In this #throwback episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, Erin interviews Eleanore Eaves, a brilliant strategist, writer, and coach, about executive presence.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction and upcoming podcast announcement
2:00 - Eleanore's background and introduction to executive presence
5:00 - Building and nurturing executive presence
9:00 - Eleanore's personal evolution and role models in leadership
13:00 - Diversity in executive positions
15:00 - Advice for accessing leadership positions
16:00 - The role of appearance in executive presence
17:00 - Closing quote and final thoughts

Key Points:
- Executive presence is about personal brand, confidence, strategic mindset, authenticity, and personal power
- It's not just about appearance, but how you present yourself as a leader
- Building executive presence requires honest self-assessment and identifying areas for improvement
- There's no one-size-fits-all approach; executive presence should be tailored to individual strengths and organizational fit
- The importance of diversity in executive roles and strategies for accessing leadership positions
- The value of finding a sponsor who speaks about you in rooms of power
- While character is crucial, appearance still plays a role in executive presence

The episode concludes with a powerful quote: "She remembered who she was, and then the game changed,"

Don't forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't stay out of trouble!

Contact Eleanore Eaves: Website: eavescoaching.com

Stay tuned for Erin and Eleanore's upcoming podcast on modern leadership and decision-making!

Script

Erin: [00:00:00] Welcome my friends to yet another episode of weirdos in the workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our wacky and wonderful world today. I'm your host, Erin Patchell. And this week we're doing things a little bit differently. We are going to have a throwback episode.

Back in 2023, your favorite episode was on executive presence with Eleanor Eves, the wonderful, inspiring. Amazing. Eleanor Eves, my friend, also one of my colleagues on the ICF international coach federation, Ottawa board amazing person. And we dive into the strategic side of executive presence how to be your full self in today's complex business environments.

And I'm really even more excited to share with you that Eleanor and I are starting yet another podcast to be titled a couple months from now. We're going to be launching this and it's all about our modern [00:01:00] and complex leadership environments, how to make really hard decisions as leaders, and how to avoid the kind of herd mentality or echo chambers that, that sometimes As human beings, we can tend to fall into and really elevating the thinking and the context through which we're making really good decisions as business leaders.

So that's what we're doing. I'm really excited about that partnership. And we're just going to be dripping out a little more information leading up to the launch. And I'll leave you with a quote as I often do on Weirdos in the Workplace. This one is by Lily Tomlin, the amazing Lily Tomlin.

And Lily says, the road to success is always under construction. And isn't that true? So without further ado, stay weird, stay wonderful, and don't ever stay out of trouble.[00:02:00]

All right, folks, let's get started. So Eleanor is one of the most interesting people that I know. She's a brilliant strategist, writer, and coach. Her resume includes 15 years working For profit and non profit organizations, London School of Economics, King's College London, and the Government of Canada.

Eleanor founded her own consultancy, Eve's Coaching not that long ago. Hey? Correct. Yeah. Yep. And I like to think you do things a little bit differently. I like to think so too. So I'm really glad that you're here to talk about the subject executive presence, because, between my blue collar upbringing and my ADHD, I feel like I've definitely had to learn the hard way about the subject.

And to be honest, I feel like I [00:03:00] still struggle with it a little bit, even though I've been in, and been in business development sales for a long time. To me, it is still, it's still like putting on a bit of a mask. So I love to just hear, how did you learn about this and how did it become such a strong focus for you?

Eleonore: Oh, darling, come on down. No. You would be the perfect person to be covering this topic. In a nutshell, executive presence is not just about how you look or your background or any of that, right? It's your personal brand. It's your confidence. It's your strategic mindset. It's your authenticity. It's your personal power.

It's everything combined and your background and anything, you might have experienced in the past That shouldn't really play into it unless it has made you who you are today in the form you want to be. So that's what we're going to be talking about when we discuss executive presence, is what kind of person do you want to project?

What kind of leader do you [00:04:00] want to be? And what does that look like for you? Because everybody has to do this a little bit differently. And as you said, how did I come about today? to doing this? I always thought, growing up that executive presence was about a look,

less

Eleonore (2): about the character and less about the individual.

But what did executives look like? To be perfectly honest, when we were growing up, not to age us, at that point in time, neither of us would have really made up the majority of executives. Unfortunately, we still do not today as well, but we're making some changes.

Erin: Definitely. I want to

Eleonore (2): be.

Erin: Yeah.

No, I was just going to say I'm really glad to hear you talk a little bit about like authenticity and bringing your personality into it because I feel like that's something that I definitely preach about a lot and I'm glad to hear that it's not just my imagination that this is, that this is [00:05:00] scaling into positions of power.

Absolutely.

Eleonore (2): Absolutely. This is why you'd be a great coach in this. I'm serious. You've absolutely mastered it from the very first day I met you. I remember just being in awe, right? You have this natural way of communicating with people and connecting. And that's all part of the executive presence.

It's how you're presenting yourself.

Erin: You are so sweet, honestly.

Eleonore (2): No, I'm just very honest. I call it how it is.

Erin: I appreciate it. Yeah, so obviously it's no secret that executive presence is really important to building a leader's credibility and, people listen to you differently and consider your opinions differently.

So tell me a little bit about how to, how do you build that? How do you nurture that in yourself?

Eleonore (2): First, take a look at your current state. Really have a very raw sense and understanding of who you are, [00:06:00] right? It really does require some honest self assessment and awareness. Because at the end of the day, you're only kidding yourself.

Then with coaching with myself or any other executive coach, what we would really look at is to identify areas of improvement. And by that, who do you want to be? How do you want others to view you as a leader? And even if you're not a leader today, what does that look like for you down the road?

Right?

Eleonore: So

Eleonore (2): even if you're not in an executive role today, but you want to be in the future, how do you project yourself so other people intuitively view you as the right fit? Not because of your gender, or your race, or anything like that, because I know we, that, that could be a completely different conversation as to, the executive makeup of all of that.

But in terms of how you present yourself, what does that look like? Not just in terms of your clothing as well. [00:07:00] But what kinds of words are you using? What's your strategy? When people look at you, do they view you as being diplomatic? As being out there? What is the approach? So then we, based off of that, we find the areas that you could improve upon.

We develop a strategy to get you there, an approach. We practice it, we tweak it as needed. Then we celebrate your successes once you get to that point that you are truly satisfied with it.

Erin: That's very interesting, actually. I like I'd never really thought about. Aspiring to an executive role in terms of, your personal style.

So just to clarify I've got a very unique personal style, so that I may not be suited to every executive role in the world or every. Organization in the world, but as a career coach I'm not a career coach, but I've worked with so many career coaches and I [00:08:00] know they're really focused on a best fit.

So does that apply in this space as well? I assume.

Eleonore (2): A hundred percent, right? No one is going to be a hundred percent great fit for everything. You have your friends, you have your nemeses, you have your allies, you have your detractors, you have different spheres of people. A person who could, a person like, let's say, Steve Jobs.

Great at Apple. Fantastic. Might not be the best field hockey coach. You never know. Yeah.

Erin: He's not alive anymore, so we'll count him out now. But maybe you never know. But yeah, I totally hear what you're saying, for sure.

Eleonore (2): So it doesn't mean that one is right or wrong. And that's the other thing we need to take apart is there is no right or wrong.

Our person shows up in an executive sense. Even if it's completely different, that might be what the organization needs at [00:09:00] that point in time. Because what have worked in the past won't always work in the future. And in fact, probably shouldn't. That means you're not evolving. That means your organization isn't changing.

So every once in a while, you do need to shake things up. You need a rebel in there.

Erin: I feel like that is so true now more than ever.

Eleonore (2): So it's being true to yourself at the end of the day. And being really honest with who you are, what you want that to look like. And what is the right fit for you?

It's not just about what is the fit for the organization, but is this really the right fit for you?

Erin: That makes a lot of sense. So I'm curious, how did, like, how did this come to be for you? What was your evolution of your thinking around this? Did you have Great role models in the past or?

Eleonore (2): Yes.

I was very lucky to have had one of the world's best leaders ever as both a former manager and as a friend now, I'd like to [00:10:00] say her name is Laura Kenny and she was one of the higher ups at Raytheon. She was one of the execs and I absolutely adored everything about her, in a healthy way, right?

Of course. But for the first time ever, I saw that you could really be your true self. She was as graceful as Audrey Hepburn, smart as a whip, and just kind and empathetic. And that was her executive presence. She showed that you could be all of those things and also have incredible style. Just an absolute fashionista and, working in a realm that was very much male dominated.

Raytheon is a defense company. Yeah. But again, this was a woman who could command the respect of any room she walked into. It was intelligence. It was empathy. It was wit. It was a sense that if you [00:11:00] were on her team, you wanted to do better. You wanted to be better. She encouraged you to.

improve not just your output for the company, but your personal development as a human.

Erin: Holy crap. This is like an amazing testimonial. Like Laura, if you're out there, I am a huge fan now. And yeah, no, that's like seriously though. But don't you want everyone? I know as a lead, like as a leader, that is how I wish people, or I hope that people will someday.

