Holly Breeding
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Liberating Teams podcast. I'm Holly Breeding team psychology practitioner and org effectiveness consultant. Every week around here, we dismantle the outdated hierarchical leadership systems that keeps leaders like you stuck in the weeds and break down how to build a self-managed team that thrives without you at the center.
Because when your team has the clarity systems and ownership, they need to lead themselves. You finally get to lead strategically. It's time to liberate the way you lead.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're getting a little controversial with the topic. So I was, on the internet as one is when they run an online business. And I was looking at just the conversation happening around. What does it [00:01:00] take to reach those senior leadership levels? So director, vp, and everyone kept going back to executive presence.
You just need executive presence. You need a master executive presence. Executive presence is the missing gap. And I, y'all I, it, I was floored. Literally floored. My relationship with the term executive presence is about equal to my relationship with the term. You just need to delegate. No. So I reeled myself in and I was like, okay, we're gonna give this a benefit to the doubt.
Let's Google the definition for executive presence. Let's just let's just see, y'all, there's, there is not a definition, like the basic the most that I could find was it's essentially, a mix of skills and, traits that allow you to [00:02:00] present yourself as credible, capable, and confident.
And my biggest problem with that right there is. We are having leaders focus on the wrong thing. We are having them obsess over how do I present myself as a senior leader? How do I look the part, how do I get people to perceive me as a senior leader versus the real question that we should be asking, which is, how do I provide value?
At the senior leadership level, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Executive presence, presenting yourself like a senior leader. That is an outcome of having the skills required to think and operate at the senior leadership level. But we jump right to [00:03:00] talking about the end game. Talking about the executive presence because, hey if that's what we need, if that's the output of doing the work, of thinking strategically of operating like a senior leadership, then we'll just skip all the middle part and we'll just jump to that.
We'll just work on that. Why? Because it's easier. It is way easier than figuring out how to think like a strategic leader, how to operate like a senior leader. So we will just present ourselves like one, we'll just master this, say this, not that. Here's the five questions to be asking in a room to seem like a strategic thinker.
Here's how to present in threes. All these little tips and tricks and hacks. To try and look the part, but the problem with that is essentially your cosplaying as a senior leader, instead of operating like one, you are dressing up. You are [00:04:00] like, it reminds me of my son who's four right now, and he's really big into what he wants to be when he grows up.
The other day was like, mom, I'm, I think I'm gonna be a doctor for three days and then I'm going to be fly planes for two days, and then I think I'm gonna be a garbage truck driver for one day. And I'm like, yes, okay. This is gonna be a really big college bill for a week long of a career.
But yes, let's do this. And all jokes aside, that's what I think. When I think of executive presence, it's like we're trying this on, we're dressing up as what we want to be when we grow up, instead of actually going and developing the skillsets, the mastery, in order to truly be that senior leader.
And let me tell you all, like people can see through that in five seconds flat. There is a very [00:05:00] distinct difference than the, from the person who is, using all the tips, tricks, and hacks of executive presence, the, breaking their presentation into the threes and the, all the over rehearsed answers.
The, like trying too hard energy, the inability to go off script and just have a conversation about the dang topic. Because they're trying so hard to give off that executive presence. And then there's the person who actually has the skillset, who's actually put in the work and has mastered the skillset, the.
Strategic thinking, the way of operating at the senior leadership level. While Soandso is over here going through their 27 slide PowerPoint deck, don't need to hide behind all that. I don't need to fake confidence. I don't need to fake credibility. I don't have to worry about looking like it, presenting [00:06:00] myself like it because I already have it.
I've done the work. I don't have to spend four weeks, developing out these like comprehensive charts with all this data to back up all this stuff and communicate this story because i, or like I, I've done the work, I understand the business, I understand where we're trying to go. I understand the biggest gaps, the barriers, the opportunities that we need to overcome to get there.
I understand how to position my team, my function in order to meet those business needs. And I've actually developed a strategic perspective on where we need to go, where we need to focus, what we should do and what we shouldn't do. I have a position and I have the knowledge to defend it .
