You already have the intelligence, experience and expertise. Now you need other people to recognize you as the leader you are capable of becoming.
Executive presence is not an inborn gift, and it does not require becoming louder, more extroverted or less authentic. It is a collection of learnable skills involving awareness, communication, voice, physical presence, emotional regulation and flexibility.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations provide Executive Presence Coaching for talented professionals who want to command greater respect, communicate with authority and become the obvious choice for greater leadership responsibility.
Schedule an Executive Presence Strategy Call →
Who Is Executive Presence Coaching For?
Yes And Innovations works with:
- Newly promoted executives
- Founders and startup leaders
- Technical experts moving into management
- Senior and emerging leaders
- High-potential employees
- Introverted professionals
- Women in leadership
- Professionals preparing for the C-suite
- Experienced individuals being overlooked for advancement
- Executives whose communication or presence is limiting their careers
Our Executive Presence Coaching is especially valuable for brilliant people in technology, computer science, finance, insurance, Fortune 500 organizations and founder-led businesses.
Many of these professionals possess exceptional knowledge. However, they may not yet communicate that knowledge in a way that creates confidence, trust and followership.
When Expertise Is Not Enough
An executive may be highly capable and still be passed over for promotion, ignored during meetings or overlooked when important assignments are distributed.
They may receive feedback such as:
- “You are brilliant, but you don’t come across as a leader.”
- “You need to command the room.”
- “You need to speak up more.”
- “You need greater executive presence.”
- “Senior leadership needs to see you differently.”
Some people appear stiff because they have selected one behavior they believe a leader should use in every situation. Others have little awareness or control over their voice, posture, gestures, eye contact or communication style.
They may:
- Ramble or overexplain
- Speak too quickly, quietly or monotonously
- Use too few pauses
- Appear nervous, apologetic or uncertain
- Struggle to make eye contact
- Try too hard to appear powerful
- Become overly technical
- Have difficulty reading senior leaders
- Get interrupted, challenged or ignored
- Avoid speaking up when they have something valuable to contribute
- Struggle with small talk and quick personal connections
- Lack warmth, originality, authority or flexibility
- Have difficulty calming, focusing or energizing a room
The problem is not always a lack of confidence. The deeper problem is often a lack of awareness, a lack of flexibility and a lack of clarity about the desired outcome.
What Is Executive Presence?
Executive presence is the ability to make people feel confident in your leadership.
A leader with strong executive presence can be warm, open and gregarious when connection is needed. That same leader can shift toward clarity, authority and task-focused communication when the situation demands it.
This flexibility is essential. Executive presence is not one permanently serious voice, one rigid posture or one artificial display of power.
Leaders with executive presence:
- Enter a room calmly and without rushing
- Remain aware of the people and space around them
- Speak clearly with vocal variety and well-placed pauses
- Use stable posture and natural, fluid movements
- Make appropriate eye contact
- Shift effectively between warmth and authority
- Adjust their status behavior to help others feel comfortable or led
- Communicate effectively with employees, peers and C-suite leaders
- Remain composed when interrupted or challenged
- Respond spontaneously without becoming reactive
- Calm, focus and energize other people
- Demonstrate consistent, ethical charm
- Build trust through consistent behavior
- Develop other leaders and prepare people to replace them
Executive presence allows your expertise to become visible.
The Yes And Innovations Approach
Executive Presence Coaching from Yes And Innovations begins with observation and conversation — not assumptions.
Depending on the engagement, Brett Duggan and the Yes And Innovations team may speak with the client, hiring manager, HR representative or organizational sponsor. We establish development goals, confidentiality boundaries and the workplace situations in which greater presence is needed.
We then observe how the client communicates and responds under realistic conditions.
The coaching may evaluate:
- Voice and vocal variety
- Breath and nervous-system regulation
- Posture and movement
- Gestures and eye contact
- Listening and responsiveness
- Status behavior
- Storytelling
- Emotional regulation
- Communication under pressure
- Interactions with people at different organizational levels
Our pedagogy is well tested, but the coaching is never generic. Exercises and simulations are customized around the client’s actual strengths, challenges, personality and professional environment.
We do not try to manufacture a new personality. Our objective is to help clients become more fully themselves — with greater skill.
NeuroSpontaneity™ and Executive Presence
Executive Presence Coaching incorporates three central elements of the NeuroSpontaneity™ System developed by Yes And Innovations.
Somatic Resonance™
Somatic Resonance develops the physical and vocal foundations of presence.
Clients work with voice, breathing, posture, gestures, movement and nervous-system regulation. They learn how to use the voice as an instrument and how to make physical choices that help other people feel calm, focused and comfortable.
A regulated leader can help regulate a room.
Magnetic Influence™
Magnetic Influence develops status flexibility, situational awareness and ethical influence.
Clients learn to read the room, adjust their energy and move appropriately between authority and warmth. They practice guiding, pushing or pulling a conversation without making people feel dismissed or manipulated.
