Olivia: Meritocracy is a myth. You can be the best at your job—the smartest person in the room—and still get passed over for the corner office. The reason? A silent, invisible force that has nothing to do with your performance. Jackson: Oh man, that is the most frustrating feeling in the world. You do the work, you get the results, but someone else gets the promotion because they… what? They just feel more like a leader? It’s maddening. Olivia: It is. And that invisible force is exactly what we're dissecting today, through the lens of Sylvia Ann Hewlett's classic book, Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success. Jackson: Hewlett, she's the economist who founded that big talent think tank, right? The Center for Talent Innovation. So this isn't just self-help fluff; it's backed by some serious research. Olivia: Exactly. She interviewed hundreds of senior executives and ran massive surveys with nearly 4,000 professionals to crack the code on this. And what she found is that executive presence isn't some magical 'it' factor. It’s a skill. And it breaks down into three very specific, learnable pillars. Jackson: Okay, I’m intrigued. Because "executive presence" always sounded to me like corporate code for "we promote people who look and sound like us." Olivia: That is a huge part of the conversation, and we will absolutely get there. But Hewlett’s goal was to demystify it, to make the implicit, explicit. She argues that once you understand the components, you can cultivate them authentically.

Olivia: So, what do you think of when you hear "executive presence"? A sharp suit? A booming voice? Jackson: Honestly? I picture a tall guy in a power suit who never seems to sweat and talks in confident, declarative sentences. Probably named Chad. It feels very much about the surface-level stuff. Olivia: That’s what most people think. But Hewlett's research flips that on its head. She found that executive presence, or EP, is made of three pillars. The first is Communication, how you speak. The second is Appearance, how you look. But the third, and by far the most important, is Gravitas. How you act. Your substance. Jackson: Gravitas. That sounds heavy. What does that actually mean? Olivia: It’s about signaling that you have depth, confidence, and credibility. And here’s the kicker from her research: senior executives say Gravitas accounts for 67% of what makes up executive presence. Communication is 28%. And Appearance? Just 5%. Jackson: Whoa, only 5% for appearance? That completely contradicts the "sharp suit" image. So it’s not about looking the part, it’s about being the part. Olivia: Precisely. But that 5% can be a brutal first filter. Hewlett tells this incredible story about the Concert Artists Guild's international competition in New York. You have these prodigies, the best young musicians in the world, competing for career-launching prizes. Jackson: Okay, so pure talent on display. Olivia: You'd think. She describes a Korean violinist who is technically flawless, a true virtuoso. But he walks on stage looking awkward, ill at ease, never makes eye contact with the jury. He looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. Then, an Irish mezzo-soprano comes out. She’s not just technically skilled; she radiates confidence and joy. She smiles, she connects with the jury, she owns the stage. Jackson: And let me guess, the mezzo-soprano won, and the violinist didn't. Olivia: You got it. The president of the Guild told Hewlett that judgments are made before the first note even sounds. The violinist’s lack of presence, his appearance of discomfort, undermined his incredible skill. It’s a perfect example of how that 5% can act as a gatekeeper. If you fail the appearance test, people might not even stick around to hear what you have to say or see what you can do. Jackson: Hold on, that feels a bit unfair. And it’s why the book gets some mixed reviews, right? People feel like the focus on appearance, even a little, is outdated and reinforces bias. Olivia: It's a valid criticism, and the book tackles it. Hewlett’s argument is that appearance isn't about being beautiful or fashionable. It's about polish and not creating distractions. She tells a hilarious and painful story about herself. When she was a working-class kid from Wales interviewing for Oxford, her mother, wanting her to look smart, bought her a tweed suit with a full fox collar. Jackson: Wait, a full fox? Like, head and tail? Olivia: Head, tail, the works. She walked into this stuffy Oxford interview, and the committee was just... aghast. She bombed it. She later got into Cambridge, but only after, in her words, "losing the fox." The point wasn't that the fox-less suit was better, but that it wasn't a distraction. It allowed her merit to be the focus. Jackson: Okay, that’s a great way to put it. It’s not about looking good, it’s about not looking wrong. It’s about removing any static so your signal—your substance—can come through clearly. Olivia: Exactly. Appearance is the filter. Communication is the amplifier. But Gravitas is the signal itself.

