You may not think there’s a difference between being proficient at organizing meetings versus being able to lead meetings. There is!

Some people can do both. And if well trained, can do both well. However, many organizations discover too late—which is once the meeting has begun—that the person who has so efficiently organized their meeting does not know how to be an effective leader. A leader who knows how to guide the group to a clear deliverable; a concise plan of action (not just another meeting) for all to follow. A meeting that gets results!

With that said, increase your meeting success by increasing your “Executive Presence” — being someone who knows how to lead meetings.

According to research by Northwestern’s Dr. Amy Cuddy, three factors will increase your “Executive Presence” (think respect).

1. Strengthen your credibility
2. Increase your ease
3. Curtail your ego

By improving your ability to lead meetings, you and your organization nourish vibrant meetings that produce effective results everyone can own.

So, let’s take a closer look at each of these factors.

The formula to strengthen a speaker’s credibility extends back to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—and before. Aristotle presents three leadership factors of persuasive success: ethos, logos, and pathos. Aristotle’s leadership factors are closely related to Dr. Cuddy’s three actions. So, if you want to increase your “Executive Presence” when you lead meetings, you might want to pay close attention.

1. Lead Meetings by Strengthening Your Credibility (ethos)

In Greek, ethos means ‘character.’ Ethos captures the credibility and refers to the trustworthiness of the speaker (or, meeting leader). Ethos expresses itself through the tone and style of the message, transforming the speaker into an authority on the subject.

Ethos lends itself to the creation of reputation and exists independently from the message. The impact of ethos refers to ‘ethical appeal’ or the ‘appeal from credibility.’

Dr. Cuddy on Credibility

Foundational Factors

Three foundational factors sustain all the other factors that strengthen credibility. They include integrity, expertise, and preparedness.

• Integrity represents honesty, forthrightness, and ethical business practices and behavior. Many executives have demonstrated stellar “Executive Presence,” but ethics became their undoing as they lost their credibility and, in many cases, they’re still working to regain that over time.
• Expertise requires getting good before you worry about looking good to other people. Early in your career, intellectual, horsepower is essential, but it does not replace “Executive Presence”. “Executive Presence” doesn’t measure your merit, intellect, or horsepower. “Executive Presence” measures your capacity to translate your creativity, your good ideas, and your deep expertise for the benefit of other people.
• Preparedness simply means showing up prepared. Foundations are built upon showing up prepared for something that’s important to you. Perhaps you’ve done a talk-through, a walk-through, or a run-through. If so, the non-foundational components to be covered next won’t harm you. For example, filler words decrease just by the nature of being prepared. When someone challenges you if you show up prepared, you are less likely to get caught off guard.

Vocal Factors

Vocal factors also strengthen credibility and include inflection, cadence, resonance, fillers, and props. Inflection and cadence capture the two most important factors.

• Inflection refers to the amount that your voice changes in pitch and amplitude, over time. We all know how it feels to experience complete monotone or absence of inflection. For example, with customer service call centers, two variables were strongly associated with successful calls.
  • The ratio of listening to speaking. People who listened more were seen as being more attuned more helpful, and more interested.
  • The second was the variable of inflection. People with higher rates of inflection demonstrated stronger interest, and stronger responsiveness, and even their levels of expertise were rated as higher.
• Cadence or speed may convey urgency. So, sometimes speed needs to be dialed down, especially if you’ve been told consistently, you speak too quickly. Your fast rate of speech may mean that your audience cannot track and keep up with you. Your levels of expertise are so high that your cognition can’t catch up and process what you’re saying at the rate at which you’re speaking. Some listeners suggest that fast speaking indicates nervousness or a lack of confidence. Slow down a bit by inserting pauses, especially when you’re making a particular point. Pauses signal that you are comfortable with silence. They can signal that you’re making an important point. Pauses can also signal your willingness to be challenged at a specific point in time.

Three Other Factors to Consider

• Resonance or vocal power, knowing that when a voice is low to average in range (of the assumed gender), people will most frequently describe that voice as being successful, sociable, and smart. Those are the adjectives that do not describe when someone’s voice is really high with the assumed gender. They will say it’s grating, annoying, or too young. As we age, our voices get deeper, and increased age is associated with higher credibility. Thus, research suggests lowering your pitch. Additionally, control your vocal power (volume) and breath control.
• Filler words become a distraction when used more frequently than normal speech. We all use filler words, including American Sign Language. Filler words represent a part of normal speech. However, beware when they start to become excessively measured by the fact, that they have become a distraction.
• Props or fidgets such as your phone may detract from your credibility. It could be clicking a pen or a marker. Remember, anything that causes a distraction removes traction from getting DONE. And nobody wants longer meetings.

