One of the biggest things I’ve learned in my career is the importance of effective influence.
Driving change, promoting technology adoption and establishing new ways of working is a challenge whatever employer you are working for. So what can talent acquisition leaders be doing to develop presence and be more influential?
My guest this week is an expert in these areas. Harrison Monarth is a New York Times best selling author and leading executive coach with a client list that includes Fortune 500 CEOs, start-up entrepreneurs and Members of Congress.
In the interview, we discuss:
- Harrison’ coaching philosophy
- What is “executive presence”, why is it so important and how anyone can develop it
- The critical importance of perception
- Managing emotions in high-stress situations
- Feedback
- Improving influence and getting buy-in
- Harrison also talks about managing the line between confidence and arrogance and the new edition of his book “Executive Presence.”
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from ClickIQ. ClickIQ is an automated job advertising platform that uses the latest AI and programmatic technology to manage, track and optimize the performance of your recruitment. Advertising in real time spend is focused where it’s needed the most to reach.
Matt Alder [00:00:20]:
Both active and passive job seekers across.
Matt Alder [00:00:23]:
Indeed, Google, Facebook and and an extensive network of job boards. To find out more about ClickIQ, please visit www.clickiq.co.uk. that’s www.clickiq.co.UK.
Matt Alder [00:01:00]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 202 of the Recruiting Future podcast. One of the biggest things I’ve learned during my career is the importance of influence driving change. Promoting technology adoption or establishing new ways of working are a challenge whichever organization you work for. So what can talent acquisition leaders be doing to develop their presence and be more influential? My guest this week is an expert in this area. Harrison Monarth is a New York Times best selling author and leading executive coach with a client list of Fortune 500 CEOs, startup entrepreneurs and members of Congress. Enjoy the interview.
Matt Alder [00:01:48]:
Hi Harrison, and welcome to the podcast.
Harrison Monarth [00:01:51]:
Thank you Matt. Thanks for having me.
Matt Alder [00:01:52]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Harrison Monarth [00:01:58]:
I’m an executive coach. I’m based here in New York City. I’m originally from Germany and over the past 15 years I’ve worked as an executive coach with over 60 Fortune 500 CEOs and thousands of senior leaders globally. In workshops and one on one sessions, companies like Deloitte, GE, P&G Standard Imports and so on. And so over the years I’ve gained a lot of insight into the specific skills and behaviors that make these leaders, these managers, senior executives, more effective influencers by way of building their executive presence. And so happy to share some of that with you today in your podcast.
Matt Alder [00:02:40]:
Absolutely.
Matt Alder [00:02:40]:
And I suppose just to dig into that straight away, what’s your sort of philosophy behind coaching? You know, why do people need it? What is it that you’re helping them to helping them to achieve?
Harrison Monarth [00:02:52]:
My philosophy for coaching is I don’t really fix people that have major problems because it’s usually the organizations that come to us, they have leaders that they want to invest in, they have leaders that have a need for coaching because maybe they’re getting into the next level or they’re stepping into a new role that they’re unfamiliar with and they want to help them accelerate the learning. Or these might be leaders that need to acquire some new behaviors that would help them in a new role. These might be leaders that need to become more inclusive and make sure that they include everyone on the team and that they can communicate on various levels. So there could be a number of reasons why companies come to us. And then of course, coaching, it’s not consulting. So in an ideal scenario, coaching is really helping people come to their own conclusions, find their own answers, and inspire them to grow and to develop. And a coach doesn’t really tell anyone what to develop. These things have to come, they have to come from the client or from the organization. Typically it’s actually a combination that comes from the client and the organization because they should be aligned on what needs to change or what behaviors need to be acquired and learned. And so, you know, coaching really facilitates that whole process. You know, helping people with self awareness, helping people with feedback. So we help people understand what their reputation is, what people are currently saying, and then use that to identify what are some of the development areas and then helping them with goal setting, strategy and action, planning on really acquiring these behaviors, developing new behaviors, or stopping certain behaviors that might, might be seen as toxic or might actually thwart any efforts to influence and yeah, and then help in the process and be cheerleader, thought partner, strategist, talk through issues, sounding board. So good coach does all of those things.