Jackson: Okay, so if Appearance is the gatekeeper, it sounds like Gravitas is the king of the castle. What does that even look like in a high-pressure situation? It still feels a bit abstract. Olivia: Let's make it concrete. Hewlett breaks gravitas down into six behaviors, but two of them are incredibly powerful: "grace under fire" and "speaking truth to power." And they are almost perfect opposites. Jackson: Grace under fire I get. That’s the stoic leader, the calm in the storm. Olivia: Think Bob Dudley, who took over as CEO of BP right in the middle of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill crisis in 2010. His predecessor, Tony Hayward, had famously whined on camera, "I'd like my life back," which, as you can imagine, did not go over well with the families who had lost loved ones or their livelihoods. Jackson: Understatement of the century. Olivia: Right. Then Dudley steps in. He goes on national television, getting absolutely grilled by anchors. They’re accusing BP of cutting corners, of recklessness. And Dudley is just... calm. He’s composed, he’s direct, he doesn’t get defensive. He expresses empathy. He projects this aura of quiet competence. His entire demeanor signaled, "The adults are in the room now. We will handle this." His grace under fire single-handedly began to stabilize BP's reputation. Jackson: That’s a powerful image. He’s absorbing all this chaos and projecting pure stability. That’s definitely gravitas. But what about the other one? "Speaking truth to power" sounds like the opposite. It sounds like creating chaos, not calming it. Olivia: It can be. And it requires a different kind of courage. Hewlett tells the story of Katherine Phillips, a junior faculty member at Northwestern's prestigious Kellogg School of Management. A star professor had just left, and the senior faculty were in a meeting discussing his replacement. Jackson: A very political, walk-on-eggshells kind of meeting, I imagine. Olivia: Totally. And Phillips, who is a young, Black woman in a predominantly white, male environment, realizes that the senior faculty are just paying lip service to finding a top-tier replacement. They'd already carved up the departed professor's resources—his budget, his research assistants—for themselves. So in the middle of this polite, go-nowhere discussion, she stands up and says it. Jackson: Oh no. What did she say? Olivia: She said, essentially, "We don't need to find a replacement for him. You've already replaced him. You've taken all his resources. There's nothing left to attract a candidate of his caliber." Jackson: Wow. You could hear a pin drop, I bet. That’s a career-ending move for a junior person. Olivia: It could have been. But instead, after a stunned silence, the senior faculty started thanking her. She had spoken the uncomfortable truth that everyone was avoiding. She established her personal brand right there as someone with integrity, someone who wouldn't just go along to get along. She now holds an endowed chair at Columbia Business School. Jackson: That’s incredible. So one is about staying calm when the world is on fire, and the other is about lighting a fire yourself. They feel like opposites. Olivia: And that’s the key insight. Gravitas isn't a single personality type. It's not just being the quiet, stoic leader or the loud, disruptive one. It’s about demonstrating substance and integrity in the way the situation demands. It's about having the judgment to know when to absorb pressure and when to apply it.

