Exceptional Executive Presence: The Key to Standing Out as a Leader

Although hard work, experience, leadership, and your ability to influence others are all key factors in getting promoted, executive presence is often the factor that separates the great employees from the exceptional. Executive presence can mean the difference between sitting stagnant on one rung of the corporate ladder or quickly climbing past your co-workers.

There are three excellent ways to develop this distinctive quality: building a strong personal brand, stepping outside your comfort zone, and recruiting influential advocates to support you.

I discuss these three methods in my guest blog post, “3 Killer Ways to Build Your Executive Presence,” for Diane Craig’s Corporate Class Inc., a leading image and etiquette consulting company that has been advising Fortune 500 companies for more than twenty years. Here’s the advice I gave, in a nutshell.

Establish your personal brand.

Building your brand helps you set yourself apart from your coworkers and establishes you as an expert your employer will value.

Engage in strategic risk-taking.

Risk-taking isn’t just for leaders, but further establishes you as the employee who goes the extra mile for your organization.

Cultivate a network of relationships.

Forging relationships with people who have influence in your organization will give you a strategic advantage, since they’ll be in your corner.

By the time you’re done reading this post, you’ll have a better understanding of how important strategic relationships and executive presence are to your career and job advancement.

With these methods, you’ll gain more organizational recognition, become more influential, and have strong allies in your corner. Through the development of executive presence, you will be a driver of change who creates innovative solutions and positively impacts your company’s growth and success. Each of these factors will transform you from a great employee to an exceptional employee your organization will be eager to promote.

Joel Garfinkle is a personal leadership coach who has helped develop effective leaders in many top companies. He has worked with clients at Shell Chemicals, Eli Lilly, Coldwell Banker, and dozens of other leading businesses in the US and worldwide.