Power of presence

Employers continue to struggle to determine whether job candidates are a good “cultural fit” for their organizations’ environments.

Cultural fit, one of several important elements for executive succession planning as more baby boomers leave the workforce, addresses ideas of shared assumptions in the workplace environment, such as how employees:

• Treat others with respect.
• Manage time.
• Complete work.
• Wear proper attire.
• Avoid intolerable behavior.  
• Allocate resources.

Employees who fit well into organizations’ cultures will possess exemplary soft skills.

What are soft skills?

Leaders at all levels should daily use such high-level soft skills as collaboration, creativity, curiosity, problem-solving, communication skills, conflict management skills, strong work ethic, adaptability, social awareness, empathy, emotional intelligence (the arbiter between the rational brain and emotional brain) and clear self-expression (the ability to clearly express ideas, thoughts and opinions in a variety of media). These skills represent core values and drive organizations to achieve financial and transformational objectives in the long term.

Can organizations teach these soft skills? Sure, people can acquire them. However, some soft skills rely on our internal “wiring” that reflect more individual expressions of personality. These, of course, are difficult to teach. Such soft skills can be very challenging to screen for in just one or two pre-employment interviews or assessments. However, job interviewers and other executives can draw out some from within those who already have solid soft-skills baselines. If you think that’s a huge challenge, you’re correct, as many surveys reveal.

Soft skills are the widest proficiency gap in U.S. workforce

An Adecco Staffing survey in 2018 of more than 500 senior executives found that 44 percent think Americans lack soft skills — communication, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, etc. (See Watch the skills gap, May 6.)

A 2016 survey conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that only 33 percent of global employers believed they had a strong “quality of hire” — a metric that helps understand how well an organization’s hiring process functions. (See Quality of Hire Top Metric for 2016, by Roy Maurer, Jan. 4, 2016, SHRM.) When employers complain about socially unskilled hires but don’t measure their hiring processes, a self-fulfilling prophecy soon arises.

Another survey by the International Association of Administrative Professionals, OfficeTeam and HR.com discovered that 67 percent of human resources managers said they’d hire someone with strong soft skills even if the technical skills were lacking, and 93 percent believe technical skills are easier to teach than soft skills. (See Pre-Employment Testing to Measure Soft Skills, Prevue.)

There’s no simple across-the-board solution that will address soft-skills deficiencies that can apply to all positions in all industries. If we pursue more methods of what I call “influential and persuasive intelligence” (ability to influence and persuade others to pursue a line of thought, behavior, or action, and make them believe/feel they did so under their own volition) we might identify soft-skills aptitude in potential leadership candidates.

Do we accommodate those with generational or other differences when managing soft skills?

You don’t. Each generation comes to the workplace strongly influenced by its particular pop culture (music, art, fashion, politics) and technology drivers (mobile devices, mobile apps). No one generation is better than another. So, accommodating those with specific generational work ethics only encourages vertical social and organizational “silos” that inhibit cooperation, foster organizational discord and promote internal competition. Multigenerational teams yield best results.

The work environment must become the crucible for creating conditions from which management can identify and groom future leaders for positions of greater authority and responsibility.

The Harvard Business Review over the past several years has highlighted the difficulty of leadership and diversity programs taking root in companies. (See Why Diversity Programs Fail, by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, July/August 2016.) Since the 1960s, criteria for hiring, promoting and aligning employees at all levels were based on factors that leaned (and still do) toward social and legal compliance objectives rather than those that address the financial goals of the organization.

Other ideas for identifying leaders with soft skills

Professional football and basketball teams often recruit players directly out of college or before they graduate. Major league baseball (MLB) teams go a step further. They usually recruit college baseball players after they graduate, draft them into their team organizations and send nearly all of them down to play on AA or AAA minor-league teams for several years to hone their talents and prepare them mentally and emotionally for their transitions to the big leagues.

These farm teams are incubators for developing talent. When a MLB team calls a player up to the majors, he already has a few seasons as an apprentice under the tutelage of experienced coaches.

Such training within organizations can better prepare up-and-coming leaders for life in the big leagues when that time comes for promotions to greater positions of responsibility and authority.

