¶ Introduction to Executive Presence
Do you often feel overlooked in those executive leadership meetings or board meetings, even though you're highly capable
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Welcome back to Speak Up, the number one rate business communication podcast, where we help high-performing introvert leaders, including you social introverts. Turn your ideas into influence and improve business outcomes. Because being brilliant does not automatically make you influential. I am your host, Laura Camacho, your career accelerator, executive presence strategist, and godmother. And by the end of this deep conversation with Janice Kapner, which you're going
Going to love.
You'll know how to build executive presence when you don't have major PL responsibility.
Brilliant.
the kind of strategic questions that create more influence than perfect answers.
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So Janice, I see you used to work at this people might have heard of called T-Mobile where you were chief communications and corporate responsibility officer. What does a corporate responsibility officer do?
The world has gone through lots of iterations on CSR and corporate responsibility, but looking at how you do governance, what you can do as a company to be smart about your carbon emissions or inclusive of your employees and that kind of work usually has some center of gravity. And navigating that, particularly when you have a parent company based in Germany and they're very, very committed to that work in Europe.
Oh yeah.
Yeah. You know, you have to sort of figure out the right way to do the right thing, but also still live up to shareholder responsibilities. And so I had the privilege of looking after that while I was there as well. Right.
¶ Pillars of Influence: Business Acumen
Right, right. Well, we want to know the inside scoop on executive leadership and influence. How do you influence? The CEO. Like, how did you do it?
When you don't own revenue and you do or you don't build the product, I think are kind of two big areas of the business that are very straightforward on what you're contributing yes to a company. And to influence those departments and those teams, those executives and the CEO or the C suite is a real art form and it can be very, very difficult. There's a school of thought from some people that, you know, various disciplines, whether that's communications, HR, IT,
finance, anything that we might call a center box solution are often seen as just service bureaus. I need you to do what the business or the product team tell you to do. And for some companies that works and that's how it operates. I always found I had more success and added more value to the company and to the shareholders if I didn't operate as a service bureau. I also personally it's not my thing.
I I wanna add value. I'm not a good just do as I say. Ask my husband. I'm not an order taker. I'm not good at that. And so it was something I had to learn to do if I was gonna be happy and fulfilled in this discipline and in this job. And What I learned through the years is that anybody can influence a room, but there are key things you have to be able to do. And then you're gonna have to recognize it doesn't just come because you have a good resume or you got the job.
Correct. That got you to the table. That doesn't get you influence at the table where everybody says, Oh, well, we hired so and so you hired Janice. We must just listen to everything she
Right.
You know, that got you to the table. And once you're at the table, then you have to do other things if you really want to build the credibility to then have influence on what business decisions are made from your perspective of your area of expertise.
Mm-hmm. And so how do you do that?
I sort of chalk it up to a few key things and I'll give a little bit of color on each one, but first just kind of in the interest of my storytelling skills, let me give them to you at the top level. One is what I kind of refer to as active listening. Okay. And it's not just listening. Everybody says, oh, you need to listen. Uh-uh. There's more to it than that. So there's really an active listening ability to read the room skill set.
You need to know your business. I cannot tell you how many people come in and, you know, they'll say, well, I'm in HR. I know the people. I don't necessarily know the PNL. Mm-hmm. First of all, even if that's true, you're undermining yourself like instantaneously with a business leader who's like, Well, if you don't know the business
Right.
I can make a guess on what's right for our employee or I can make a guess on what's the right story to tell. So you have to really know and understand your business, even if it's not the discipline you chose and you're not.
passionate about you have to know your business. That's why you're on payroll. Otherwise it's much easier to hire agencies that'll have some depth of knowledge on business. Right. Particularly the good ones, but they're never gonna be as deep as an employee because they just don't even have the access.
And then you have to be resilient because I've had employees that come in humble and ready to show that they can add value. And I've had employees that come in and they're like, Well, you hired me, so you should listen to me. And I'm like You do not have the resilience in that scenario to build the credibility that is required in order to get a CEO of a small or a large company. Small companies are trying to build and they have a lot of a lot of pressure on them.
Big companies have massive responsibilities and a lot of people talking at'em. Right. They want to be heard. You're gonna have to figure out how to actively listen. You really have to know the business and you have to have some resilience.
