26 Aug Executive Presence Starts with Understanding People
Zoa Norman, Director of Client Success at ADP and a longtime Menttium mentor, shares her thoughts about leadership, executive presence, communication, managing up, and the habits that have shaped her career. Zoa has held senior leadership roles across organizations of dramatically different sizes and has built a career around creating high-performing teams, accelerating growth, and improving retention.
Executive presence can sometimes feel difficult to define. It is often associated with confidence, communication, composure, and the ability to influence others, but those qualities are rarely developed through a single technique.
They grow through practice, feedback, self-awareness, and a deeper understanding of the people around us.
Her perspective throughout the conversation reinforces an important leadership principle: the more effectively leaders understand people, the more effectively they can lead.
Leadership Begins with Understanding What Motivates People
Much of Zoa’s career has involved startups and turnaround situations, environments where strong leadership and team performance are especially critical.
Her approach begins with understanding the individual.
When joining a team, Zoa spends time learning what each person is good at, what motivates them, what they enjoy about their role, what they find frustrating, and what they hope to accomplish.
That understanding allows her to see opportunities that performance data alone might miss.
In one example, Zoa inherited a salesperson who had consistently struggled to meet expectations. Through conversation, she learned what personally motivated him and what he wanted to achieve. Rather than defining him by his past results, she worked with him to rethink how he approached his role.
Two years later, he earned recognition in one of the company’s most elite performance groups.
Another team member was motivated differently. His greatest strength was bringing people together. While his individual performance remained steady rather than exceptional, his ability to unite the team played an important role in helping the group reach its financial targets.
Both employees contributed to success, just in different ways.
For leaders, that distinction matters.
High-performing teams are rarely composed of people who think, work, or contribute in exactly the same way. Strong leaders identify the value each person can bring and create conditions that allow those strengths to contribute to the larger goal.
Executive Presence Can Be Practiced
Executive presence is frequently treated as an innate quality. Zoa views it as something that can be developed.
One of the most practical tools she uses when coaching leaders is role play.
She may recreate how someone appears in a meeting, including their posture, tone, or communication style, and allow that person to observe how they are showing up from another perspective.
The exercise can surface behaviors people simply do not recognize in themselves.
Zoa shared the example of a highly accomplished senior vice president whose executive presence was limiting how others perceived her. Through role play and coaching, the leader became more aware of her physical presence and practiced making intentional adjustments, including in high-pressure situations.
The lesson is straightforward: awareness creates choice.
Once leaders understand how they are being perceived, they can determine whether their presence aligns with the message and credibility they want to convey.
A trusted mentor can be especially valuable here because mentors can offer a perspective leaders may not receive in their everyday environment.
Master the Art of the Pause
One of Zoa’s most practical recommendations for improving executive communication is also one of the simplest: pause.
Speaking more slowly and intentionally gives a message more weight. It allows listeners time to process information, and it gives the speaker additional time to think.
That becomes especially valuable in high-pressure conversations.
Rather than feeling compelled to answer immediately, a leader can repeat or clarify the question, pause, collect their thoughts, and then respond.
Zoa describes this as part of projecting calm and helping move difficult conversations toward resolution.
The pause also creates space for others.
Zoa learned this firsthand when moving between industries. She had been accustomed to fast-paced communication among sales and marketing professionals, but found that senior HR and financial leaders often responded differently.
By intentionally slowing down and allowing more space in the conversation, she noticed that the same executives reacted differently to essentially the same message.
They had time to process.
They had time to respond.
And sometimes that brief pause opened the door to insight that otherwise might have been missed.
Improve Communication Without Losing Authenticity
Developing executive presence does not require adopting someone else’s personality.
Zoa emphasizes that leaders should continue to sound like themselves.
The goal is greater effectiveness, not performance.
Leaders can improve their communication through practice, speaking groups, coaching, classes, and direct feedback while retaining the language, personality, and experiences that make their leadership authentic.
One particularly useful practice is asking for specific feedback after a meeting.
Instead of asking, “How did I do?” consider questions such as:
Did I make my point clearly?
How did I come across?
Was there a moment when I lost the room?
Why do you think my recommendation did not get a response?
Did you notice anything different about how I communicated this time?
Specific questions tend to generate more useful feedback.
Leaders can take the process a step further by telling a trusted colleague in advance that they are practicing a particular skill and asking that person to observe them.
That creates a continuous feedback loop: practice, observe, adjust, repeat.
Managing Up: Start with What You Want
Communicating effectively with senior leaders often requires a different level of discipline.
Zoa’s first recommendation is to lead with the ask.
Instead of spending several minutes building toward a request, begin by clearly stating what you need.
“I’d like your opinion on…”
“Would you be willing to…”
“Will you approve…”
Then support the request with the most important information.
Zoa often prepares for executive conversations by repeatedly editing her message until she can reduce the supporting points to three to five essential ideas.
Senior leaders typically operate with limited time and competing priorities. Clear, concise communication helps them understand what is being asked and engage with the issue more quickly.
Managing up also requires observation.
Pay attention to body language, tone, hesitation, and other cues. If someone appears uncomfortable with a topic, that reaction may contain important information.
Rather than pushing forward, pause and ask.
Is there someone else I should speak with about this?
Would another time be better?
Is there context I should consider?
Those questions allow the leader to gather information without forcing someone to disclose something they may not be able to share.
Ask Directly for Career Feedback
The same principle applies to career development.
Leaders sometimes assume they are positioned for the next opportunity without confirming whether senior decision-makers see them the same way.
Zoa encourages a more direct conversation.
If a role opened today, would I have your support?
If not, what skills or experiences would I need to develop?
Where do you see gaps in my readiness?
These questions can feel uncomfortable, but they can also provide information that significantly changes how someone approaches their development.
A mentoring relationship can help leaders prepare for those conversations by clarifying what they want to ask, anticipating different responses, and processing the feedback afterward.
“Not Everyone Is Like You”
When Zoa was first promoted into leadership, a former boss gave her advice that stayed with her throughout her career:
“Not everyone is like you.”
As a high-performing individual contributor, Zoa had been intensely competitive and motivated by being among the very best.
Leadership required recognizing that other people were motivated differently.
Some people wanted to be number one. Others wanted stability, collaboration, mastery, connection, or the opportunity to contribute in a particular way.
Teams need those differences.
The responsibility of the leader is to understand what each person brings and connect that contribution to the organization’s broader goals.
That also means explaining why the work matters.
People are more likely to engage when they understand how their actions connect to the larger strategy. Providing context can create buy-in, strengthen a sense of purpose, and help people see themselves as meaningful contributors to the organization.
Successful Leaders Never Stop Developing
Another theme running throughout Zoa’s conversation is continuous learning.
She describes intentionally creating opportunities to learn through books, development programs, practice, feedback, and experiences outside her normal routine.
She also emphasizes the importance of finding ways to recharge that fit the individual, whether through exercise, rest, reading, art, music, or simply creating a few minutes of space during a demanding day.
Leadership development is ongoing.
Executive presence evolves.
Communication improves through repetition.
Confidence grows through experience.
And mistakes are part of the process.
Zoa begins the conversation by acknowledging that none of us reaches a point where every leadership skill is fully mastered. Growth requires being willing to fail, learn, adjust, and continue practicing.
The Power of Perspective
Perhaps the thread connecting all of Zoa’s advice is perspective.
Understand what motivates the person you lead.
Observe how others experience your communication.
Ask for feedback rather than guessing.
Notice how senior leaders respond.
Recognize that other people may value different things than you do.
And remember that you rarely know everything another person is carrying into a conversation.
These practices make leaders more self-aware, more adaptable, and better equipped to bring out the best in others.
They are also exactly the kinds of leadership skills that mentoring can accelerate.
A mentor provides a place to practice difficult conversations, examine assumptions, receive candid feedback, and see a situation through someone else’s experience.
Over time, those conversations can help leaders expand their executive presence while becoming more intentional about how they communicate, influence, develop others, and lead.