Members Only | 05.25.21
Mastering Your Executive Presence as You Lead Transformation
By Kevin E. O’Connor, CSP, LCPC, LMFT, NCC
When I asked a senior executive at one of our largest pharmaceutical firms his advice for presenting to senior executives, his considered response was this: “If you can in any way avoid it, just don’t. Senior executives have one job: to decide things.” He went on, “If you make them decide they may not decide in your favor. And if you have to keep going to them for permission it not only shows you have no initiative, but it puts them in the corner to take responsibility for the decision, a decision that you know more about than they do. So, lead them with your confident expertise. You know more than they do about your material.” Another CEO who is a physician simply said his motto was, “Proceed until apprehended!”
A friend wrote that on his daily biking around a nature park, he noticed that others were stopped and snapping a picture of a deer. It was as if they hadn’t seen animals there before. “Then I started to look for them actively.” Out of frustration, he bought himself a better camera as a retirement gift and began posting his pictures on Facebook, many each week. When asked how he saw so many he replied, “Mostly it’s because I am always really looking.”
Have you ever taken the same path he did but all you saw were humans?
I now understand that I was missing the “close observation” part of the experience. The wisdom Tom relayed was the insight that it is up to us to make the connection, not up to us to hope for the coincidence of the animal to appear.
This is the heart of transformation for Tomorrow’s (and today’s!) MSP. We have to lead, look, and take the initiative to help senior executives and physician leaders decide … some call this your executive presence. And I would like to suggest that this is at the heart of the transformation you can make happen from your office to the boardroom. In short, they will be saying, “Make way, here comes our MSP!”
One physician leader put it this way, “You are either at the table or you are on the menu.” He went on, “I want to ensure that I am at the table!”
Another physician leader said he learned the most about executive presence through his immigrant experience. From my physician father, I learned that the politics is as important as the content. From my mother, I learned not to say too much as long as I listened intently. Listen, she said, and they will tell you. With a laugh my father added, “Americans don’t like silence … give them a chance and they will talk!”
In our work with others, especially those who can and do make policy affecting our work, how much are we showing initiative, inserting the “really” in our day, and simply allowing our silence to allow them to help us succeed?
The challenge, however, is often to deal with my own initiative. Author Bill Guertin calls it the “voices in my head.” These voices can silence us, diminish us, limit our initiative, and reduce our ability to see the seat at the table that belongs to us.
I have interviewed more than 50 leaders of all sorts, types, and temperaments. I’ve noticed that they have certain things about them that create a thread. Each spoke immediately about the executive presence as a key to transformation, and believe me, they had opinions! They also related with their own stories. They had feelings about those. And they each in their own way found a way to personalize their experience. They were quite human relating the ups and downs, successes and failures.
Perhaps this may be our first insight. The leaders we serve and the leader we aspire to be want all three. These leaders want something and someone to help them form their opinions, in effect they each are asking for our help in solving the problem before them. Note that they look to us to help them. They also want to know the emotional component of that work and its impact on others. They all seem to know, without being psychologists, that impact is an emotional experience, and it is emotions that drive change. Data will not connect, nor alone will it convince, nor does it stand over time. When we connect data with the person’s emotional response, then we have movement. Or, as they say on the range out west, “The fastest way to move cattle is slow! You don’t want to scare them!” No matter what, the data transformation needs one more component: the human enterprise. We are bound by our common human experience: rounding at their hospital, taking time off, having a favorite ice cream, and petting the dog. MSPs of the future can transform and shape their future, not just respond to it. We need to understand how things work in the C-suite and in the boardroom.
Dr. Frank Dono, an 80-year-old, short, stocky, fully and always well dressed, Italian physician leader from Ohio Health used to wait for the end of each administrative meeting, and then came his inevitable words, “May I say a few words?” Everyone would smile, settle in their chairs, and await the words they were anticipating that would give them hope. Frank would then give us a 3–5 minute end note about the importance of the patient, the person, the healing, the presence, and the vital work we all do with one person in mind: the patient. Master teacher and mentor, he was that for sure. Even when Frank was dying, he was the teacher still instructing an extremely nervous resident what she should do next not to serve him but to serve her anxiety. When I heard the story, it occurred to me that Frank was “really looking” for what was required of him at that moment for someone else, the moments closest to his death. And he took the lead.
These leaders might think about things differently than we do. They might even decide things differently than we would, unless we have a strategy to accompany them, become their trusted advisor, get invited to their meetings, and place ourselves before them. Not unlike Tom, they too have a camera that may be much better than the one we have. They may be able to see the shy deer, the elusive coyote, or the ever-above-us heron’s nest. It is as if they are our guide to what is right before us, if only we “really look.”
The MSP of tomorrow (and, remember, of today!) is the one who listens to the voice in their head that says, “Go, they need your expertise. Become their leader.”
“I’ve learned to really listen, too.” Tom added, “The bird sounds are so beautiful, even if often I can’t find the bird.”