1154: The Fundamentals of Great Executive Presence with Elisia Keown

Pete Mockaitis
Elisia, welcome!

Elisia Keown
Pete, thank you. I’m so excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk executive presence, and I think your own clients have teed this up perfectly when they’ve actually said to you, “I’m told I should have more executive presence, but WTF does that even mean?”

Elisia Keown
Exactly. Maybe they leave out the WTF part, but they’re definitely thinking it. No, you’re totally right. Like, my audience is like that C-suite, VP-leader level, and that is one of the most common things I hear. And you and I were talking about it a few weeks ago that this theme of executive presence is so common, and it’s this blanket, I call it the atomic bomb of feedback of, like, we’re going to drop this big atomic bomb of, like, “You need to have better, stronger executive presence.”

And the atomic bomb part of it is it gets dropped and there’s no further explanation. It’s super vague. The executive kind of walks away from the conversation feeling super confused, like, “What does that mean?” And it’s one of the most vague pieces of feedback in corporate America, I’d venture to say.

And so I have made it a mission. How do we demystify it? How do we help define it? Because once you have that clarity, then you can actually work on developing that skill because it is an absolute skill, you can develop it. I do not believe you’re born with it. And then that changes everything in that leader’s trajectory.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds excellent, and that really does ring true in terms of vagueness. And we could talk all day about vague words, like, “Have more executive presence,” or, “Be more strategic,” or, “Be more proactive,” I mean, that could encompass dozens, hundreds of potential behaviors.

Can you tell us how have you grappled with attempting a definition or a decomposition or segmentation of this fuzzy term?

Elisia Keown
Yeah, totally, you’re right. It gets handed down like zero instruction, and people can feel that absence.

And when even pressed, leaders try to articulate it. I find they struggle with it, too. So I don’t think it’s the leader’s intention to be vague. I truly don’t think they go out there trying to confuse the human. But without direction, it’s useless, right? It’s incomplete.

So what I try to do is break it into concrete components. And I usually work with the executive. If they’re unclear and they don’t have the direction, we’ll try to get clues and get little breadcrumbs based on the feedback and what they’re hearing and seeing so that they can have some of those moments of clarity.

And so what I found, it usually falls into these four kind of main buckets that I’ve seen. So the first one is thinking about emotional regulation. Emotional regulation under these high pressure, high stakes environments. We all know it. The big important meeting, speaking in front of the board, having to make a big decision.

So how do you show up and how do you have executive presence when things go sideways or there’s a lot of stakes in the meeting or risk involved? How do you show up and have that emotional regulation within yourself? So that’s a big one.

The ability to be decisive and making decisions quickly even when you have very limited amount of information, that’s very common as an executive, and remaining humble at the same time. So you can make a clear decision, you can still listen to the team, your colleagues, your drug reports, your boss, you can listen to everybody, but you can have that confidence to make a decision without arrogance. Very tricky.

The third, and this is the one I think that gets kind of lumped into executive presence, but how to have intentional communication. How do you speak with clarity, not with that emotional impulse? How do you know, just as important when to speak, but when not to speak, and when to stay silent and listen? And that’s tricky, and I think that’s a lot of the times we do lump it just into blanket communication as executive presence, but I think it’s intentional, clear communication.

And then the last is just being consistent with all of this. So executive presence isn’t always just about what you do in the big meeting. It’s more about what you do every day, how you show up every day, how you lead in the moments where people observing you and when they’re not observing you.

So I think, in summary, it’s not about being the loudest, biggest personality in the room, the smartest person in the room. It’s about being, like, the most grounded in your own leadership, in yourself, and having that self-confidence and helping people understand which of those levers they need to pull.

And because, again, sometimes it isn’t all four of these things that people need to work on. It might be one more than the other but it’s believing in yourself and then moving forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that does paint a picture. Thank you. And, I guess, I’m also thinking about what’s not in there in terms of it’s not, you know, dressed like an executive with a cool suit or an expensive haircut. So I guess looking the part matters somewhat, but perhaps folks would probably just be able to say and articulate that more directly instead of executive presence, like, “Clean up. Get a suit that fits you right.”