¶ Mastering Active Listening for Impact
Yes, this is so good. I love the knowing the business because let's say you're in marketing or we I guess you would know a little bit about the business maybe, but privacy, cybersecurity, finance, the I like You're thinking, Well, I don't need to know the business. I just need to know my domain and I'm master of my domain. But yeah, first of all, if you don't understand your business, please don't tell anybody.
Yeah. I think Yeah. And learn the business. And to me it makes it more interesting. But I think you're always gonna want to connect, at least be able to connect. what your policy or your suggestion or your recommendation to how it's going to impact the company. It's not just, oh, this little KPI that's on my
That's my compensation that's gonna help me or maybe my team, but how does that really how does that serve our customer, right? So true. Active listening. You know, you're talking to people who are mostly introverts, and we all consider ourselves really good listeners. I think that we are, but maybe not as good as we could be. So when you say active listening, my response is listening, but for what? Is that the wrong attitude to have?
No, I think you're you're right on the right track. I would say this. We have all sat in a big room. Could be a room of directors, room of directors, a vice president's room, a C suite. Doesn't matter. where you've got multiple voices and stakeholders and you're trying to solve a problem or make a big business decision. And what I see happen so often and it just I want to grab people and go, no, no, no. Is
You get two types. You got the people that are listening and then they're full-fledged multitasking. And I'm like, you may be brilliant, and I hope you're good at that. But you know, but more importantly, People they start to hear the rhythm of the conversation and they start to figure out, okay, I need to say something. I need to get my voice into this, right?
And you start to think about what you're going to say and you stop hearing and picking up on the nuance of the room. What I have found over the years is if you watch. First of all, you have consistency. CEOs.
And senior executives are consistent in their demeanor. Some of them are, I want to know the data. I also want to know what the impact to customers are. I also want to know the impact of the business. I want to know how fast we can go. I want to know if we've turned over all the rocks to go faster. I want to know what the implications are.
You see patterns to how executives ask those questions and where they want to go. Watch that. Cause then you're prepared not only for the question, but the answer and when it impacts or intersects with your area of responsibility. But more importantly, the people that I I feel badly for are you start to tune out.
Just ever so slightly'cause you're preparing your commentary. Right? And have you ever sat in a room and you hear somebody who then they weigh in and it's their like two minutes too late and the whole room is like we've already moved on from that. And not in a overt like in your face. Sometimes that happens too, but usually it's a little more subtle than that. And a kind room
Will just keep rolling. They just keep rolling. A tough room at some some company cultures will be like, I think maybe you've lost track of the conversation and it can be very embarrassing. Yes. If you understand what they're trying to do, then the dialogue of, oh, I understand why
the retail channel lead is pushing on that because they have X, Y, and Z three things going on. Or I understand why finance is worried about this because that's a profit impact. Or I understand why HR is concerned about that because that might have personnel issues. If you understand that
Then you don't have to spend so much time preparing your own answer that you stop listening to the rune because you're an active participant in the entire big picture. Like in my case in communications, oftentimes we might have to make decisions that are gonna land publicly. People can be mad. Yeah. And it's not my job to convince the business, hey, don't do the right thing for the business because it's gonna be unpopular. It's my job to say, I know why the business needs to do that. I feel like
the people who own those decisions have turned over all the rocks. And I get what we're doing. And therefore, as a leader, I can figure out with good morals and good ethics how am I going to help us do what we have to do for the business, even if it's going to, you know, be a little bit unpopular or whatever the advice might be. So they they intertwine.
Guys, what Janice just told us is life changing because a lot of you struggle with speaking up in meetings and it's exactly what Janice described has happened to you, it's happened to me, that you hear something and you start putting together your pieces because as introverts, you know, we take sometimes we're slower to process.
But if we go into the meeting, even without the agenda, we'll pretend that we don't have the agenda, but you know the business and you know the main people in the room and what their priorities are, what they're being graded on. then that knowledge alone is going to position you so that you're faster at the trigger to be able to say things faster because you have that understanding. Is that right?
¶ Speaking Up with Strategic Questions
Yeah. And here's the third piece to the stool. I talk about being resilient because if you don't own the revenue and you don't own the product, it's hard to influence.
And
Honestly, if you know the business and you're actively listening and you're throwing out sometimes even the best ideas, which by the way, I call it throwing spaghetti on the wall. You can throw out twenty ideas and management or the leadership team or the decision makers may say like to 19 of those are gonna be like, I'm sorry.
