknesses and knowledge gaps. So you can speak up confidently when you have a POV to share—but without sucking up all the air in the room, or feeling the need to have an opinion on everything just to prove your worth. Because you don’t need other people to validate your worth. You already know who you are.

• Self-trust gets a lot easier once you’ve worked on those other layers. Because when you know yourself, and you know how to stay calm and present, you can trust yourself to show up in a room and just be. You don’t have to overthink and second-guess all the time—because you know that you’ve already done the work needed to meet this moment. You can confidently share an opinion or make a decision—without feeling threatened by someone else seeing it differently. You radiate confidence and care.

That’s real presence—and real leadership. I promise you, it’s so much more satisfying than trying yet again to thread the needle of other people’s biases.

If you could use some help building this kind of self-trust, I hope you’ll check out our upcoming Power Shift cohort. It’s a space to explore all the layers of this pyramid—and get a whole lot more comfortable leading like the brilliant, wise, utterly unique person you are.

—Sara

Register now for Power Shift

A leadership accelerator for people who want to stand out—not burn out. Sessions start Wednesday, September 11.

You’ve tried people-pleasing, “proving your value,” and putting yourself last. If you’re ready for something else, Power Shift is ready for you. Join us this fall for 10 weeks of live masterclasses, self-guided modules, and coaching sessions.

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