Elisia Keown
And you’re right. I think there’s a lot of factors and a lot of things that people say will encompass executive presence. And just like you mentioned, it doesn’t mean those things aren’t important. It doesn’t mean, yes, if you work in an environment where a suit and a clean haircut and being well-groomed is important, and you don’t show up that way, of course it’s important. It’s just not everything.

And I think that’s the hard part because people think if I just solve this one piece that it’s going to encompass everything, and that’s not everything. I think it really, truly, when we say it, we typically mean one of those other four levers to pull. It’s typically not just what you’re wearing. You’re right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we can dig into each of these, but, I guess, maybe I’d love to get your take on. So this is a set of skills, and we talk about all kinds of skills here on How to be Awesome at Your Job. How important, in the relative pecking order of career skills development to propel you forward and advance and progress in your career, would you rank these sets of skills? Like, what’s the difference between being amazing at these things versus, “Okay, good enough, but you also have really sharp strategic thinking and prioritization skills going on”?

Elisia Keown
I think executive presence is probably one of, at least, top three because of this reason.

Executive presence, it’s not just this, again, visual effect of how you show up or a lot of people say charisma. It’s not just the personality. It really is, if you go deeper, like into it, it’s not just these behaviors or physical traits. It’s an identity shift.

And I think that’s one of the biggest things when you think about moving and shifting, you know, especially when you come out of some of those individual contributor roles or manager roles where you’re just managing a smaller team. Nothing wrong with that.

But when you leap into the executive level and you start managing leaders of leaders, it requires this identity shift from the leader.

And a lot of high performers, they’ve outgrown this version of themselves that got them to where they are. They’ve been very successful moving up through the organization. And now what’s required to go to that next level is, like, it’s almost like a death of their previous self. And you’re building that back up.

The hard part about that identity shift, though, is all of those behaviors have made you successful to this point. So because of that ego, it’s very hard to say, “I’ve got to let all that go and build upon what I have, and break into a new identity and see myself in a completely different way to level up into that executive presence.”

And so I really think it’s definitely top three when you say that. I don’t know if I can give it an exact number, but you can’t perform your way to executive presence. And I think that’s so often, as an individual contributor, you’re used to putting your head down, executing very tactical skills, all very important. By no means, definitely not disparaging that work, right?

So when I say the death or you’ve got to let go of it, it’s what got you there. But then you have to become this entire new type of leader, and the skills that are put before you, you’ve got to believe in yourself and you’ve got to have a mindset shift and look at yourself in a different way before you talk about those things you talked about like the strategic vision and the planning and the prioritization.

I think that all comes with it. But if you don’t believe that you are operating and believe in the level that you need to perform at, none of that other tactical stuff is really going to matter. So it’s this bridge into that leadership level.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I love what you said there, it’s like, you cannot execute your way into executive presence. It’s sort of a fundamentally different thing. And the picture that’s coming to mind for me is just, in TV, when we have the dork with the lab or the computers helping the crime fighters or the Jack Bauer catch the terrorists, they’ll say, “Well, I ran an analysis using matrix multiplication and we deduced that…”

They’re like, “In English!” you know, like, they get impatient, and it paints a picture like, “Oh, that person is clearly executing amazingly. Like, they know their stuff inside and out.” And yet the leaders are annoyed and frustrated. They don’t imagine that guy or gal has high potential executive future in store for them.

Because of their vibe of the ‘executive presence is lacking.’” So those are TV examples. But, Elisia, give us a real example, a story, a tale of a client who maybe got this fuzzy feedback and then did something about it and saw some results.

Elisia Keown
Yeah, you’re dead on. I love that analogy. It’s so funny, right? Because I think that’s what happens, is a lot of times clients come in thinking they need like a few tips, and what we really discover so much deeper, and it’s not just about what they’re doing, right?

So I had this client VP level, high performer. And, again, I always say this, I work with people that are already high performing. There’s nothing going wrong with their leadership, right? And some people think that it’s a remedy for something going wrong when, really, this is an accelerator.

So this person was already getting good results, already performing, but she’d get passed over for that next level, for that C-suite, the higher-level role. And what was happening was, when we started digging in and peeling back the layers, she was an over-explainer.

So the person that’s saying too many words, right, just like you said, or overly complex words, over-explaining every decision. She had a lot of hedging, and hedging is you’re saying things like, “I mean,” “I feel like,” or very passive kind of language rather than very decisive language.