Executive level leaders don't care about how [00:07:00] polished your presence is. They care about can you think and operate at their level. There is a reason why at two separate airlines in my twenties. Wearing Converse instead of pencil skirts. Like everyone around me with a manager title, I still was able to position myself as a strategic authority as somebody who solved business problems that matter, to the point where I was able to become an advisor to the C-suite level.
And it's not because they didn't have a wealth of other options. They could have brought in external consultants. They had an entire strategy team full of XBCG consultants with director level titles and super fancy PowerPoint decks with the models and the forecasting and the [00:08:00] data. But they chose me to come in and lead these massive cross-functional, transformation projects where we're shifting entire functions with 5,000 people, or rethinking and transforming how we do the digital function.
I didn't have any experience in digital. I didn't have any experience in call centers. I didn't have the bank of connections that these XBCG consultants had to go pull 70,000 benchmarks from leading companies, but they chose me. Why? Because one group was giving them a bunch of flashy PowerPoint decks and data and the other.
Was solving their problems. They valued me because I talked to them like I belonged at their level. Not because I was [00:09:00] trying to prove that I belonged there. I wasn't performing confidence or desperately trying to, impress them with overly complex presentations and big buzzwordy, statements.
That left them more confused than clear. I was gen, genuinely curious about what was happening in their team, and I was genuinely confident in my ability to help solve those problems. And now a big piece of this, and we get way deep into this inside Liberated leader in the strategic authority module, which is all about how to position yourself as a strategic authority in your business as somebody who is, credible, capable as somebody who you know is sought after for their strategic mind, for their insight, for the value, their voice that they bring to the conversation.
And a big piece of this is [00:10:00] understanding how to build a personal brand, not just for you as a leader, but also your function. So I was helping in both of these scenarios stand up a brand new org effectiveness function, which half of you guys are like, what the fudge is that? And yeah, that's the same thing that everyone else said.
So like we already had a lot stacked against us is because we weren't a function that most people were familiar about. Nobody had even thought of a team whose purpose was to help transform the way that your team works. And so we already had a long like marketing road ahead of us. And we could have tried to build that credibility by trying to be everything to everyone.
Oh yeah, we can do that for you. We can solve that problem for you. Yeah, we've dabbled in, process improvement and change management and org design and org strategy and this and that. And we can do it all. Like just try to people, please do everything for [00:11:00] everyone. And while we might have made those people, those department leaders happy in the moment.
Giving them that short-term gratification of solving that quick win that wasn't going to build a long-term sticky brand. It was like, Hey, can you do this quick thing for me? Yes, and that was it.
Whether you were a service organization like I was, where I was providing a service to other departments, or you are more of a, product based function where you are maybe even serving that external customer, that end user, like digital, like a customer service team.
Many functions fall into trying to do this, to be everything for everyone, to get recognition by being the problem solver, the fire drill fixer, the one who can, solve all your last minute requests. And sure people love you for that, for getting them out of a pinch. But there's a lot of people who [00:12:00] can do that.
Executors are a dime a dozen like these Tiger teams everyone in org design wanted we just need a tiger team. Like people who just like I can tap into them and they just make it happen. Honestly. Dime a dozen. Versus functions who have done the work to understand, okay, what is going on in our business?
Where are we trying to get? What are the biggest barriers preventing us from getting there? And how can I position my team around solving one of those core problems? And then build depth expertise, a wealth of knowledge, obsess over that problem. How can we do it better, faster, easier? How can we be better at solving that problem than anyone in this company, let alone any other external consultant they could probably bring in or anyone else in our industry, any other finance function out there.
We're not trying to be the best at everything. We're [00:13:00] trying to be the best at solving this one problem. So for example, instead of me going around and being like, we're the org effectiveness team, we can help you with org strategy and org design and process improvement and change management. They don't care about any of that.
They don't like, they don't care. People don't care. This is like marketing one-on-one. People don't care about the product or service your team provides. They care about the output, what it does for them. And whether you're marketing your team, your function to that end user, that customer or executive level leaders, they're all human, they all care about what does this do for them.