And hopefully if you've shown that you know the business and you have a a good command of the business and you're respected at the table as you build that muscle, the way the no comes is gonna be like, I totally hear why you think you should do that, Janice, but we just here's why we can't. Right. It's not personal. But here's one tip that I will say. I worked for the former CMO at Microsoft. I don't think he would be upset by hearing me tell this story.
And one year early in my tenure at Microsoft, we had a annual review and he was very complimentary. It was a very great positive conversation. He said, Here's the one thing that I need from you. He said, You are not super vocal in meetings, right? To your introvert and Okay. And he said, When you do speak up, it's so good. It's so thoughtful, but it's just not that much.
And I said, Yeah, but if I'm aspiring for that perfect gonna be really thoughtful, people are gonna look at me like, Oh, that was a really thoughtful thing to add, then I can't do it as much. And he said, People will forgive the less brilliant moments.
versus having only two moments, you know, you have to find your voice. And we talked about it and I said, I have to figure out how to do that. And he said, you can ask questions and still be a contributor. It's not everything has to be a like, yeah, hey, we should do A, B, C, or D.
He said to build your seat at the table and take your share of oxygen and be heard so that when you do put that hopefully very thoughtful idea, whether it's taken or not, on the table and people are like, oh, I get why she said that.
It's in the midst of an active engaged person who's saying like, well, when you guys decided to go for this revenue target, did we explore A, B, and C or have you talked to the product team? Is there a propensity that we can maybe move the date or whatever the question is?
So I would say to all those introverts out there, when you're really struggling and you're just looking for that perfect comment, don't just worry about the perfect comment. You want to have an idea, recommendation, sure. If you if you're listening, if you're educated on the business you're working on, you'll get there.
But ask questions, be an active person. Don't ask 20 questions and be that like annoying person who's disrupting the flow either, because those people look insecure like they're trying to be heard. Yes. There's just a balance. Right. You know?
Exactly. Let's say that you're a more junior person in an executive leadership room and You think that whatever is being suggested is a really bad idea. I'm looking for pushing back against authority while r keeping your job and your reputation, maybe framing it as a question, you know, whatever your doubt is, how are we going to handle this aspect would be one way. Do you have any guidance about disagreeing without being disagreeable when you're intimidated.
¶ Disagreeing Respectfully and Informing Risk
Yes. Hey look, it's hard. And anybody who says to your audience or anybody else, oh, that's easy, is probably a l the m small percentage of people it's kind of a bowl and a china shop. For the rest of us normal human beings. That is that is that is difficult. My opinion the way the best way to do that is
You can push back and disagree without being disagreeable. I do like to pose it in the form of a question. And sometimes the hardest part about that is to find a window to break in. When you get into places where you might have some real conflict.
the room gets loud and people get going and you know, you do sort of have to pick your your shots. Not every time you disagree with an idea are you gonna be able to find that opening to get in there and and push on that. But if you believe you have an articulate like
I really think in my case, I was a wet blanket a lot. I'd used to say to people in the room, I don't want to be the wet blanket, but I have to ask a couple of tough questions because comms was my job and trying to protect the brand, work with marketing. Protect our people. Right. That meant asking questions. And there were things I'd be like, oh my God, I really don't want to do this. But if the company has to do this,
You know, like when you go through job reductions. No executive worth their salt is looks forward to that. Right. And sometimes it's just a choice that has to be made. You know, I would find myself sitting there going, Okay Let me hear the room out. And when I really reach the point where I'm like, oh, I'm pretty sure this is a a hard yes. It's a it's a decision that has to be made. But I'm gonna I can't help myself but to give one push.
just to make really sure that we are sharks. Yeah. I like to find a an entry point. You gotta have your voice. If you try and enter soft in a room where tough decisions are being debated, it's gonna be really, really hard. But you don't have to be big macho. Yeah. You just have to say, hey, excuse me, I have a question. And if there's one lead person in the room, I try to use their name. Excuse me, Joe. Right. You know, I just have a question. I know we're going around about this.
