The Unwritten Rules: The Six Skills You Need to Get Promoted to the Executive Level

Chapter 8. Factor 6: Projecting Executive Presence

If you think executive presence means "dress for success," personal grooming, and "looking like an executive," you'd be partially right—and, perhaps, fundamentally wrong. Of the six core selection factors that lie behind executive promotion decisions, executive presence is the most intuitive and most visceral. Often senior-level decision makers have difficulty pinning down exactly what executive presence is and claim that it's mostly a gut feeling on their part. While writing this book, I had a number of conversations with senior executives responsible for executive promotion and placement decisions in their companies. The vast majority agreed that executive presence was a requirement for someone ...