And so it wasn’t about the skills problem. She had a lot of skills that have gotten her to this VP level. It was more being deferential when she was leading rather than being decisive and forward-thinking. And so a lot of what was happening though, again, as we peeled it back, it wasn’t about saying different words. It was showing up differently in terms of her identity.

She had a deep executive presence problem that was rooted in how she saw herself. And so she was still seeing herself as needing to prove herself. And we were way past that. So we really worked through thought process and identity.

And once we worked in that, within months, she was showing up completely differently in the room and then being groomed for that next level. Like, actually having conversations versus it not being on the table for her at all to move to that next level.

Pete Mockaitis
So when you say thought process and identity, what might that look like in terms of, if I’m saying, “I’m going to go work on my thought process and identity”? What does that consist of? What am I doing there?

Elisia Keown
Well, in the simplest terms, it’s the sum of the sentences that are running through your head and how you’re thinking about yourself. And so a really easy way to do this would be to, when you think about the situation, again, she was in a lot of board meetings, she was in a lot of meetings with her C-suite level leaders.

It was, “What was she thinking and how was she thinking when she was in the room, hedging, explaining herself, like, what was her thought process?” And trying to narrow it down to some of those sentences that kind of run through your brain like a stock ticker, right, and again, part of it could be as simple as, “I need to prove myself,” or, “I still need to level up, and I’m not at the level of an C-suite executive.”

So whatever that kind of sentence is that’s holding them back, that’s really what you’re trying to investigate. And if you’re doing this for yourself, it would be when you’re in some of those critical moments where, if you can identify when you’ve been told you need stronger executive presence, so if there was a specific meeting, what was some of those sentences that are running through your brain as you were getting told some of that feedback?

And, again, that’s a little bit harder to back into to undo, but I’d say the easiest way would be thinking of the specific example where you need to hold executive presence. And maybe if you were told you had weak executive presence, what was the sentence? What was the thing you were telling yourself in that moment? Because, truly, philosophically, it’s just how you’re thinking is really how you’re going to show up.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, Elisia, it’s so fun that we’re talking because you have unique vantage points into many people’s intimate thoughts, which most of us never get to hear. So lay it on us, what are some of the recurring thoughts people have that undermine their executive presence? And how do we deal with them?

Elisia Keown
I think the big one that I hear a lot of, and it’s the exact opposite of executive presence, it’s like saying that they have impostor syndrome.

And so some of the thoughts that sound like, some people will just straight up be like, “I feel like an impostor,” as simple as that. But some people will have the sentence of, “What am I doing here? How did I get here?” I’ve heard that one.

So looking around the room, seeing executives that are highly accomplished, highly tenured, multiple degrees from Ivy League universities, etc., and just saying to themselves, “How did I get into this room? I don’t belong here.” Essentially, the underlying thought could just be like, “I’m not good enough to be here.”

And so it will sound like that, it’ll sound subtle. And those thoughts could be very innocent-sounding, right, like, “Hey, let’s make sure we can perform up to the level of this room, right?” But in the essence, if we’re thinking we’re not good enough to be in that room, that can show up and start to show up in our actions.

So if we’re thinking, “I’m not good enough to show up,” or, “How did I get here?” and your feeling would, potentially, be like insecurity, lack of confidence, then you’re going to show the actions that you’ll take will be from that defensive position.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And so what’s interesting, though, is that thought in the moment is you say thoughts and identity, that thought is naturally bubbling up from a belief. So I want to hear how you go after that.

We had Dr. Valerie Young, who may have coined the phrase impostor syndrome, on the podcast. And she had some cool perspectives along the lines of, like, “Well, so is everybody just an idiot if they made the decision to hire you and promote you?”

And so just to kind of, like, reminded me of some cognitive behavioral therapy-type stuff in terms of , “Let’s evaluate the evidence. Let’s really take a look at this belief. And is it kind of bogus or so?” So that was kind of some helpful practical stuff. But I’d love to hear you in the trenches, when you’re working with folks on these thoughts and identities, how do you attack them?

Elisia Keown
What a great conversation. I’m jealous you got to have that conversation with her, but I think that’s a great tip, and I think it’s the same thought process of looking at that thought. And, again, we get real granular, right?