Have we really looked at the alternatives to this, this, this, this, and this? Obviously I'm very concerned about what this is gonna do from a news cycle perspective for for our communications work. And I'm sure you've turned over all the rocks, but is there just no other way? Because at a minimum for me in my discipline, I may message that. Right. I may have an A to the Q that says, hey, we looked at
This cost cutting. We looked at this, we looked at the and it just wasn't gonna hit our shareholder commitments and we have an obligation, a fiduciary obligation, so we have had to make some tough decisions. So he serves two purposes. Yes. And by the way, your job in that isn't necessarily to change the decision. What it could be is making sure that the decision makers in the room are informed on the risk that comes with the decision.
Yeah.
Sometimes they hear that and they go, I hadn't thought about that. Right. Maybe we want to do a little more due diligence. By the time I'm in those debates, you know, when I was in the C suite, there'd been a lot of churn with really smart people in the director and VP population. And so we didn't have a ton of those. But sometimes we paused. Right. Sometimes we would say, Hey, let's take an extra week.
Let's go do a little more due diligence. Let's, you know, and even if we come back to the same decision, we can feel good about the fact that we didn't make it willy nilly.
Exactly. And you as the you know, questioner, you know that hey You gave your idea or your concern
The best.
argument, the best backing that you could. And to me that is that's more important than winning'cause you're not gonna win. I mean, that would be crazy that everything oh, whatever Laura says we'll do. No. It doesn't work that way.
¶ Building Credibility in Tough Debates
If you have an idea, either a suggestion or concern, like give it the best shot you can because otherwise you'd live with that, you know, like, oh, what if I had done that? You don't want that regret.
And I think it's twofold. Number one, that's your job. Yeah, it is your job. Like really it is your job. It is your job to express the hey, have we thought through the downside to this is this, this and this and do it in a respectful way. But The other thing is if you're trying to build your career and your credibility, when you become a voice that's willing to tee up things that might be uncomfortable, but also willing to understand.
that you're capable of being told like, Thank you so much for the input, but no. And you're creating a better decision and you're not a wilting flower that flips out because somebody pushed back on your idea. You know what that does for your reputation when you're trying to move up the food?
chain and get into this bigger jobs, it makes people really respect you. Like, hey, we can have that guy in that meeting. He's gonna be an active contributor. And even if, you know, he doesn't like what he hears, eventually he or she will
push through that, help us make a good decision. And if you have to agree to disagree and move forward, you can. Because there's a maturity that comes with that that management needs to know. People get frustrated in middle management, they don't get included in certain things. Some of that has to do with A, are you adding value to your point not being a wallflower and you know and finding a way to contribute? But also
When it doesn't go the way that you would like it to go and it's gonna be a tougher decision, how do you engage and respond on that? Yeah. Because management, I promise you, most leaders when they make a decision that they they feel like is a tough decision. Even if it's totally brilliant business decision, but it might come with like, oh my God, we're gonna have to ask some people to work extra hours'cause it's gonna be harder to get this done so fast or whatever.
Yeah, yeah. Some kind of downside, yeah.
People are human and most people, not all, I'm there people, but most people have some feelings about that. And so they wanna grind through, make the right decision, and then they need their management team to get behind that and then go make it happen. And not keep going like this is so dumb, this is so dumb, this is so dumb, this is
Right, right.
So there is a little bit of like when you show that you've got that maturity to engage in the debate, to offer solutions, to ask good questions, to make for a better outcome. And then when all the dust settles, you're like, Okay. I get it. I'm gonna have to ask the team to work this weekend. Gonna be hard, but it's totally the right thing for the business. A as a leader I can go tell my team that.
And B, management knows that I'm gonna help get it done. And by the way, most of us want to be at that table for that debate because it helps us go lead our people better. But you have to earn that participation by both having a voice. But being able to have the thick enough skin to realize like oh okay, some
Yeah, you're not you're just not gonna win every time. And and you know what, you can be right. You can be correct. Yeah, it is not good to ask these people to work and maybe somebody just had a baby or whatever. I mean, just because They disagree with you doesn't mean that you're wrong.
Wrong. A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Most leaders, you know, and CEOs I've worked with will tell you that some of the biggest business decisions they've made with risk. No matter which way they go, there's gonna be a part to that decision that they don't love. But advancing a business, particularly in a competitive market, is complicated. It's not like it's flowers and fairy dust and like, oh, here's the
Here's the easy path and we don't have to make any tough decisions. It's just not real. And so that's why good leaders want the debate. Yes. Because if you're gonna make a decision and you're gonna have to do some stuff that you love and that's gonna be amazing and gonna deliver great customer value, but might be hard on your people or might cost you
extra dollars or whatever. You want to make sure you've you really stared all that down. And that is where these rooms become really interesting. And most people in middle management aspiring to get up want very much to be in that room. And eventually you'll get a shot, but how you manage it is where it gets important. I
love this discussion about all of us contributing to better decisions in in different ways.