Deloitte’s Business Chemistry System

Deloitte has created a similar farm-team process for employees. Rather than develop players for certain positions, its Business Chemistry System identifies four primary work styles (pioneers, drivers, integrators and guardians) and related strategies for achieving shared goals. (See The New Science of Team Chemistry, Harvard Business Review, March/April 2017, by Suzanne M. Johnson and Kim Christfort.)

The Business Chemistry System classifies individuals on their dominant work styles based on neural chemistry. The process pulls together individuals to work on teams consisting of all four work styles as well as different generations, genders, races and ethnicities.

According to the research behind Business Chemistry, this emphasis on cognitive diversity has more of a direct bearing on the types of thinking, behavior and activities that directly influence organizational goals. With team members representing each of the four work styles and other variables, such team environments can serve as incubators for future leaders.

‘Power of presence’ soft-skills development is next big thing

Through the years, I’ve had conversations and meetings with Fortune 100 executives about searching for stellar talent. When I asked them about the one characteristic of potential strong leaders, they talked about “presence” — a seemingly intangible quality that defies empirical quantification.

“You know presence when you see it and hear it,” these executives told me. “It’s a feeling you get from observing how someone interacts with people and situations with uncommon ease.” Those who have presence have that certain je ne sais quoi — something inexplicable. Executives request the soft-skill attribute of presence in their fast-track leaders more than any other.

Is presence innate or can we acquire it? Well, all of us can attain greater presence in our lives by more authentically connecting with the thoughts and feelings of those who inspire, motivate and encourage us to achieve challenging goals.

However, certain qualities of presence are innate to a person’s personality. In the eyes of many, “that special something” (perhaps charisma captures innate presence to some degree) endeared JFK, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to so many. To others, the absence of that special something failed to endear Mitt Romney to voters and Richard Nixon to people outside of his inner circle.

Four elements of presence

Trying to describe the characteristics of presence is like explaining the qualities of a summer breeze. You can only express the effects of the breeze, not the breeze itself. I’ve identified four elements that characterize the evidence of presence: engagement, positioning, influence and conversion — EPIC.

Here are some examples of how presence manifests itself:

• Your experience gets you the interview; your presence gets you the job. Presence engages you with decision makers, positions your expertise and uses the influence of branded value to convert them to offering you the job.
• Your creativity generates ideas; your presence gets them heard. Presence engages you with listeners, positions your idea and uses the influence of your creativity to convert them to hearing you out.
• Your brand gets you in the door; your presence gets you the deal. Presence engages you with the potential client, positions your branded expertise and uses the influence of your value to convert them to become a client.
• Your leadership gets you the stage — it’s presence that inspires your audience. It’s how you engaged with an audience, positioned your leadership expertise, used the influence of your authority to convert them to an inspired audience who will act.

Takeaways

Here are a few takeaways about how the power of presence can reveal itself in your work and personal life:

• You can look the part, act the part and “fake it till you become it,” says Amy Cuddy in her popular book, “Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges” (Little Brown & Co., 2015). But realize that authentic presence is more like your shadow than a tailor-made suit: It’s always with you.
• Charisma and empathy, important components of presence, help you draw others into your world, position and beliefs while making them feel like the most important person in the room. Nothing feels better than making someone else feel significant, noticed and validated.
• Projecting confidence even when you don’t feel it is a sign of emotional intelligence that’s tied to strong leadership presence. It’s putting on your game face regardless of the score.
• You can be authentic and be the true version of yourself, despite celebrity coach advice that says you can’t. Synonyms for authentic are “real, reliable, dependable, faithful, trustworthy.” Such personal characteristics go far in bringing out your leadership presence.
• Strong self-management strategies (being aware of your emotions to wisely choose responses) go far in developing self-awareness. The presence-driven leader is acutely self-aware.

Presence is the positive, beneficial application of influential and persuasive intelligence because ultimately that’s how it usually reveals itself. There’s no empirical “from 1 to 10” scale for measuring leadership presence, and any “10 ways to build your presence” list only highlights the tangible, external skills and behaviors you can acquire — not your personal, innate qualities that enhance them.

But you’ll know it when you see the epic results you get with it.

Donn LeVie Jr., CFE, a Fraud Magazine staff writer, has been a presenter and career and business engagement/positioning strategist at ACFE Global Fraud Conferences since 2010. He speaks on the Power of Presence and is the author of several award-winning career positioning/influence strategy books. Visit his website at donnleviejrstrategies.com. Contact him at donnlevie@austin.rr.com.