Resources

To make the most out of this program, we highly recommend engaging with these additional resources to further your understanding of the tenets of Leadership Presence.

They’re organized by section, so revisit this page after you’ve completed each module.

Download the Guidebook (right-click and “Save Link As”):

  1. Dr. Lieberman’s Ted Talk.
    You may be interested in viewing the whole video which is nearly 18 minutes, or you can fast forward to the key message at the 13 minutes and 45 seconds mark. That key message is that having strong social skills – core capabilities in Executive Presence – is the key differentiator for successful leaders, and few people have them.

  2. Developing and Demonstrating Leadership Presence with Christiane St-Amour, CCI Senior Consultant.
    Executive coach and leadership development specialist, Christiane St-Amour, a Senior Consultant at Corporate Class Inc., discusses the concept of leadership presence, why it’s important no matter one’s role, how it changes over the course of one’s career, and the linkage with emotional intelligence.

 

Additional Reading

Books

  1. CCI podcast with the author of The Trusted Advisor (The Trusted Equation), Episode 6.

    You can’t help it; sometimes, you just get a bad feeling about someone that’s hard to shake. So, what’s happening in your brain when you make that critical (and often lasting) first judgment? Peter Mende-Siedlecki shares the social psychology of first impressions.

  2. A four-minute animated video about First Impressions, with Peter Mende-Siedlecki.
  3. Dr. Brian Little’s TEDTalk.

    Brian Little is one of those professors everyone adores. Students sit starry-eyed in his class, hanging on his every word, and they line up at his door during office hours. But on the TED stage, he shares a secret: “I am as extreme an introvert as you could possibly imagine.” After interacting with students, he often retreats to the men’s room and puts his feet up in the stall in order to give himself a break. This is his way of coping with a line of work that asks him to transcend his nature.

  4. Dr. Amy Cuddy’s TEDTalk.

    Amy Cuddy wasn’t supposed to become a successful scientist. In fact, she wasn’t even supposed to finish her undergraduate degree. Early in her college career, Cuddy suffered a severe head injury in a car accident, and doctors said she would struggle to fully regain her mental capacity and finish her undergraduate degree.

    But she proved them wrong. Today, Cuddy is a professor and researcher at Harvard Business School, where she studies how nonverbal behavior and snap judgments affect people from the classroom to the boardroom. And her training as a classical dancer (another skill she regained after her injury) is evident in her fascinating work on “power posing” — how your body position influences others and even your own brain.

  5. Corporate Class Inc.: First Impressions – A Summary.

    An additional handout to further examine your own knowledge about making impactful first impressions.

Additional Reading:

Books

Articles

  1. Keynote: The Power of Nonverbal Communications | Joe Navarro

    Joe Navarro (born 1953) is a Cuban-born American author, public speaker, and former FBI agent and supervisor. Navarro specializes in the area of nonverbal communication and body language, and has authored numerous books, including What Every Body Is Saying, Dangerous Personalities, Louder Than Words, Three Minutes to Doomsday, and The Dictionary of Body Language.

  2. Paul Ekman and micro facial expressions.

    Paul Ekman was a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was ranked 59th out of the 100 most cited psychologists of the twentieth century. The popular Netflix series Lie to Me was also inspired by Paul Ekman’s research. You can find out more about Paul Ekman here.

  3. Micro facial expressions test. (Center for Body Language)

  4. Micro facial expressions test. (Science of People)

 

Additional Reading:

Books

  • The Silent Message by Albert Mehrabian.

    Download the Preface to this incredible book. Albert Mehrabian, born in 1939 to an Armenian family living in Iran, is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Although he originally trained as an engineer, he is best known for his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages.

Articles

Conversational Intelligence

Video: Judith Glazer on the three levels of conversations.

 

Key Conversations

A BBC Interview with Conrad Black – There is a better way to communicate!

On October, 2012, Conrad Black gave an interview to Jeremy Paxton from the BBC. Paxton begins by asking Black, “Do you think prison made you a better person?” A reasonable question since Black had been released from a federal penitentiary in the U.S. in July, 2010 after serving 28 months for mail and wire fraud.

To Black’s credit, his answer was meaningful and to the point. It was when Paxton asked his second question that you could see a notable change in Black. Black was quickly annoyed, felt attacked, and it showed.

Granted, it was a tough interview and Black was entirely within his right to set the record straight but was his approach effective? Would you like to model his behavior? There is a better way.

Watch the interview here.

Article: The Yes, and… technique, called “Anding”.

Video: The SCARF Model by Dr. David Rock: Influencing Others.

 

The Value of a Network

Video: Where do Good Ideas come from? by Steven Johnson.

Books:

  • Bowling Alone by Michael Putnam.
    In a ground-breaking book based on vast data, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures– and how we may reconnect.

    Putnam warns that our stock of social capital – the very fabric of our connections with each other, has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities.

    Putnam draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. We’re even bowling alone. More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues.

    Putnam shows how changes in work, family structure, age, suburban life, television, computers, women’s roles and other factors have contributed to this decline.
    America has civically reinvented itself before — approximately 100 years ago at the turn of the last century

  • Adaptive Space by Dr. Michael Arena
    Adaptive Space reveals how companies are transforming themselves into responsive, agile organizations suited for the age of disruption by enabling individual employees to connect and create across networks—the best way for any company to unleash creative potential from within.

    The book highlights four key network roles—brokers, connectors, energizers and challengers—that all organizations need in order to enable “Adaptive Space.” These roles help to facilitate the movement of ideas and information across the firm, and therefore, enable the organization to positively disrupt itself. 

    Find out your networking role and download your personal comprehensive report for free, here.

Additional Reading:

Corporate Class Inc. Overviews:

Additional Reading:

Corporate Class Inc. Overviews:

Books:

  1. The Secret Handshake by Dr. Kathleen Reardon
    Putting Office Politics Into Plain English
    The Secret Handshake takes the mystery out of office politics. CCI is privileged to collaborate with Dr. Reardon in order to present the concepts and content from this extraordinary book. It explains how political savvy results in membership in the elite inner circle. Our goal is to bring aspiring leaders the political savvy fundamental to understanding how to reach the next level.

Videos:

  1. Creating Psychological Safety at Work in a Knowledge Economy | Amy Edmondson, Harvard
    Harvard University’s Dr. Amy Edmondson says psychological safety is mission critical for today’s knowledge economy. When employees don’t have the freedom to speak up, organization’s lose mindshare and early awareness of risks. Edmondson offers one tip for creating psychological safety: it starts with the leader.

  2. Unconscious Bias
    Kara Helander, (formerly) Managing Director at BlackRock, shares how the firm leveraged NeuroLeadership Institute’s SEEDS Model® to mitigate bias and improve the decision-making capabilities of its 2,900 managers. 
  3. Empathy
    RSA Shorts: Dr Brené Brown, “The Power of Empathy”

Additional Reading:

Self-Assessment: