Welcome, HRL Laboratories, to Executive Presence: A Training & Coaching Program for Leaders

OBJECTIVES AND APPROACH. The Executive Presence workshop is designed to give you the understanding and tools you need to significantly enhance your presence as a leader. We believe the definition of “leader” is a freely-followed person; someone who would be followed even if they had no formal authority. We believe an individual’s presence is key to that kind of leadership. We want you to be able to “own the room” when you need to and to create spaces for connection, communication, and collaboration to further the goals you and others need to accomplish together. We want you to be able to connect authentically with others, to communicate clearly with others, and to co-create shared value with others. Our aim is to help you further develop your skills to be a warm, self-confident, competent, grounded, and decisive leader; the kind of leader others will follow.

We’ll unbundle and share with you the critical success factors related to voice, gesture, posture, expression, story, status and…silence. We’ll demonstrate how they all work together to make positive and compelling connections with those around you.  

We’ll give you a safe place to practice, with lots of positive and constructive feedback and coaching. This is not a time for you to try to be “perfect.” Instead, it is a time to see and consider what you are doing now and try ona number of strategies and techniques that may be more effective than what has become your norm. We are certain you will walk away with some immediate improvements. You will have new awareness and practical tools to help you improve dramatically as you adopt techniques over time. Authentic and effective executive presence takes time and experimentation. Our workshop will give you a good chunk of that time and lots of opportunities to experiment! 

WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU. We need you to do a couple of things ahead of our workshop. First, we need an example of your current style. We’d like you to come to the workshop prepared with an interaction that is about five minutes long. It could be an interaction with one person, several people, or a fairly large audience. It could be a presentation or discussion. In most cases it is helpful if the purpose of your interaction is to get someone to enlist, support, or buy into a different way of doing something. It should be an interaction that is useful for your work. It’s only five minutes, so we would like you to talk without notes or slides.  

Here are some examples of interactions others have brought into the workshop.

• One participant simulated a discussion with an employee who thought he was surely going to win a promotion, but needed to be told he would not get promoted.
• Another simulated a pitch to a funder, making the case for an investment.
• One person simulated a recruiting talk to a group of college seniors.
• Another wanted to practice a scenario in which they were breaking difficult news that a project was cancelled and that some layoffs would start soon.

Next, We need you to complete the Executive Presence Self-Assessment and pick three colleagues to provide you with an Executive Presence Feedback Assessment. Your instructor will provide you with more information about this. 

Last, we need your undivided attention during our time together. When you demonstrate your interaction, we will ask your fellow workshop participants to simulate your audience…the types, the characters…the reactions you might get in real life. We will also ask them for constructive ideas on how the interaction could be more effective. So, you will be very engaged either as a presenter, audience member, or advisor throughout the two days. As a result, there will be no opportunity for multi-tasking. We ask that all participants detach from their electronic devices except at breaks, lunch, or in emergencies.

ABOUT YOUR WORKSHOP LEADER. Your workshop leader will be Scott Hutcheson, PhD. Scott is founder and Chief Social Scientist at Hutcheson Associates. He is also a professor of organization leadership at Purdue University. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses, including one that includes the content of this workshop. Through Hutcheson Associates, Scott has trained and coached over 4,000 leaders from 143 different countries. His efforts to develop his own “executive presence” continues to be a work-in-progress. He recently started doing stand-up comedy to improve his delivery and timing and he’ll be a featured storyteller at the upcoming Listen To Your Mother event. Scott studied theatre as an undergrad and worked briefly as a professional actor before settling into his career as a leadership development professor, trainer, and coach. Scott leads workshops and gives keynotes all over the world. His TEDx Talk on the science of prospection has received over 1.3 million views on YouTube.

QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS? We look forward to seeing you in the workshop on March 27-28, 2023. If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, feel free to contact Jenn Sweeney at 2-6562.