So for us, we figured out the biggest problem that our customers, which were, at the beginning, functional leaders, so directors, VPs, SVPs, their biggest problem was they had a strategy. They had a plan. Some of them needed our help, but they needed someone to [00:14:00] connect the dots between, here's where I'm wanting to go.
Now how do I get my team aligned, structured, and the ways of working to actually deliver on this strategy? They had a vision they didn't have means to get there through their team and so we didn't talk to them about, oh, we're gonna do this org design or this process improvement or this like transformation effort.
No. We just said, okay, hey, we're the people you go to. To structure your team and develop the ways of working to deliver on your strategy. Boom. They resonated with that. They understood that, and then we got really dang good at it. We obsessed over it. We
became experts in it, thought leaders in it beyond what was out there in the industry. We developed proprietary frameworks and tools. All focused on how to solve this problem better, faster, easier for our customers. And guess what happened? [00:15:00] Those customers, they started talking. They were in those higher level meetings that I had zero access to as a manager.
They're in those meetings with executive leaders and guess what they're talking about? Yeah, those results we got, we talked to this little team called Org effectiveness. And then my name started getting brought up. And then next thing we had executive level leaders knocking on our door, not because of our ability to develop these fancy, showy P presentations.
Half the time I would walk into that room. In fact, I remember a very specific conversation I had with a C-Suite member. And I was there to present on why they should work with our team to do these massive transformation for this function. A function that I, by the way, had very little technical experience in, but I understood the team and how to set up and align a [00:16:00] team around a strategy and to deliver on that.
So it didn't matter the function. And I brought my slide deck. I think it maybe had five slides in it. And we sat them all on the table and we started having a conversation. Y'all, we didn't even open that slide deck. There was at some point in the conversation where I said, we were talking and I was like, he was describing what was happening in his team and I was like, oh yeah, this is, that's this.
That's what we call unrewarded complexity. I put a term around it and he's oh my gosh, tell me more. And so we talked through, Hey, I see you got a whiteboard. Mind if I jump up there, grabbed a marker, started whiteboarding out. We had a conversation because I was an expert au authority in something that he wasn't.
I was offering him value and insight that he didn't have. I wasn't trying to prove how smart I was or why he should, see me as this big, credible leader. No, I was sitting there in my converse. [00:17:00] I wasn't trying to be something I wasn't. I was being exactly who I was, which is this super nerd, obsessed with how teams work.
And I was there because I deeply cared about teams and this leader's ability to deliver on their strategy through this team, because that's going to help our business, that's going to help this leader that's going to make a better environment for their team. And so I sat there with genuine curiosity.
I was asking, clarifying questions, Hey, tell me more about this. I really want to understand your function. And I was challenging their thinking. I was, helping bring clarity to what they were experiencing. We were thinking out loud. We were iterating, we were problem solving in the moment. I wasn't hiding behind executive presence.
Because I could think and communicate alongside them, they valued me as a thought partner who could [00:18:00] solve their biggest problems better, faster, and easier than they could on their own. Versus me trying to sell them on something because that, to me is what executive presence is in the way that we are teaching it.
Like I had executive presence in that moment. Moment because I did the work. If you looked at me, you probably wouldn't think I had executive presence because I didn't quote unquote look the part with the fancy deck and the fancy pencil skirt. But I had executive presence because I was operating at their level, like I belonged there.
Even with my manager title, because I had built authority. I wasn't trying to sell them on anything. I was just saying I'm an expert in solving this problem. Let me tell you more about it. Let's have a conversation about it. I didn't have to sell anything 'cause I saw my value in that room. And I think what scares people when I talk about this is like my concept of [00:19:00] niching down.
Oh so you built this expertise around, org effectiveness. But how does that help me be a senior leader who's supposed to be leading at that higher level, having that cross-functional perspective? Again, this is Business 1 0 1, and this is exactly why I set up Liberated Leader the way I did, where we start by building a strategy in a brand around your function and becoming known for something in your function.