Matt Alder [00:05:03]:
Now, one of a number of best selling books that you’ve written is called Executive Presence. What’s Executive Presence and why is it Important?
Harrison Monarth [00:05:12]:
So my new book, in fact the second edition of Executive Presence actually just came out on Friday, so I’m very happy to talk about that. And executive presence, I mean, it’s fundamentally about influence. You hear a lot about it out there. People saying it’s about the way you look or it’s about the way you speak and the way you present yourself. But executive presence is fundamentally about influence with other people and about having a positive impact. My own appreciation of what constitutes executive presence was formed over the last decade and a half in several ways. So that’s years of conversations with senior leaders about what executive presence looks like and the qualities that they need to see in emerging leaders. Close observation of respected leaders who bring out the best in other people as well as those who don’t research in the social sciences, leadership literature. And then of course also seeing the failures of people that had talent and cognitive ability but then nonetheless derailed or faltered because they were either unwilling or unable to accept Listen to feedback and accept feedback and then adapt their behavior. So executive presence is a mosaic. There are so many components to it, like certainly appearance, certainly communication skills, engagement skill, but also the ability to hold people accountable or having difficult, mastering difficult conversations, let’s say being decisive, making decisions, having interpersonal integrity, meaning you show people that you care and you’re able to adapt your status to the person you’re speaking to, whether they’re of a higher status or lower status. So there are lots of different components that give the perception of executive presence. And I say perception because executive presence is not something that you decide you have or that you say you have. It’s something that other people say you have. So that’s very important to keep in mind. Executive presence is based on other people’s perceptions.
Matt Alder [00:07:21]:
And very much this is something that everyone can develop. Not necessarily people who are already in a senior leadership position.
Harrison Monarth [00:07:27]:
Oh, absolutely, yes, absolutely. You can have executive presence. And it’s a matter of understanding for first of all, where you start, where you are, and again, listening to feedback, listening actively soliciting feedback. So if you feel very confident and very comfortable presenting your ideas to peers, let’s say, or to direct reports, but you then get very nervous if you’re presenting your ideas to senior level management or to clients. Well, so you may have executive presence with your peers, but then it disappears when you’re speaking to higher ranking leaders or clients. Well, so that’s a clue that you need to need to work on those areas. But anyone, once you understand what’s missing or what you need to develop. Absolutely. These are skills and behaviors that really anyone can learn.
Matt Alder [00:08:19]:
Now you’ve sort of touched on this a little bit already, but I’m kind of interested in sort of perhaps diving a bit deeper into it. How, how can people develop these skills if they’ve, you know, if they’ve kind of come to the realization that they don’t, you know, that that kind of sense of presence that they, that they need to get things done with their job, what can they do to develop it?
Harrison Monarth [00:08:41]:
So again, Matt, it goes back to what have they identified that they need to develop? And so if it is the ability to manage your emotions in a, in a high stress situation, like for instance, presenting to a board or presenting to important clients, then it’s. So you work on your emotion regulation ability. And there are certain techniques that you can develop here or you can use here. Everything from labeling the emotion, which neuroscience research has shown actually lowers the heat in your limbic system. So it actually allows you to access your prefrontal cortex executive functioning and think more clearly. Reframing a situation so that it doesn’t seem as threatening. There are a number of emotion regulation strategies you can practice over time which then allow you to tap into those in the moment when you’re, when you’re stressed, you know, and then other things. Holding people. I’ll use holding people accountable. There are lots of leaders that have difficulty holding people accountable where they’re not getting the results they need. And so they just sort of kind of get by. And sometimes they get them, sometimes they don’t. And they have the same players on their team that continuously do not deliver results. Well, it may be in the communication, it may be that the leader has not established the expectations or has not made clear what the expectations are. It may be that the leader is not giving enough feedback. It may be that a clear timeline wasn’t established. It may be that the leader wasn’t clear. Does the person even have the skills or the capability or the resources to deliver on what is expected? Those are absolutely things. Once you’re aware of them and you can learn these things, you can make sure that you hit on all these points and then you can say okay, we checked all the boxes so the person really should be able to deliver. We have regular check ins so I can be sure that I won’t be surprised a few months down the road that things weren’t done. So these are all things. It really just kind of depends though, what is it that you need to work on. And again, you get that by getting feedback, by getting feedback from whether it’s your boss, your peers, your direct reports in your organizations. As you know, 360 feedback is very popular. And if that’s something that you can utilize, not everybody gets it. But if you can get 360 feedback, that’s great because it gives you a snapshot of how you are seen by people right now. You know what’s working and what you might need to work on.
