Episode 28 – Presence Is Your Most Powerful Leadership Tool

Presence: Your Most Powerful Leadership Tool

A Solo Episode with Dr. Kim Richardson

RECAP: THE ENGAGEMENT QUARTER SO FAR

All right, everyone, it’s Dr. Kim. Welcome back to Rise Up and Lead. Real lessons, real stories, and real talk.

So this is a solo episode today, but I think it’s a good time to just pause for a minute and think back to the two episodes that have aired so far, before I start talking about today. And I hope that you know, between the podcast and the blogs and the newsletter, we are in the quarter of engagement — Engagement That Moves People.

When I started the episode, episode 26, the first, it aired on July 27th, I really wanted to spend some time leaning in with you on the core distinction between attendance and engagement. We all know people can show up, they can comply, they can nod, and still not be engaged. And so, I hope that you are thinking about your team’s showing up, your team complying, they’re nodding — but if nothing’s changing, you have attendance, you have participation at best. You might not have engagement.

So we started thinking about the engagement that moves people. And you’ve received — hopefully you’re on my subscription list — our year-long support every Thursday, about supporting your clarity, relevance, direct communication, that emotional safety that we know has to be in place, and following through, because we know that those are the true, big engagement lifts.

And then I had the chance to interview my daddy, Cleve Garvin — my dad, a retired IBM manager. I did not know he had been working for 36 years, y’all, and I did not know — because you just grow up, my dad worked at IBM — but he was not only hired, he was promoted to a fourth level of leadership.

He told us about the difference between being a manager and a leader, and differentiating his leadership for each person, because there should be a separate plan for each person. He also talked about not believing that leaders are just born, which we know the research about that. And he told us about a mistake that taught him about planning before assigning roles.

His theme was individualized leadership — my dad believed that every person there needs a different plan. And when we think about that attendance versus engagement, and some of the things my dad said about the proof that engaged leadership means, it’s not one-size-fits-all — it really is all pointing to the same idea: leadership is not compliance. That’s it. Leadership is not compliance. Leadership is not barking, yelling, and commanding. It’s really about connecting — a tailored connection, perhaps, to that person that’s right in front of you.

So this is episode 28, and I want to lean a little more into this concept of presence. I want you to think about that word. What comes to your mind? What is the visual representation when you hear the word presence? Because presence is your most powerful leadership tool.

WHAT PRESENCE MEANS: ICF COMPETENCY 5

I want to bring my coach hat in for just a second. One of our competencies, according to the International Coach Federation, is maintaining presence — Competency 5, I believe. And it says that it’s fully conscious and present with the client. Now, that’s in a coach-client relationship. And as a coach, we have to employ a style that is open, flexible, grounded, and confident.

And if you can believe it, the competency of maintaining presence sits underneath a larger umbrella called co-creating the relationship. It’s about standing alongside, establishing agreements, cultivating trust and safety. It’s not just an isolated soft skill. To take words from Bryk and Schneider’s article on trust being the connective tissue — well, so is this. Maintaining presence makes the other competencies work.

WHAT PRESENCE LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE

What does it look like? It’s about staying focused and observant, and being empathetic and responsive to other people. In a coach stance, you want to be more curious about what the person is saying, not saying, what their facial expressions are looking like during that coaching process. It’s also about me as the coach managing my own emotions and staying present — I can’t let what I’m thinking or feeling derail our time together. And it’s about the confidence in working with other people and their emotions, because people can bring their emotions — they don’t leave them at home.

When we demonstrate presence, it really is being comfortable working in a space of not knowing, talking and working in a space where you don’t have the answer to everything. And finally, demonstrating presence creates a space for silence, pausing, and reflection.

Oh man, I love when I’m working with a client and they just say, “You know what, Dr. Kim, let me think about that for a second,” and we might sit in silence for a minute or more. And while a minute sounds short — when it’s quiet, and I’m an extroverted thinker, I really feel like sometimes I want to jump in there — I have to sit back and remember that presence is allowing for that space to think in silence.

The maintaining-presence competency is one of the harder ones. It’s really hard to fake it. You can’t really fake presence. Everything else is a skill — like questioning and listening — that can be practiced, but presence is just different. It just shows up when a coach stops trying to manage the process.

So what does that have to do with us as leaders? A lot of times, leaders have to deliver — you have meetings, you have agendas, you have things to share — and a lot of times, many leaders deliver, and then they just move on.

