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The applications and benefits of Leadership Presence are widespread. Throughout large and small organizations leaders need to move, influence, inspire, and motivate people to achieve goals. Leadership Presence is a powerful tool for mobilizing and energizing people, sometimes toward great achievement.

We have worked at the senior levels of Fortune 500 companies, in government, in nonprofits, in education, and even in the prison system. The list of ways to apply the skill of Leadership Presence grows with every client. Consider the following list.

• Developing deeper and more trusting relationships with your clients
• Inspiring your teammates to sprint to the finish on an important project
• Persuading a reluctant recruit she has what it takes to charge up that hill
• Convincing your investors to fund your next great idea
• Inspiring a classroom of students to become lifelong learners
• Encouraging your employees to hang in through tough times
• Creating enthusiasm in your organization for a difficult change
• Negotiating a complex contract that benefits all sides
• Nurturing a corporate culture that engenders loyalty and retention

Do any of these tasks look familiar? Are they similar to the challenges that you face? Would your ability to connect authentically with your audience help accomplish these things? In other words, would Leadership Presence help? We think so.

It's not hard to imagine all the relationships and situations where these abilities will be useful in building consensus around common goals, making a work group into a real team, creating long-term relationships with customers, improving collaboration with colleagues, anywhere relationships are critical to accomplishment.

Leadership Presence More than just charisma

As we write this book, the notion of charisma has fallen into disfavor. Too many companies in recent years have come to wrack and ruin, led by so-called charismatic leaders who have led their organizations over the edge of the cliff, while making barrels of money for themselves in the process.

Charisma itself is not necessarily the villain, but narcissistic charisma is. That's the kind of charisma that allows an individual to sway the masses and stir up followers while maintaining emotional distance or even disdain for those followers. Charisma as an element of true Leadership Presence can be a tool for good, as long as the other elements are also in place.

Leadership Presence combines power with humility. It's about where you and those you lead want to go and what all of you want to accomplish and how all of you can benefit from your work together. It's about relationships and connections between people. To use our PRES model again, Leadership Presence is about:

• Being Present not pretentious.
• Reaching Out not looking down.
• being Expressive not impressive.
• being Self-knowing not self-absorbed.

We said a moment ago that self-knowing is what integrates the four elements of the PRES model into one thing Leadership Presence. Self-knowing is what separates Leadership Presence from self-centered charisma. For Self-knowing involves knowing your values and living according to those values. A leader can possess charisma and still have Leadership Presence. But for the narcissistic charismatic leader, the chief value is "me," and the problem is that followers inevitably discover that value, causing the luster to wear off.

Achieving Leadership Presence is a four-act drama

Because our experience has shown us that Leadership Presence is most easily learned around the four elements, we have organized the rest of this book around them, in four acts. Each act contains two chapters that cover the interior and exterior aspects of the element. The second chapter in each act provides rules and practical advice to help you apply what you learned in the first chapter.

Act I: Being Present

Chapter 2 discusses the value of living in the moment, which is the state of mind that compels or energizes Being Present. Chapter 3 then uses improvisational theater to explore flexibility, the key feature of how you act when you're fully present.

Act II: Reaching Out

Chapter 4 delves into empathy, the state of mind that drives Reaching Out, followed by Chapter 5 on making connections, which covers all the actions we can take to create a relationship with another person.

Act III: Expressiveness

Chapter 6 talks about expressing emotion and focuses on a concept every actor and leader will recognize passionate purpose which influences all the ways we express ourselves. Chapter 7 then describes the way we communicate our passionate purpose by congruently using all means of communication at our disposal.

Act IV: Self-knowing

Chapter 8 explores the heart of Self-knowing for a leader, which is the development of explicit beliefs and values through self-reflection. Chapter 9 discusses authenticity, which is based on accepting yourself and living your values.

Practices and exercises

At the end of each chapter we include easy-to-use practices and exercises based on our actual work training and coaching executives. These are the reference sections of the book, designed so readers can learn and apply the principles we discuss in each chapter. Some of you may jump into these right after each chapter, others may choose to return to them after digesting the entire book. We encourage you to pick and choose from these sections depending on your personal preferences and needs.

The practices are actions and behaviors that you can apply, on a daily basis, to your everyday life. The exercises are to be done outside of work at a time you have set aside, in the same way you might do physical exercises to stay fit. These activities, which come predominantly from our acting training, are designed to maintain and strengthen your skills of Leadership Presence.

Copyright © 2003 by Gail Evans, Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Tags: Management & Leadership

About the Author

Kathy Lubar and Belle Linda Halpern, cofounders of The Ariel Group, have instructed more than 30,000 executives from hundreds of companies through their workshops. Lubar is a professional actress and cofounder of Boston's New Repertory Theater.

About the Author

Belle Halpern performs nationwide as an actress and singer and has taught music students at Harvard University. Both live in the Boston area, where The Ariel Group is based.