Hi, I'm Helen.

And I'm Sarah.

And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast where each week we share ideas for action and tools for you to try out that we hope will help you.

And it always does help us navigate your squiggly career with more confidence, clarity and control.

And this week we're taking on the topic of presence at work.

And presence is one of those, I think, tricky words because people struggle to define it and be

specific about what good looks like. I feel like we sort of know it when we see it, but it's

hard to break down into something that we can develop. And that's absolutely what we are

now going

to attempt to do today and I do think it is particularly frustrating if you receive feedback on this

area so I I don't think I've ever had these exact words but I've definitely talked to people

who've had feedback oh you need to improve your presence if you want to progress but then with

no clarity about going well what does that look like?

How will I know when I've got there?

How do I think about what this means for me?

So I feel like it's often one of those vague and abstract things that most of us feel like is important.

We sort of recognise it's important.

We've probably worked with or for people who we would

describe as having presence, but it almost falls into that risk of maybe feeling like a personality

trait or maybe something you either have or you don't have. So we've read quite a few different

articles. I've read a really good book, which is a HBR sort of small mini book called Leadership Presence,

which is one of the ones that they have in their emotional intelligence series.

...