We get in the moment, in the room, in the thought process, and really start to question it. Basically, you look at it and you say, “Is this true? Do you belong here? Do you not belong here, right?” And, generally, where we go with it is, “Why are we telling ourselves this thought?” and understanding that as well. Like, “Why would that be coming up for us?”

And, again, it can be so different for every individual, but, typically, what happens is, when we get in some of these tough situations, leading is difficult. Speaking in front of a group is difficult. It can be challenging.

Again, you can get better at it, it can feel easier at times, but it always, there’s that challenge of that fear of rejection. Leadership, a lot of times, is we’re separating ourselves from the group, from the pack, from the herd, right? And we’re standing out and we’re separating ourselves from the group. So in its very primal essence, it can feel like survival, it can feel life or death.

And so what happens is we go through some of that fight or flight, and the brain is telling you, like, “Hey, it’s scary, Pete. It’s scary to speak out in front of thousands of people or tens of thousands of people on a podcast.” And your brain is like, “Stay safe.”

And so some of the stay-safe thoughts can be like, “Hey, we might not be good enough to do this. What are we doing here? Let’s go stay back into the cave and stay safe and get quiet and really, like, pull ourselves back from this. Let’s go cuddle on the couch with a blanket and some snacks and watch Netflix. It sounds like a much better idea, right?”

And so it’s the brain’s protective mechanism to give you some of these sometimes snarky, sometimes nice-sounding thoughts. They sound really helpful, like, “Let’s stay comfortable,” because it’s just based on survival.

And so, sometimes when you know that, when you’re like, “Oh, this is just my sweet brain trying to protect me. Is it really true that I don’t belong here?” No. You can just say, “Thanks. Thanks for that thought. We’re going to go ahead and proceed with doing this podcast, speaking up in this boardroom, doing the thing anyway, even if we feel a little bit nervous about it.”

We can carry the nervousness, knowing that it’s normal and natural, and it doesn’t mean stop. I think a lot of people think that that feeling means stop, turn around, don’t take action. When really we can just carry it with us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s super helpful in terms of just understanding, reframing, “What is this thought, this feeling, this vibe? And what does it mean?” So that’s super handy. I’m curious about maybe some of the deeper work with regard to, it was like, “No, I really do think that I kind of got lucky to be in this role, and I don’t think that I belong and I really do think I’m faking it.” If we’re there, what do we do with that?

Elisia Keown
Yeah, totally. Well, and I think there’s two separate approaches. You know, I think if you’re thinking we really go down the path of someone has deep beliefs that they cannot overcome and they can’t see any other upside. I think, sometimes that’s where the difference between therapy and coaching comes in.

Like, if there’s some sort of hurdle that’s coming from their past or their internal beliefs from trauma or some other thing, that’s where a coach is not a therapist. That’s where, I think, sometimes you separate the application of support there.

On the flip side, another way to look at it, if we’re just thinking that’s not the situation and we’re thinking more forward thinking, it’s to say like, “Okay, where do we have evidence that that’s not true?” And I worked with a leader to say, “How do we look at the entirety in your body of work?” to say, “Okay, where can we show that that is not the case?”

And having the human come up with those things to say, “Okay, let’s start to look at our internal beliefs and be, like, really challenge them, right?” Because I think digging deeper, like you said, I think taking that, “Is this true?” a couple clicks further to be, like, “Okay, give me all the evidence that you really don’t belong here then.”

It’s funny, when they ask me that, like, “Tell me all the reasons why you don’t belong,” they’re usually like, “Well, actually, no, I’ve done this and this…” and they actually start to answer or asking questions of why they do.

And so I found that to be effective, like, “Tell me all the reasons. No, let’s stick on it.” And sometimes they really can’t. They can’t find beyond that just, like, triggering thought, like, why that’s actually true. So that can be really helpful kind of that path.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I really liked that notion of collecting the evidence, thinking about your experience. And just recently, I guess I coached myself in terms of, I was having some stuff going on. I was just like, “Oh, I kind of feel like a loser, you know?”

And so I was like, “Well, what’s the evidence?” I was like, “Well, you know, it seems like someone was upset about this, and I disappointed someone there, and I didn’t kind of get the things I wanted done on these days.”