Olivia: And that idea of finding the right way to show gravitas becomes incredibly complicated when you're not the 'default' leader—when you're not a straight, white man. Jackson: Right. This is where the rubber really meets the road. Because all these rules—how to speak, how to act, how to look—they weren't written with everyone in mind. Olivia: Exactly. Hewlett calls it the "tightrope walk" between authenticity and conformity. And for women and people of color, that tightrope is thinner and higher off the ground. She talks about the "Goldilocks Syndrome" for women in leadership. Jackson: Let me guess. If you're assertive, you're "too hot" or abrasive. If you're collaborative, you're "too cold" or weak. But you're never "just right." Olivia: You nailed it. It’s a likability versus competence trade-off. The very traits that are admired in male leaders—ambition, decisiveness, assertiveness—are often penalized in women. And the book has this story that is just... infuriating. It’s about a young analyst named Carol at a Swiss investment bank. Jackson: I’m bracing myself. Olivia: Carol is 24, ambitious, and great at her job. She wants to build client relationships, so she starts playing tennis on weekends with a senior male client. It’s purely professional. One day, he asks for her input on some documents for a huge IPO. Her insights are so good that her bank wins the deal—the biggest of the year. Jackson: Amazing! She should be getting a massive promotion and bonus. Olivia: Instead, her boss pulls her aside and accuses her of sleeping with the client. He cannot fathom that she could win a deal of that magnitude based on her intellect. He assumes she used sex. It gets worse. The client, impressed with her work, requests that she join the IPO roadshow across Europe. Her boss refuses, but the client arranges it anyway. Carol goes, but she’s so paranoid that she avoids all after-hours socializing, eating dinner alone in her hotel room. Jackson: That is just soul-crushing. She did everything right, exceeded every expectation, and was punished for it. Olivia: She ended up quitting. She realized that no amount of merit could overcome her boss's biased perception. And that’s the tightrope. Her success was seen through a lens of gender bias that turned her competence into a liability. Jackson: And that speaks to why this book, even though it's a decade old, still gets such mixed reception. Some readers find it empowering, but others feel it's asking people, especially women and minorities, to contort themselves to fit into a broken, biased system. It feels like the advice is "here's how to play the game," not "here's how to change the game." Olivia: That’s the central tension of the book, and Hewlett doesn't shy away from it. Her final chapters are all about this. The advice isn't to sell your soul and become a corporate drone. It’s about being strategic. It’s about knowing your non-negotiables—the parts of your identity you will not compromise. It's about finding the environments where your authentic self can thrive. Jackson: So it’s less about changing who you are, and more about finding the right stage for your performance? Olivia: A perfect way to put it. And it's about leveraging what makes you different. The book tells another story about Trevor Phillips, a Black British television executive who felt he had to suppress his Afro-Caribbean identity to succeed. He spoke "his second language," as he put it. But he reached a point where he decided to risk it all and produce a documentary about the first West Indian immigrants to Britain. Everyone told him it was a career-killer. Jackson: And was it? Olivia: It was a massive success. It "returned him to himself," he said. By embracing his authentic story, he found a new level of gravitas and impact he never could have achieved by conforming.

Jackson: So after all this—the pillars, the tightropes, the fox collars—what's the one thing we should take away? Is the message really just about learning to play a game? Olivia: I think the most profound insight is that it's not about playing a game; it's about closing the gap between your inner merit and your outer signal. Executive Presence is the bridge between the value you know you have and the value others perceive in you. Jackson: A bridge. I like that. It’s not a mask, it’s a structure you build. Olivia: Exactly. And the book's most powerful message is that you get to be the architect of that bridge. You don't have to be a Steve Jobs clone, a charismatic visionary in a black turtleneck. You can be the quiet, decisive CEO who handles layoffs with such empathy and integrity that he secures the loyalty of those who remain. You can be the junior professor who speaks an uncomfortable truth and changes the entire conversation. Jackson: So the first step is just to be aware of the signals you're sending. To stop and think about the impression you're leaving. Olivia: That’s everything. And maybe the most practical takeaway is to actively seek feedback on it. Hewlett points out that this is the feedback no one wants to give, because it's so personal. But you have to ask for it. Jackson: That’s a great, simple action. Olivia: Maybe just ask one trusted colleague this week: "When I'm in a meeting, what's one impression I leave?" Not "was I good," but "what was the signal?" The answer might be surprising. Jackson: I love that. It’s a small step toward building that bridge. And I’m curious to hear from our listeners. What are your executive presence stories? Have you ever had a "fox collar" moment? Or seen someone with incredible gravitas? Let us know. Olivia: It’s a journey for everyone, and the goal isn't perfection. It’s about allowing your full potential to be seen and felt. It’s about letting your merit shine through. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.