When someone you have worked with, known as a friend, colleague and thought leader writes a book – you buy the book and read it. And then you tell the world about it. That’s what I’m doing with Kristi Hedges and her new book, The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential To Influence And Engage Others. My advice to you is to go out and buy it and read it! That’s also why we’re cohosting a webinar tomorrow, to help you beef up your own presence and get it working for you in your career.
Any successful businessperson needs to have a noticeable presence, but women in particular benefit from developing this skill. There’s lots of research that points to the fact that when women stick their nose to the grindstone, get stuff done but don’t ensure others know about their success, their careers suffer. Many of us worry about bragging. What I love about Kristi’s new book is that she provides lots of advice on how to develop an executive presence that helps you gain credibility and influence people in a very authentic way.
How To Establish Presence Without Bragging
Kristi and I go back a long way, to when I hired her PR firm in 2001 to help relaunch a brand into the DC tech scene. I’ve always loved her down-to-earth, poised and precise advice when it comes to how to present – anything. Products, people, information – presenting everything can be an art. And presenting it in a way that influences people, is an even more subtle art.
Kristi takes a very InPowering approach to the concept of personal presentation and developing your presence, and she focuses on the fact that you can’t fake it. Not only that, but when you don’t fake it, you have a more powerful presence!
She gives very concrete advice about how to create intentions that help you authentically communicate on verbal and nonverbal levels. She helps you figure out how to find out how you are perceived so you can create an action plan to improve. Her philosophy? “Use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses.”
The book is full of stories from her own career and work with executive clients. It’s fun to read and will give you a great perspective on how you can “be you” and also be more influential and powerful.
Watch the video on the book below.
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