Personal Presence: What’s the Perception of Yours?
Personal presence involves more than mojo and managing first impressions. Your presence involves your physical, mental, and emotional essence, as well as character. It encompasses what others think or feel about you, based on their interactions with you over time. When that feeling turns out to be favorable, you earn trust and credibility. As others experience the same thing in their interactions with you, buzz builds and social and business opportunities lead to personal and career success.
As I pointed out in my recent book released last month, Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader, that impression of your presence rests on four key elements—just as the title implies:
How You Look: Your body language, movement, dress, reaction to surroundings
How You Talk: The words you choose, physical qualities of your voice, how you use your voice
How You Think: How you organize ideas and information, what you decide to pass on or withhold, how you frame issues
How you Act: The attitude, values, and competence your actions reveal
So how important is personal presence? Well, considering that the book made it to:
#31––BookScan Trade Paperback Best Sellers the first week of its debut
#1––Amazon Best Sellers > Sales & Selling
#4––Amazon Best Sellers > Management & Leadership
#12––Amazon Best Sellers > Business & Investing
apparently, people consider personal presence important to their success. So how do you determine how others perceive you? And how do you increase that presence and expand that influence?
Step 1: Increase Your Awareness.
Observe people with presence: How do they look (move, gesture, walk, stand, dress)? How do they talk (word choices, intonation, conversational starters and bridges, emotional displays and control)? How do they think and communicate their thoughts in meetings, presentations, and writing? Finally, how do they demonstrate their character (integrity, concern, authenticity, goodwill, thoughtfulness, good humor, competence)?
Step 2: Assess Yourself.
Reflect honestly on your own skills, attitudes, and habits as compared to those you consider star performers around you in the industry. If you want a specific checklist to measure yourself, take the 27-item self-assessment to analyze yourself in the four key areas covered in Creating Personal Presence.
Step 3: Get Feedback.
Ask a trusted friend, supervisor, or peer for feedback on areas that concern you. Of course, you’ll need to give them permission to give you straight talk as a favor to help you in your personal development. In fact, you can forward your personal assessment to them and let them rank you specifically in the 27 areas for growth as to how they see you communicate, react, and work with them and others on a daily basis.
Step 4: Commit to Practice a New Skill, Habit, or Technique.
Commitment to growth requires attention. As you practice a new skill (such as larger, more authoritative gestures; thinking on your feet under pressure; or summarizing succinctly in one overview statement), ask your trusted coach or colleague for feedback. And make sure they know what you’re working to improve.
Step 5: Do a Periodic Checkup and an Annual Video Review.
Dieters become discouraged when they lose only a pound or two a week and nobody seems to notice. But let them compare photos from January 1 and May 1 after they’ve lost 25 pounds, and they’ll notice a dramatic difference! As with weight gain or loss, small increases in your personal presence may go unnoticed and seem insignificant to you week to week. But over time, you and others will see, hear, and feel the impact of new techniques and habits.
As a baseline, record yourself in several situations (giving a presentation, leading a meeting, participating in a group discussion) and then record your first feedback from your trusted coach. A year later, record yourself in similar situations and compare the feedback sessions. If you’ve been working at changes, you’ll see and hear a significant increase in your personal presence and influence.
With every interaction, you have the power to strengthen and communicate your presence. Whether you’re starting a relationship, landing a job, closing a deal, or leading an organization through change, little things can make a big impact.
Dianna Booher, an expert in executive communications, is the author of 45 books, published in 25 countries and 19 languages. Her latest books include Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader and Communicate with Confidence, Revised Edition. As CEO of Booher Consultants and as a high-caliber keynote speaker, Dianna and her staff travel worldwide to deliver focused speeches and training programs to address specific communication challenges and increase effectiveness in oral, written, interpersonal, and organizational communication. www.booher.com
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