Aristotle on Ethos (Credibility)

Aristotle tells us that appeals from ethos should not come from appearance but from a person’s use of language. Advertising relies much on ethos and takes the form of credible spokespeople, such as Michael Jordan selling underwear. The historical view holds that three characteristics fortify ethos. Effective meeting leaders embrace all three, namely:

1. Good moral character,
2. Good sense, and
3. Goodwill

2. Lead Meetings by Increasing Your Ease (logos)

Dr. Cuddy’s Foundational Factors on Ease

Four foundational factors sustain the other factors that increase your appearance of ease and strengthen credibility. For instance, diet, sleep, exercise, and social support increase ease and credibility.

• Diet – “Is there any food in your food?”
• Sleep – “Is there any rest in your sleep?”
• Exercise – “Do you move routinely and develop stress resilience?”
• Social support and friendships make us stronger, more stress resilient, and more capable when we’re under fire from any number of things that we cannot control.

Other Easing Factors

Additionally, easing factors also strengthen credibility including stability, congruence, connection, and authenticity.

• Stability (emotional) refers to how we navigate our inner world of thoughts, emotions, and feelings. You tame and develop emotional regulation by recognizing, even naming the emotion, to create space between you and the challenge. Called “labeling,” a descriptive mode brings us into the present moment and can regulate the brain’s amygdala from overtaking our response. You could say internally, my heart is racing, my face is getting flushed, my hands are getting sweaty, etc., and your central nervous system will calm down. Therefore, expressing the emotion prevents it from taking over.
• Congruence implies alignment of your words with your body language.
• Connection includes strong eye contact, although it varies by culture. Do you know how to listen to people, do you maintain a connection with them over time? Above all, they want to know that you are at ease connecting with them.
• Authenticity signals the ease of self-assurance. What are your strengths, what are your values, what are your needs? What is your vision and what are you striving for in the world? In other words, authenticity creates self-assurance and a clear purpose that anchors you over and over.

Aristotle on Logos (Internal Consistency)

Aristotle tells us that appeals from logos refer to internal consistency and reasoning of the message—clarity of your claims, logic of your rationale, and effectiveness of your supporting evidence. Aristotle’s favorite approach above all, logos captures the logic used to support claims (induction and deduction) with facts and statistics.

• The impact of logos may be called an argument’s logical appeal.
• A meeting leader supports inductive logic by requiring facts, evidence, and support. They allow participants to develop a general conclusion. Or they lead deductive logic by challenging participants with a general proposition and then eliciting specific facts, evidence, and support.

3. Lead Meetings by Curtailing Your Ego (pathos)

Dr. Cuddy’s Foundational Factors on Ego

Ego as a denominator in Dr. Cuddy’s equation on “Executive Presence” means we are dividing our credibility and ease to get a final quotient (where more is better). So, when you divide a number for credibility plus ease with an exceedingly high number, you erode your quotient. What participants want is true confidence and true humility. Therefore, an effective leader may hold back their point of view until they hear from others to be sure that they’re getting the information that they need from other people. For example, from CS Lewis we have the following:

“True humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking about yourself less often.” — CS Lewis

Aristotle on Pathos (Audience Focus)

Pathos (Greek for “suffering” or “experience”) refers to an “appeal to the audience’s sympathies and imagination.” The persuasive appeal of pathos focuses on your participants’ sense of identity, their self-interests, and emotions. Therefore, many consider pathos the strongest of the appeals.

Be cautious as appeals to participants’ sense of identity and self-interest exploit common biases. They naturally bend in the direction of what is advantageous to them, what serves their interests, or the interests of the groups to which they belong.

Finally, to improve one’s “Executive Presence,” continue to minimize or avoid using the first person singular “I” or “me.” Substitute the integrative “we” or “us” or refer to the collective and pluralistic “you.” The fewer times you say “I,” the more respect you will gain as you get viewed as the one who leads meetings that create clear and actionable results.

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NOTE: These three appeals are used to describe rhetoric, which we define as “the art of adjusting ideas to people, and people to ideas.” Fortify yourself with a deeper understanding of rhetoric and argumentation if you want to lead challenging meetings more effectively by becoming a better facilitator.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

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