Sue Pritchard, principal consultant, Bath Consultancy Group

Ten years ago we noticed an interesting phenomenon when working with top teams in Financial and Professional Services and the public sector. When we asked senior people what qualities they were looking for when recruiting to their top teams, they would struggle. Words like ‘gravitas’ and ‘depth’ were bandied about - even, memorably- "more bottom!". 

But when probed further, they couldn't explain exactly what this meant. (And it usually meant more people like us….)

Since then at Bath Consultancy Group we’ve been researching what people really look for in their leaders - and how to describe this in a way that gives everyone an equal chance to develop and improve those qualities and attributes. This comes down to three distinct aspects – Authority, Presence and Impact. During our research we also found that gender played an important part in how Authority, Presence and Impact were displayed (and experienced).

What do we mean by authority, presence and impact?

Authority

Authority is something we develop through our experiences, our education and training, and our background. It reflects the past that we bring to the current challenge. Authority markers might include the role we take in leading successful projects, our job history, the clubs and networks we belong to.

It is noticeable that women often downplay this trait preferring instead to promote their team. Women will tend to say: “The success of this project is down to my team.” Whilst this is much appreciated by colleagues it can mitigate against developing an authoritative personal and career history. Men will, typically, be more forthright and claim ownership of a successful project.

To start helping leaders, and women in particular, develop their authority markers we teach different mechanisms. This might include asking you to say ‘I’ more. This is not about self-aggrandizement but about claiming authority appropriately. We will also look at how you can draw connections with potential clients to demonstrate the authority that you have in that space. We also say, keep it crisp. Five minutes is long enough to set your authority markers - any longer and it will be overdone!

Presence

Presence describes our capacity to ‘occupy the leadership space', in the moment, to be appropriately noticed and to gain respect. It is strongly dependent on our ability to build rapport and to relate effectively with a wide range of other people in the present. 

Whilst women are often very good at the ‘soft skills' of developing rapport and relating well to people, we find that this is typically more comfortably demonstrated in traditional female roles. The capacity to display presence in a wider range of scenarios becomes crucial in moving up the leadership ladder.

We are all pretty good at forming connections and building rapport with about 35% of the people we meet. At Bath Consultancy Group we help you develop presence to increase the rapport bandwidth to a much wider selection of people.

It might be suggesting that you ask for feedback on how well you listen, communicate and interact with your team. Getting first-hand feedback on how people experience you is vital.

We also help develop the interpersonal skillset which looks at how you 'match' with people, how you develop active listening and attending behaviours.  At Bath Consultancy Group we’ve also developed our work on Sentic States, which is about understanding the energetic rhythms of communication and matching the rhythm of the person you’re speaking with to gain rapport. 

Impact

Impact describes our ability to change the course of events; for example, in a meeting, when we intervene to improve the outcome, or to enable people to reframe the way they think about the situation or problem they face. It is a future orientated dimension.

We're all familiar with the New Yorker cartoon, set round a board table, where the chairman is saying to the only female member: "Thank you, Miss Jones, good point. And perhaps now a man would like to make it...."

Impact is closely connected to the capacity to give and receive feedback with empathy and assertion; and also the capacity to sense, respond to and change the mood in the moment, through matching (and mismatching) the prevailing ‘energy'. It is about shifting the course of events. It is also deeply connected to the ability to handle differences or conflicts in the moment, to be assertive, bold and courageous.

We find that whilst many women are good at ‘reading' atmospheres, their ability to handle conflict and dissonance productively in the moment (instead of smoothing over) can often be significantly enhanced.

Emotional rhythm

For example, in a meeting, presence would be used to build rapport and to show that you really ‘understand the world’ of the person you’re speaking to. You might echo and match their sentic state, their mood, their emotional rhythm. And then, to create a different set of future possibilities - to have impact in the moment - we would suggest that you 'mis-match' appropriately. This acts to change the rhythm of the moment and enables the person or group in turn to make the same change.

Successful leadership

Successful leadership matches for rapport and mismatches to create change. To successfully deliver change, we agree with Nelson Mandela when he says leaders must: "be the change they want to see in the world" or develop their capacity to evoke that change in other people.