Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived.

I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach and today

we're talking about executive presenting. During her coaching, Riley and I focused on developing her executive presence.

I found Riley to be a determined learner.

We were only a few months in, and she had already made strides that were getting noticed.

One day as we sat down to begin a coaching session, she spun her laptop towards me and said,

I have something for you to watch. On the screen on the

screen,

screen was a video freeze frame of Riley sitting at a conference table,

a spiral-bound slide deck in front of her.

No one else was in the frame. She was

clearly the presenter. She said, I delivered 30 minutes on our Asian energy

strategy to the global investment team. I have it on video. I'd love for you to

give me some feedback."

Great, I said. How do you think you did? Well, you tell me. I will, I said, and we both laughed but Riley your experience is important too a lot of times what people tell themselves is what makes them succeed as a presenter

or fail she added.

Agreed, I replied.

She went on, I think I did pretty well.

I knew my stuff. I was well prepared. I'm comfortable when I know the content. I was pleased for her and said

sounds like it went well let's see what we see. She hit play. The Riley who was

presenting on the video was not all that different from the Riley who sat across from me during our coaching conversations.

She was a confident young executive with a pleasant presence.

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