And then I said, “Okay, so we’ve got that.” And then I was like, “Well, then what’s the evidence on the other side?” And just for funsies, I did all this research, and I was like, “Well, I mean, hey, I did that. And that was kind of cool. And really how many people really have done that?” And so I went ahead and assembled the spreadsheet.

And so what’s kind of fun, and this is true for every human. This is my latest kind of revelation I’ve been having fun with is that, if we take a look at the things that you have done, have accomplished, are good at, and how kind of rare that is, and then string together maybe 10 of those.

It’s fair to say for just about everybody that, by some measures that you’ve selected, you are the winningest human being who has ever lived, more than all 120 billion humans who have ever walked this earth. On those dimensions, collectively, if it were like a decathlon, you are the winningest person ever.

And so what was fun for that exercise with me, it’s like, I just sort of move on, it’s like, “Okay, the word loser is just like a nonsensical term that is ill-defined and not helpful. And if a loser is defined as one who never disappoints anybody and never fails, well, then there’s no such…everybody’s a loser.

Elisia Keown
Then I will own it. Yeah, right. Then just, “Okay, I’m fine, right? I’ll own that, Yeah, totally. What a great exercise. You did, you coached yourself. Good job, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. So I was collecting evidence via spreadsheets, I guess it’s a language that speaks to me. But I’d love to hear your prompts or your approach by which you facilitate this evidence collection.

Elisia Keown
Yeah, totally. Well, first off, you get a gold star. Great job. Great way to do it. And that’s exactly it. Exactly it, Pete. And I think, too, like, you said something that’s really interesting, too.

And so I want to really emphasize it, in the sense that looking back at what you accomplished and only what you could have done, if somebody else followed the playbook, they probably wouldn’t have the same results as you did, and just because all those things are making up uniquely you.

Can somebody do some of those things? Of course, they can, but they won’t be in the same magic and the way that you did it. And another way to look at this, too, is, if you’re not having failure, if you’re not feeling a little bit of the discomfort, if you’re not feeling a little bit queasy about some of things, your goals probably aren’t stretching you.

They’re probably not big in the sense of big in your own world. That can mean something different for everyone. So I’m not being presumptuous, and you have to do this, but a lot of times, as high-performing leaders or people that are entrepreneurial or accomplishing big things and setting big goals, you’re setting bigger goals for yourself and going after them.

So to expect that everything would go according to plan, that you would never feel insecure about them, or you would never fail at them, or you wouldn’t feel good enough for them, or you would feel like, “I don’t know how to do what I’m doing,” that is actually a false expectation, that we somehow believe that it’s like we do believe that everything is going to go according to plan.

We’re very optimistic, typically, as humans, a lot of those things. And when things don’t go, when we think that there’s something terribly wrong. But in your example, it’s like, “Well, yeah, I have a big fat goal and I might stumble but I’m going to still going to get it, right? I’m still going to go after it.”

“And if I’m not setting big-enough goals, like if it’s really easy, I’m probably not stretching and growing in the same way.” So a lot of it, like the coaching, I will do is to say, “Hey, some of this discomfort, some of this brain, we’re not going to solve the brain telling us that like, ‘Hey, in some instances, we don’t feel good enough.’” It’s a normal human condition. It’s part of the human condition, knowing that we can go after these big things and move through that discomfort.

That’s more what we’re trying to work towards is recognizing that in the moment. So it’s not trying to eliminate, it’s more so saying, “Oh, I see it. I can know what’s happening here. And now I know how to handle it, right?”

“Maybe I go back to my spreadsheet, or maybe I have my own method, I have my own things that I can do to work through it, knowing this is actually part of my currency. This is my currency towards success, and this is part of the game that I’ve decided to play.”

And it’s optional, right? In leadership or entrepreneurial ventures, it’s optional. So, “Do I want to put my chips in knowing this is the table stakes that I need to play or not?” Most people say, “Yeah.” They’re aspirational, they’re driven, they want to go after these things. So lot of times they say, “Yes, I’m willing to feel all of this and move through it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, Elisia, this has been fun. I’ve been sort of just deep-diving into anything I found intriguing. But I want you to take the floor and tell us, what have you found to be beyond what we’ve already discussed, really just the most game-changing, powerful interventions, or exercises that upgrade executive presence in a hurry?

