What if the habit that got you promoted is now holding you back? I see it often with high performers, especially perfectionists. They’re usually the hardest workers in the room, and when they ask me how to improve executive presence, they’re expecting a long list of new things to do.
But presence isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing less, and perfectionists have a hard time accepting that.
I once worked with a guy named Mark (not his real name) who had an incredible eye for detail and was obsessed with performance. He wanted everyone to see him as a high achiever who made all the right moves, and he had a real gift for setting high standards and then meeting them, over and over again.
Naturally, he kept getting more and more responsibility until he eventually hit a roadblock. He was up for a senior leadership role that would have him running a much larger function, but nobody wanted to promote him. The executives and HR determined that he lacked the executive presence needed to do the job well, but they wanted to see if he could grow into it with the help of a coach.
When the brief came in, the diagnosis was clear. Mark needed to improve his executive presence because he pushed people too hard; he didn’t understand how to work at the senior level, he didn’t know how to prioritize, and he made mountains out of molehills. People saw him as pushy, demanding, and judgmental, and they worried he wouldn’t work well with others in a bigger role.
The sad part was that his work was excellent. His efforts had led to some real breakthroughs for the organization, but the merits of the work weren’t enough.
How he was showing up was holding him back.
When he heard the feedback and was offered a coach, he jumped at it. But he approached coaching exactly the way he approached everything else. He was going to WIN at being the perfect client and prove to everyone that he deserved the role.
He couldn’t see that the pattern he was stuck in was the very thing holding him back.
How to improve executive presence when you’re a perfectionist
It is hard for perfectionists to change something. After all, they are perfectionists, so they assume everything they are doing is perfect!
Perfectionists tend to see leadership the same way they see their work, as a list of things to get right. They believe they need to do it well, do it on time, and move on to the next thing, and they aren’t wrong. The problem is it’s a very linear, operational way of looking at the world, and it is only a piece of the puzzle.
It works beautifully early in a career, when your value comes mostly from what you deliver. But once you step into roles that require more maturity, things change.
Your job shifts to choosing what matters and helping others understand what matters and why it matters. Priorities become the name of the game when possibilities are endless. But when everything is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, nobody around you can tell what actually is. Your standards quietly become everyone else’s workload, and your intensity starts to read as a liability.
That’s exactly what HR was describing when they said Mark couldn’t prioritize and made mountains out of molehills. Mark gave off a vibe others couldn’t tolerate.
But his vibe came from an unhelpful assumption. He believed what many perfectionists believe: “It’s all or nothing.”
Mark never realized what Voltaire stated so simply:
“The best is the enemy of the good.” — Voltaire
In other words, perfection is the enemy of progress.
This simple belief is essential to unwinding the years of programming that went into becoming a perfectionist. Without it, you’ll keep trying to do everything to the very high and exacting standards that suck the life force out of you and others. Your presence will dwindle, until one day someone will tell you that you are lacking executive presence.
The subtle shift:
Decide what deserves perfection, and let the rest be good enough.
Once Mark’s assumptions about perfection started to change, he lightened up. He began picking his battles and putting his energy into a few key parts of his role. On certain tasks, he intentionally let go of perfection and asked himself what good enough would look like.
He also started doing something he’d never done before. Instead of pushing hard on everything, he’d patiently gauge how his peers and executives saw an item’s importance before deciding how hard to push.
People noticed. They saw him listening more and asking different questions. One person told me he was much less intense than he used to be, and much more enjoyable to be around. They appreciated that he gave them space after a commitment was made and was more flexible when a commitment needed to be renegotiated.
Mark didn’t need to become a different person for any of this. It was a series of small corrections, the kind I wrote about in Commit to Continuous Calibration, and they added up.
If you see a little of Mark in yourself, try this:
- Pick the two or three things that truly deserve your best work this month.
- On everything else, decide what good enough looks like before you start.
- Before you push on something, ask how important it is to the people around you.
Mark did step into the senior role, and he did it with great success. He went on to help the organization launch a product that changed the business.
If you’re wondering how to improve executive presence, start by asking what you’re trying to make perfect, and whether it really needs to be.