The objective is not dominance. It is the ability to influence people ethically while remaining responsive to what is actually happening.
StoryGenesis™
StoryGenesis helps leaders make their ideas memorable.
Clients learn to tell concise leadership stories, connect information to human experience and use storytelling to clarify purpose. More advanced coaching may include nested and looping story structures that sustain attention and reinforce an important idea.
Story allows a leader to turn information into meaning.
What Clients Practice
Executive presence cannot be developed through explanation alone. It must be practiced.
Depending on the client’s goals, coaching may include:
- Voice and gesture exercises that strengthen the connection between thought, body and speech
- Presenting an idea, receiving feedback and presenting it again
- Developing presentations through different creative and learning processes
- Entering a room and establishing an appropriate presence
- Making small talk and building quick connections
- Delivering difficult information or bad news
- Offering correction, direction and encouragement
- Telling concise leadership stories
- Developing nested and looping stories
- Answering difficult or unexpected questions
- Recovering after losing a train of thought
- Responding to interruptions
- Reengaging someone who repeatedly changes the subject
- Handling a higher-status person who disrupts a discussion
- Communicating “up” to senior leadership
- Communicating “down” to employees and direct reports
- Remaining present during high-pressure situations
Clients also examine where conventional ideas about executive presence come from and which behaviors are genuinely useful in today’s workplace.
The work is practical, challenging, enjoyable and directly connected to real professional situations.
An Anonymous Client Transformation
One client was among the most intelligent professionals Brett Duggan had ever coached. The client possessed extraordinary computer-science expertise and many years of experience, but that expertise was not reflected in their physical and vocal presence.
When speaking, the client shuffled their feet, avoided eye contact, spoke too quickly and used a voice that was difficult to hear. They believed a basic personality difference prevented them from connecting with people.
The solution was not to make the client extroverted.
The coaching focused on simple physical choices: becoming still, using a stable posture, speaking with greater clarity and helping other people feel comfortable. The work also reframed the client’s understanding of value and purpose.
Within several weeks, the change was visible enough that coworkers began asking what the client was doing differently.
This is what effective executive-presence development can accomplish: not replacing someone’s personality, but allowing their existing intelligence and value to become visible.
Why Work With Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations?
Brett Duggan brings an unusual combination of executive coaching, university teaching and professional performance experience to leadership development.
His background includes:
- 35 years as a professional performer
- An MFA and extensive university teaching experience
- 12 years of executive coaching
- Shakespearean performance and training
- Applied improvisation
- Filmmaking and directing
- Corporate training and leadership-program development
- Training speakers and senior professionals
- Expertise in voice, physical presence, storytelling and behavior
Yes And Innovations coaches bring creative and performance backgrounds that allow them to teach presence through practice — not merely discuss it as an abstract leadership concept.
Our approach combines:
- Nervous-system regulation
- Physical and vocal training
- Status flexibility
- Performance techniques tested in real rooms
- Realistic simulations
- Repeated rehearsal
- Storytelling
- Ethical influence
- Customization around the client’s natural personality
- An enjoyable process that encourages experimentation
We have worked with highly accomplished professionals and organizations that expect coaching to be substantive, practical and engaging.
Engagement Options
Yes And Innovations offers:
- Private Executive Presence Coaching
- Employer-sponsored executive coaching
- Small executive cohorts
- Executive-presence workshops
- Half-day workshops
- Full-day workshops
- Two-day intensives
- Leadership-team coaching
- Preparation for an important presentation
- Promotion and interview preparation
- High-stakes meeting preparation
- Four-month transformation programs
- Six-month transformation programs
Four- and six-month programs are our recommended options for clients seeking significant, sustainable development. Executive presence is a collection of skills, and meaningful practice allows those skills to become more natural, flexible and dependable under pressure.
Programs are available virtually, in person or through a customized hybrid arrangement. Yes And Innovations works with clients worldwide and can travel to the client’s location.
Measuring Progress
Progress measures are selected according to the client’s goals and may include:
- Initial and follow-up self-assessments
- Clearly defined development objectives
- Manager or coworker feedback
- Observed simulations
- Stronger presentations
- Increased participation in senior meetings
- Improved vocal and physical presence
- Better handling of difficult conversations
- Greater professional visibility
- Increased responsibility
- Promotion or advancement
- Follow-up interviews or surveys
When an employer sponsors the coaching, reporting expectations and confidentiality boundaries are established at the beginning. Yes And Innovations has experience providing confidential coaching and signing nondisclosure agreements when appropriate.
Your Expertise Should Not Remain Hidden
Your expertise should not remain hidden behind nervousness, stiffness, ineffective communication or an outdated idea of what leadership is supposed to look like.
Brett Duggan and Yes And Innovations can help you develop the voice, awareness, physical presence, storytelling ability and communication flexibility that allow other people to recognize and trust your leadership.