Matt Alder [00:11:24]:
Obviously this is going to be very much based on individuals and situation, but I know that you know, certainly in our industry that one of the things that’s incredibly important is influence. Do you have sort of any sort of specific tips around improving influence or achieving buy in within organizations?
Harrison Monarth [00:11:45]:
Yeah, and again, depending on what the situation is. But some of the general guidelines for getting buy in is having individual conversations. So rather than surprising people in a meeting with your ideas or with your proposals, sort of do some prep work and talk to people beforehand to see what their concerns might Be what might be reservations about your ideas? What are some misunderstandings you need to clear up? So individual conversations with people to prepare them is one hearing people basically giving people a voice, not necessarily a vote, but a voice so they can actually share how they feel about your ideas. And that’s sometimes all that’s needed to actually get them on board and really being clear on why people might resist. So that could be very different depending on who you’re speaking to, you know, each person. You know, change is a difficult thing, right, for a lot of people. And so, but people typically resist for a specific reason. Maybe they are loyal to other stakeholders that you know that don’t agree with you, or maybe there’s a conflicting, conflicting priority. Maybe they don’t have the resources. They would like to agree with you, but they don’t have the resources. And maybe they haven’t articulated that. So getting buy in lots of conversations beforehand, being very clear about why resistance exists, and then also showing the benefit, of course of joining you on your journey and buying into your idea. The worst thing you can do is just sort of browbeating people into compliance because then they might go along simply because they have to, but they’re certainly not going to give you their best effort or their best ideas and support you along the way.
Matt Alder [00:13:31]:
So I would imagine that a lot of success here is about developing confidence. How do you advise people to manage the line between confidence and arrogance?
Harrison Monarth [00:13:44]:
Yes, it’s a good question. In fact, I addressed that in my, in my book, in a chapter called the Dark side of Executive Presence, because confidence is certainly an executive presence strength. You know, if you’re confident, people certainly will, you will give people the impression that you have that executive presence. It often morphs into arrogance when people stop monitoring themselves when they feel that they know it all or they’ve accomplished a lot, or they don’t take other people’s ideas very seriously because they just trust in themselves but in no one else. So it’s very important, important again that you have self awareness, that you actually notice when you seem to be turning people down or swatting people away and not listening to other people’s ideas and feedback. And so that fine line again with self awareness, you will recognize when you start doing these things. And again, so being fully aware of how you’re communicating with people, are you listening to feedback? Are you hearing their perspectives and having some humility and realizing that you can’t know it all, you don’t know it all. And you can’t go it alone either. Because if you’re arrogant. People might respect you, but they won’t necessarily support you. You may have status, but you won’t necessarily have much social support when you have arrogance. And so that’s definitely something to watch out for.
Matt Alder [00:15:15]:
So final question. Where can people find you and where can they find the new book?
Harrison Monarth [00:15:21]:
Thanks. Yeah, the book is available on Amazon now, certainly in bookstores, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers. And then my website is gurumaker.com so it’s G-U-R-U m a k e r dot com. So we have a team of executive coaches and leadership coaches, development professionals. And yeah, we’d love to engage with people.
Matt Alder [00:15:44]:
Harrison, thank you very much for talking to me.
Harrison Monarth [00:15:47]:
Thank you, Matt. I appreciate it.
Matt Alder [00:15:49]:
My thanks to Harrison Monarth. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for Recruiting Future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify or Pandora user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com. on that site, you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