¶ Unseen Pressures, Personal Executive Presence
Janice, is there anything else that we should understand of these high potential, super smart, super attractive listeners? That they should know about how executive decisions are actually made. Are there any misperceptions or myths there or incomplete understandings that you can shed some light on? I would say
Every company's a little bit different how they do it. It depends on the leader and it depends some people like big forums and lots of debate. Some people like smaller forums and a little more hierarchy. And there's no right or wrong in that. Everybody has their preference on what kind of culture they want to work in. But what I will say is
Even the tough decisions are usually churned over pretty extensively. And if they have a material impact on people, product, customers, or the financial exposure of the company, no CEO that keeps his job for very long or for a job for very long.
makes those decisions without a lot of and you may not see it. Like even when I was at the C suite, there were meetings that would happen where you know I wasn't in every meeting and and you would know, oh, they've had six meetings kind of gearing up on what's the long term
revenue potential for the company and I try and I have moments myself I am human where you're like, Oh, there's just no way they thought this through. But odds are they did and odds are that There's pressure that you don't see, or there's a business decision or a competitive decision or a financial burden or something that we don't know about that is squeezing management saying, Oh, we're gonna have to make some tough decisions.
And I like to presume that until I'm given a reason not to. You should assume that people in those big jobs have some serious pressures that We don't see whether it's from your board of directors, whether it's from private owners, de you know, depending on the status of the company.
And these are people that have other fiduciary responsibilities and they're leaning in hard. And so then management is trying to weigh those decisions. So then you in middle management, you want to sit one of those chairs one day, don't forget that they have bosses. It's either a board or maybe it's the customers themselves that are like screaming going like I am unhappy. T Mobile was really good at like our customers hate these twelve things.
We must fix them. And sometimes fixing them was expensive. It was hard. We would try and move really quickly. It could mean really long work days for a while. You may not always know what's going on. And I encourage people to ask because once you understand the business context, it's a lot easier.
Yeah.
To get that.
And also to understand better the complexity of what's at hand. Oh my gosh, Janish, this has been so good, so helpful. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else that this that you you're thinking, oh Laura, I should have asked. this thing and she did it and I I want to let her listeners in on this Secret.
I would only say this. Executive presence when you're you have professional aspirations is different to each and every one of us. You know, a lot of people try and emulate other people. And if there's a a habit that somebody you admire uses and it it's natural to you. So you have to find what works for you, what's your executive presence. How do you ask questions? How do you engage? How do you prepare? And by the way, one other small tip.
If you have an ally in the room, you guys can agree to help back each other up. And I don't I don't mean gang up. Let's this is not the playground. But I I do mean Where, you know, hey Pam and I have discussed this thing and I really feel strongly about it. And I put the idea out there, and Pam doesn't even have to agree, but Pam could pile on with the have we stared at this and help each other find voice.
Because once you get a little momentum, it gets a lot easier. And so you just have to be patient. You have to be resilient. Find what works for you. Because when you try and do stuff that doesn't work for you, particularly if you're an introvert. Yeah. It takes all the enjoyment out of it. You're not adding value and enjoying the respect that might come with that. You're just stressing about what's
Yes, way too much, way too much. This has been so good. Thank you so much, Janice. It has been great. Absolutely fantastic.
¶ Episode Key Takeaways and Insights
Thank you so much.
I really appreciated how she talked about executive presence being something that you earn, that you develop. It doesn't come with the role. And the second major takeaway for me was knowing the business as a core executive presence skill. You want to be able to connect your recommendations to customer impact. Shareholder impact, operational impact, risk.
timing, revenue, morale, brand consequences, or reputation. So much value there. If you would benefit from getting one executive presence micro skill Delivered to you every single day for twenty-four days in the summer, and it's a great time to really beef up your executive presence. That's July 6th through August 1st. It's a private podcast series with 24 short daily leadership reps to help you build the communication habit that senior leaders actually notice.
There is a link in the top of the show notes. Hope to see you there. In any case, have a terrific, wonderful day, and I will catch you on the next episode.
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