PRESENCE AND ENGAGEMENT ARE CONNECTED

But if we’re thinking about presence connected to engagement: it’s not created in the moment. The engagement is sustained through the presence. And one of the fastest ways to destroy engagement is to ask for input — get everyone talking or sharing — and then we disappear, or we don’t use it.

Because people engage more deeply when they believe that what they said mattered. It’s back to the “S” in SCARF — status. Is someone listening to me? Is this conversation going somewhere? A simple “Last week, several of you mentioned these concerns — I want to revisit that today” really matters. That’s when the leader is able to recall, remember, and then bring it back up.

So here’s the connection: when I say engagement isn’t created in the moment, and it’s sustained through presence, it is not about your literal time standing somewhere. You can be present in a quick amount of time — even by saying, “I’ll be available two minutes after the meeting to talk with you, if you would like to.”

PRESENCE FAILURE AND FOLLOW-THROUGH

It’s about presence failure afterward — you were present for the meeting, but then absent for the follow-through. I know that sounded weird, but it’s presence failure. So, are we setting people up for failure, depending on our presence?

When I think about that ICF presence marker — that’s what they call them — I think about the “S” in status, or the S standing for status, and being able, as a coach, or as a coach-leader, to stay responsive and stay curious. It has to be about honoring what that other person actually brought, whether I wanted to hear it or not, whether it was the right time or not, whether it was even delivered in a kind way or not. I don’t want to be performatively listening. I really want to take it in, even if it’s a little harsh, and be changed by it.

So when we think about the difference between doing leadership and being in leadership, that really is going to be one of those signs — your presence. Your presence isn’t a personality trait, it’s not going to show up in your Myers-Briggs, it’s not going to show up in your Strengths Finder. It is a skill that you just have to practice. And every other leadership behavior sits on top of it, because if people don’t feel your presence, none of the other leadership moves are going to land the way they should. You can have your Rolodex of deep questions, but if we don’t get this presence piece, y’all, we’re going to backtrack.

Presence is your most powerful leadership tool. I started with that. So let’s just get into some of the final points.

STAYING PRESENT UNDER PRESSURE

When we look at presence again — not attendance — how are we following through? It doesn’t mean you have to have the answer, but are we remembering to send that email and say, “Hey, I remembered what you asked, I’m thinking about it, give me 48 hours, I’ll get back to you”? Or how are we being responsive and consistent?

And y’all, I’ve said this many times, but please stop asking for input if you’re not going to use it. If you’re going to collect input, circle back. See what the themes are. See what was said. And even if it was a little difficult, what can you hear through the noise? When you revisit — maybe it’s after a meeting, or after a staff conversation — even if this is a challenge for you, put it on your calendar to go back a week later, 48 hours later. Name what people said, what did you hear. We have all these AI tools — record the meeting, so you can go back and focus on your presence in the moment, but then go back and see what you want to revisit.

Staying present is not easy. My brain moves 500 miles a minute, as some of yours do, and so that presence under pressure — we have to stay curious. How do we stay curious when that input is hard to hear? I need a go-to. I have certain phrases that I keep in my back pocket, and somebody will say something, and my eyebrow starts twitching, and my eyes are about to roll, and I have learned to say: “Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Let me sit with that for a minute, and I’ll get back to you.”

Now, that’s after many years, y’all, of not doing that, so I don’t want you to think I’m sitting up here preaching from an expert space on that. But if that input you’re inviting in — to stay curious — is hard to hear, what are you going to do to calm yourself, to thank the person, or the group, or whatever it may be?

I was recently at a school with teams coming in and out, working with their administration as the school year was starting, and it was so powerful — this principal said, “Oh, and Mr. So-and-so, I did not forget about your question that you brought up last time. I’m going to answer it at the end of this session, because I think you’ll see how it will all pull together then.” And I looked at Mr. So-and-so’s face — this is a very calm, cool, collected gentleman — his eyebrows kind of rose up, and he did a little nod, and you could see it wasn’t that he was impressed, but — I don’t want to put an emotion on him, but you could tell from his face that he was really starting to make sense of what the administrator said, and that she took enough care to bring that up.

It was really powerful. She circled right on back. I don’t want to speak on his behalf, but it did seem like he didn’t think that was going to happen. And that can change an entire relationship — the day you realize that you actually remembered.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS FOR THE LISTENER

• Where might people around you feel unheard, forgotten, or disconnected?
• What did your team share recently that you have not yet revisited?

RISE ACTION

Follow up on something your team shared recently. Name it. Revisit it. Build on it — this week.