Owning Your Presence

In recent weeks, a few friends have entrusted my ears to the complexity of career transitions and opportunities presented. What to do? Would I listen? Could I help? And in listening, similarities emerged. And in those similarities -- a message emerged -- “Own Your Presence”. I didn’t know it was that concise of a message then. Not to say it to them -- then -- in those words. But that’s really what I meant.

Scenario Number One: Transitioning to a new job. Interviewing. Preparing. Meeting the boss above the boss. What to do? Own your presence. Own the space that you’ve been given on this earth to be. To live. To matter. To be considered for the position you want. Walk in as if you already have the job. Walk in as if you are walking in from your office/cubicle/job assignment and are there for a meeting to report on the project you were asked to handle. Start the meeting not with a tentative aww shucks ”hi” why am I here downward dog look, but a strong hello, arm outstretched. Owning your presence -- making others aware of your presence as you’re entering into a room. Owning your presence as you’re connecting with another person’s space and with another person.

Scenario Number Two: Transitioning to a CEO position after being with the Company for many a year. But the CEO position is being offered on an interim basis. What if it’s just to be a seat warmer? What to do? Own your presence. Seat warmer or not. And these days many CEO positions are offered on an interim basis. In any event, the Company sees that you are CEO level material and you get to strut your stuff. Other candidates don’t. If you don’t take the interim CEO position and stay in the position you currently have, you would be waiting for what? But what if you don’t succeed? You can’t go back? No . . . but what if you do succeed?

Own your presence. You are and others see that you are CEO material. If not at that Company then somewhere else. Put on your CEO hat and your CEO clothes and go and do the CEO job. And if somewhere in your body, in your mind, you have doubts about whether you can or cannot be a CEO, save those doubts for your ride home. I imagine people shedding their professional skins and letting their doubts re-emerge along the metro expressways from their C level suites on their way home but then quelling those doubts again as they pick up their skins and don them on their way back in the following day. Others see you as a CEO. You too must see yourself as one. If you fail to do so, others will also. Own your CEO presence as others already have. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be wasting their time talking to you.

Patricia Nemeth received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). She earned her Juris Doctorate and Masters of Labor Law degree from Wayne State University School of Law. She is the founding partner of Nemeth Law, P.C. which is celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 2017. Patricia decided to start a personal blog because she wanted to write about topics other than the law.