Speak about me. And that is the tension. I feel like that's the intention we need to put out in the universe

Eleonore (2): a hundred percent. And we luckily we're starting to have some of those conversations now.

Eleonore: So

Eleonore (2): when we're looking at executive fit, we're also looking at emotional intelligence.

We're starting to really look at the full package of what a person brings. Because that, you're absolutely right, a person like her [00:12:00] could really motivate a team to outperform every other team, and we did. And we took pride in that, but it didn't feel like a horrible endeavor to do that. It didn't feel like we were working overtime.

Overall, we had that energy to continue to work that hard because work was enjoyable. For the first time ever, Mondays were fun. Yeah, it wasn't just a paycheck.

Erin: And teams get set back so much when people leave. So if you have a leader who can keep people on the team and keep them, not just keep them motivated, but just keep them there present, that's everything these days.

Eleonore (2): Absolutely. And we could definitely go into the whole financial chat about what that costs an organization,

Eleonore: both

Eleonore (2): in terms of intelligence, labor, money for onboarding all of that. You're absolutely right. It is a huge loss to any organization. [00:13:00]

Erin: So the conversation about getting women or getting more diversity into leadership positions and executive positions.

Because, it's still male dominated the majority of executives are still men, white men. And if they're not, if they're not white men, then they're white women, I'm just curious what your thoughts are around, getting more diversity around the executive table.

Eleonore (2): Great question. And I think the approach needs to be very specific to the region right in Nordic countries and Scandinavian countries, we definitely see that the quota system works very well for them. It's well adopted. But there's also to a, we could talk about the differences within the demographics of those regions versus ours, but I think the important thing is finding out what your actual goal is, if you're actually committed [00:14:00] to those goals and it's not just a checkbox, then having some very hard and serious conversations.

within the organization to try to see what that means. It's going to be different things for different organizations. And we could talk about the merits of having the quota system in place, but you're absolutely right. One way or another, things need to change. It's not just the right thing to do. It is the strategically right thing to do.

Erin: So if I'm a person of, I'm not a person of color, but if I was a person of color, What would you recommend them to do? Like, how would you recommend that they, they access those positions?

Eleonore (2): I would urge everyone to get a sponsor. So very quickly, a mentor is someone who speaks to you,

Eleonore: and a

Eleonore (2): sponsor is someone who speaks about you in rooms of power.

So time and time again, we see that women Blacks, Indigenous, people of color We are [00:15:00] overly, and I say we because I know your audience can't see me, but I am a black woman we are overly mentored and not sponsored enough. And you can see why this wouldn't yield the results we want. If someone is just speaking to you, it doesn't actually move the needle.

Whereas if they are actively speaking about you and promoting you, yeah, that's when we start seeing changes, right? So get a sponsor.

Erin: Yeah. Good advice. So we've talked almost exclusively about character, character of executives. So I guess we could probably conclude that these days character is more important than appearance or does appearance still play a factor?

Eleonore (2): Yes, definitely. Appearance still does play some level of a factor, right? As much as we would like to believe that it shouldn't or it does not. It does. And there are some amazing style coaches out there too, [00:16:00] who really help you with that, because it's not just about the clothing you wear, but it's also to how confident you feel in that clothing.

So if that makes you put your best foot forward, you speak more eloquently, more strategically you're more of your authentic self, then yeah, get a style coach. If you need help with your presence. And then yes, an executive coach like myself would be more than happy to work with you. And they're speech therapists as well, and I highly recommend them.

I had a massive lisp for the majority of my life. So I fully understand how that could both limit your confidence, as well as,

Erin: Yeah. We're just about at the top of the hour, and it wouldn't be an episode of weirdos in the workplace. If we didn't close the episode with a little bit of a quote or a story, Eleanor.

Eleonore (2): Yeah. And, maybe I'll send it to you as well. One of my good friends, another executive coach Out in Switzerland focusing on [00:17:00] emotional intelligence.

If you need that sort of service, definitely contact her and her wonderful business partner Thomas Grom at Cofuturum. So her name is Anna Maria Zumsteg, and I remember one day she had sent me this lovely little picture of a lioness about to sprint. And the caption read, she remembered who she was and then the game changed.

So really and truly remember your inner confidence. Remember who you are. Bring that forward and go after your goals.

Erin: Amazing. I'm so glad you were able to join me and I cannot wait until you come to join me again. So there I can't wait. Fantastic. That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Eleanor and you can find her at Eve's coaching.

com E A V E S C O A C H I N G. com. I love that we ended on authenticity. She remembered who she was and then the game changed. Brilliant. [00:18:00] Thanks for joining me on this journey. I look forward to our next adventure next week. Until then stay weird, stay wonderful. And remember don't stay out of trouble.