So that's module one where we talk all about your strategy dev, how you can position your function to deliver that massive business impact. And the second piece is building that self-managed team to actually deliver on that strategy, to deliver on that functional brand. Because if you are in the weeds constantly having to hold your team together, then there's you don't have time for thinking strategically . So we actually have to deliver a team who's able to execute on that. And then the third piece is when we talk about this [00:20:00] strategic authority, because here's the thing,
when you build authority in one thing. So I was the person who was really good at helping your teams deliver on your strategy. People respected me for that because I was able to deliver results in that again and again, which built credibility, which built trust in my voice and what I had to say.
My thoughts. And so what happened is they started asking questions about more, so let's talk about strategy. So then we started talking about strategy and they had questions about cross-functional problems, what was happening at the larger scale business. And guess what? Because I had worked with so many different teams across so many different departments, I had that knowledge.
So now I was building expertise and credibility in something even bigger. And so I was starting to do more work around connecting other departments and flows between departments.
[00:21:00] People were starting to ask me broader questions, starting to want my perspective on different things. It is just like any other business out there when they first launch that business. They're very niche. They focus on one product or service. They build credibility in that thing. They become known for it.
They build trust for their brand, and then they scale. They develop more. They offer more services, more products, because when you have that trust, it's easier to move into other markets. The same thing is happening when you are positioning yourself as a strategic authority. When somebody respects you and values your opinion for one thing, you get in the door and can start to show your expertise and broaden your impact into other areas.
And so that's why in strategic authority we go deep into developing your business acumen, understanding what's happening in the business, the broader business environment, and how [00:22:00] to start building perspectives and authority around that. So does going through that process, developing the ability to set up your function in this way to, brand yourself as a strategic authority. Does that take time? Yes. Does that take strategic thought? Yes. But there's a reason cause playing in executive presence to try and look like a senior leader. Great. Maybe you'll get the authority in order to get promoted to that level. And then what? Are you just gonna keep pretending?
Are you just gonna spend every single day trying to fake it until you make it? That confidence, that credibility in front of your peers in front of now, you're getting exposure to higher level leaders and you're being put on bigger stages, higher pressure stages.
That's an exhausting freaking way to live. That sounds. So stressful, like to be honest, to have to show up each day and be put [00:23:00] on a stage that I don't feel prepared to meet, that I have to fake it, or do we take the time now to build the skillset, to build the strategy, the muscles that are going to serve you, not just in senior leadership, but throughout your leadership career well beyond into executive leadership.
To where you can walk into any room completely unprepared. Like I'm talking people just pulling you at, Hey, I want your thoughts on this, and you're not, oh God, I didn't put together my 50 point PowerPoint deck and get everyone's perspective and fancy diagrams on how I think about that. No. You have thoughts 'cause you've developed strategic thinking. You have perspective because you have business acumen, you have authority because you've built it around your function and your expertise in the business problem you solve. You can try and fake confidence and credibility all day long, but people can see [00:24:00] right through that and it's stressful as heck.
Or you can actually build mastery around how to think and operate like a senior leader. And that executive presence just comes. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to try and present yourself like that. You just do because you have the skillset, you have the authority.
You do belong there because you've done the work. And let me tell you, it was a heck of a lot more fun being able to just nerd out on the problem that I love talking about and not having to worry about presenting myself as something I was not. It was just I was here to have a conversation about something that I love doing and that I knew I was really freaking good at.
So I want you to challenge yourself. Are you spending your time obsessing over how to present yourself as ready for senior leadership? Or are you doing the [00:25:00] work to actually think and operate at that level? And of course, if you want support in how to build mastery of those skill sets, liberated leader is your next move.
I have the link in the show notes below, or send me a DM on Instagram. Let's have a conversation about it. Okay guys, let's go do the work.
Thank you for listening to the Liberating Teams podcast. If this episode hit home for you, don't forget to share it with another leader. Or if you've got 10 seconds, drop a five star review and it would mean the world to me so we can liberate more teams together. And if you try something for today's episode, come tell me how it went.
DM me on Instagram over at Liberating Teams, and I'd love to chat more about it. Now. Let's go change the world of work. One liberated team at a time.