Elisia Keown
Yeah, totally. I’ll give you some practical tips. You know, I think the first one, definitely what we talked about, we’ll call it just like a download of your thoughts, right, a blank piece of paper, kind of like just dumping out your brain, looking at it.

So we can get it out of this, sometimes our internal spin, like just writing out what you’re thinking before you go into some high-stakes meetings or high-stakes environments to kind of look at the thoughts so you can decide, “Do I like this? Do I believe this? Do I want to keep thinking this?” And knowing that’s all optional, great exercise.

But beyond that, some takeaways that I can give the audience, just to really use in a really simplistic way without having over complex environments needed, is just going into a meeting and doing a pre-meeting reset of your brain.

So just a few minutes before the meeting, before any high-stakes situation, just getting quiet and clear on what your intention is. So thinking, “How do I want to show up in this meeting? What do I need to contribute? Who do I want to be in this room and any outcomes that I want to try to influence?”

And just being super clear, because that, again, that gets your brain focused on a problem to solve, “How do I want to show up? What do want to say? How do I want to influence? What do want to do?”

And having that for yourself, so that some of those other thoughts, again, that we’ve maybe dumped out, but they’re not going to sneak in, we have a focus, we’re clear, we can focus on how we want others to experience and receive us, rather than getting in our head about not being good enough. So, pre-meeting reset, quick, clean exercise just to go in with great intentions.

The second tip I would say, in looking at emotional responsiveness, how do you respond under pressure? So if you think about some of the highest-stakes environments you may be in, maybe it’s a really difficult conversation, like I said, a big presentation or a meeting, sometimes those moments reveal what your executive presence gaps are.

So you’re just doing your own reflection after some of those moments. Did you get reactive? Did you react in a way that you felt good about? What was your thoughts on the conversation? What went well? What didn’t? What would you do differently next time? Nothing more complex than that, but auditing yourself and your emotional regulation and executive presence.

And then the third is just watching your own language and how you’re coming across in meetings. So are you hedging? Are you over-explaining? Are you qualifying everything through the conversation, or are you being really, really clear? So how are you signaling your executive presence? And how can you practice being clear, saying less, but with more conviction in those meetings?

Again, simple audit, but why that’s important is, if you do those reflections, it will also reveal your thinking. So it’ll ladder back to, “What was I thinking when I was going into those meetings? And how was I showing up?” So simple exercises that anybody can do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, and, Elisia, you got me thinking here. Nowadays, since the AI meeting assistants are ubiquitous, Fathom and a dozen others up in there, so you’ve got the recording and the transcript, and then you could even review it yourself or you could ask AI to zero in on some things like, “Hey, I’m working on executive presence such as A, B, C, and D. Could you highlight some things in this meeting in which I said that could use some improvement?”

And, again, my take with AI is, I never trust anything it says, but it can bring something to the surface for me to reflect upon, and that is useful in and of itself.

Elisia Keown
I love that idea. And I will say, the best feedback that you can ever get is, if you’re in an environment where you can have a recorded meeting and watch it back, it’s one of the most painful pieces of feedback, but it’s the best feedback that you can ever get, is just watching yourself speak. You’ll see it right away.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. I remember, I’ve had times where I was videotaping a buddy who was doing a speech and he asked me for feedback. I said, “Well, you do this thing where you kind of kept caressing your tie and it was a little distracting.”

He was like, “What? What are you talking about? No, I wasn’t.” I was like, “Well, I mean, I saw it like 10 times. You can look at the video.” And he said, “Oh, my gosh, Pete. I had no idea.” And so, yes, it really can be quite eyeopening and surprising.

Elisia Keown
Absolutely. You uncover the habits. I hope it was a nice tie. I bet it was worth it, right?

Pete Mockaitis
It was a great-looking tie, but no matter the tie, we don’t want to see you caressing it. It’s like, “What are you doing, dude? What is going on?”

Elisia Keown
Showing that tie off. It’s so funny. Subconsciously, you don’t even notice those things, right? Yeah, it’s such a great piece of feedback. I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, Elisia, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Elisia Keown
You know, I think that the number one mistake that leaders try… when they try to develop executive presence, they try to outperform it. They try to get more tactical. They work on the tactics versus the mindset.

