Being courageous is needed for executive/leadership presence as well as sales presence and personal presence.
In this second video in our series on how to improve your presence, we review the five characteristics of presence and focus our discussion on the first characteristic: Being courageous. If you have yet to read the transcript or watch the first video, you may want to do that before engaging with this second video/transcript.
The five characteristics of executive and leadership presence include:
- Being courageous
- Exuding confident
- Having an open, expanded posture
- Speaking with a full, resonant voice
- Dressing and having visual appearance (clothes, accessories, etc.) that sends a message of success
Individuals with great presence also have great positive attraction.
Being courageous is a critical characteristic in creating presence!
Maya Angelo said it well:
“Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We cannot be kind, true, merciful, generous or honest.”
Courage is a trait others admire, and it’s necessary if you want to be great leader, salesperson or parent. Why is courage important to parenting, you ask? Because children become teen-agers!
Learn the amazing neuroscience-based technique that allows you to immediately access courage when you need it.
Join speaker agent Kim Tracy and me in learning to develop greater personal power through enhanced presence, either by watching the video of the interview that Kim originally produced or by reading the transcribed text below, which was edited to enhance readability.
[vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/gR96Bshj3mE”]
Kim: Hi I’m Kim Tracy with the Maxwell James Speaker Agency here with Dr. TC North. Thanks so much for joining me today.
TC: Always happy to join you and have these conversations Kim.
Kim: Perfect. So last video we defined presence and what Is important. Would you please recap those parts and then which one are you going to focus on today?
TC: Yes, happy to. Presence is really important. It’s important in leadership and it’s important in sales, it’s important in how we interact with our friends, it’s important in parenting. Presence is really hot these days. It’s a topic that people are understanding more and more. There are five parts to presence. Presence includes,
- Courage, you have to have courage to have presence.
- Confidence
- Use of your body. How do you hold your body? Is it tall and open and looking strong?
- How you use your voice. Is it deep and resonate or is it high and squeaky because you’re nervous?
- And how you appear? What’s your clothing like? Those are the five pieces.
I’d like to focus on courage. And courage to me is foundational for presence. I’d like to quote Maya Angelou. She had a great quote on courage which sets the stage for us here Kim.
“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We cannot be kind, true, merciful, generous or honest.”
So really critical to all that we hold important as good human beings. It’s needed in leadership, in sales and again even in parenting and being a good friend.
Having good presence helps us be with others in a way that attracts them. It’s a positive attraction with others. And courage gives you the ability to grow and to learn and to do the things that are difficult.
You and I talk a lot about the importance of being uncomfortable, specifically getting comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s what high performers do and that’s the bigger part of my work really, helping people be high performers. If you want to be a high performer developing presence is really critical as well as courage.
Kim: Absolutely and of course you’re talking about this in your book “Fearless Leaders” which is an amazing book.
TC: Thank you for that!
Kim: Absolutely
TC: Yeah and that is chapter two in the book, “Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable” a really critical chapter I think. Think about athletes – when an elite athlete trains can you imagine an athlete ever training and it being easy, never experiencing discomfort? It’s the same with your mind. You have to stretch your mind to become.
To become better with your emotions you have to stretch and you have to challenge yourself. It’s uncomfortable but the whole concept of getting comfortable being uncomfortable means that discomfort isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing to be stretched that way.
Kim: Absolutely. What tip do you have for our viewers today?
TC: Thanks. I always like that question. The tip I have is around developing courage.
The way the brain works – it’s a series of neural networks. And there’s a neural network that holds all of your confident memories. Every time you stimulate that neural network by remembering a time you were confident you literally grow that neural network. The neurons get bigger, they get thicker they make more connections, and they attach to different parts of the brain.
To develop your courage remember a time you were courageous.
Kim I’m going to give you a second exercise. First – remember a time you were courageous and then second – take that feeling, those thoughts and the neural stimulation of your body being courageous and then imagine being courageous in an event in your future where you want to be courageous.
Kim: Absolutely. Thank you so much for this fantastic information. If you would like to bring TC North in for a keynote, workshop or seminar please contact me, Kim Tracy through www.MaxwellJames.net. Thanks so much again.
TC: Ah, thank you Kim!
Speaker agent Kim Tracy at the Maxwell James Agency produced this video. Please contact her at www.maxwelljames.net if you’re interested in having me deliver a keynote, workshop or webinar on developing presence for leaders sales professionals or executives. Or contact me at www.TCNorth.com if you would like individual coaching to strengthen your personal power through presence.