And so, again, I know we said at the top, but I say, trying to do it through actions versus thoughts first, wrong way to go about it. And, especially, if you’re trying to copy somebody else’s style. A lot of times people will be like, “Well, speak like so-and-so,” or, “Model after so-and-so.”

Nothing wrong with taking elements of people that we see speaking and emulating that. But if you’re trying to duplicate it rather than do the work from within, I would say that would be my number one tip to walk away with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Elisia Keown
Yes. Right now, I’ve been loving just choose your hard. I think it might be Codie Sanchez, it’s one of hers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Elisia Keown
I have been digging into recently a lot of work on the ROI of coaching. So PWC and ICF did a study that talks a lot about the ROI of coaching to include that coaching has a five-to-seven X average ROI on executive coaching for leaders.

Eighty-six percent of companies, they report that they’ve recouped the coaching investment when they invest in those type of leaders, and they see 70% of improvement in work performance, which is wild.

Pete Mockaitis
Seventy percent, okay.

Elisia Keown
And then 70%, that’s a lot. And then a 50% reduction in leadership-related turnover, meaning, “I left because I was not loving who I was working with or for.” And we all know that boss is such a difference maker in how you experience work. And so people leaving, cutting 50% of that turnover, that’s incredible.

Pete Mockaitis
So it’s the coachee that did not turn over or the leader whose underlings did not turn over.

Elisia Keown
The leader whose underlings did not turn over because of their improved leadership capabilities. So that’s huge. That’s huge. And so, to me, I’m like thinking, like, that’s real even impact. So if you think about executive presence, it’s not a soft skill. It’s absolutely, it’s a lever to pull, and there’s a direct correlation to that financial impact.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. And a favorite book?

Elisia Keown
I just read and finished Start With Yourself by Emma Grede. She is a British entrepreneur. And so she has this chapter in the book on money. I’ve read it a few times now and I’ve been talking about it with other executives, and it’s powerful. So if you haven’t read it, it’s a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Elisia Keown
I’m a big fan of the thought framework of The Model by Brooke Castillo. So we kind of talked about it, right? Her belief is you have thoughts that create your feelings. Your feelings will create those actions. Your actions create results. It’s a simple model, but it’s basically what we were talking about. It all starts with your thoughts. And if you can change your thought process, you can impact your results.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Elisia Keown
So I’m a big fan of time blocking, planning, time boxing. And I don’t do it in the way of you just go through a to-do list and even time blocking on your calendar. I’ll take time blocking and I say, “This is the time that I have allocated to this, and there’s going to be an outcome.” So it’s not just like, “Just research the thing,” or, “Time to brainstorm.” It’s like, “This is the output and the deliverable that will be done at the end of this timeframe.”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that a lot. I probably have ADHD, but I can relate to that notion, when you have a specific outcome, it makes it kind of exciting. It’s more like a game with risk and stakes and uncertainty. It’s like, “Am I going to be able to finish it? Well, I hope so, but in order to do so, I’m really going to have to stay on point.” And it just infuses a little more zip and interest into the thing.

Elisia Keown
Absolutely. I never thought about that way, zip. A little zip and interest.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Elisia Keown
Yeah, easy. ElisiaKeownCoaching.com. So it’s a tricky, tricky the way it sounds versus it’s spelled. So it’s E-L-I-S-I-A-K-E-O-W-N Coaching.com. And I love all the socials. I’m on LinkedIn. I have a podcast on all the major platforms, and to include YouTube. It’s the Executive Coaching Podcast. And we talk a lot about tips like this on there. So happy to give you some free support.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. And do you have a final challenge and call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Elisia Keown
If you want to be a leader and you want to set these big goals for yourself, you want to move forward, get comfortable with the discomfort of leading. It’s not easy. If everybody was able to do it, they would, right?

And so growing, leading, it’s challenging. And so when that discomfort bubbles up, remember, it doesn’t mean stop. It doesn’t mean we’re doing something wrong, we need to turn around.

It is a signal worth listening to, but I would say, getting comfortable with the discomfort and keep going. You’re not alone out there feeling that way. And the world needs great courageous leaders that can move through that discomfort and go after the big goal, anyway.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Elisia, thank you.

Elisia Keown
Thanks, Pete. I love talking to you as always.