Part 2 of 3 – The Leadership Presence Series

“Shaping Culture, Building Trust, and Influencing Strategic Outcomes”

Senior Executives and PMO Leaders must strategically leverage leadership presence to achieve significant organizational impact. This strategic presence is important not just for managing people, but for:

• Shaping organizational culture
• Influencing key strategic outcomes
• Building lasting trust and alignment

In times of uncertainty, effective leadership presence is defined by steadiness and reliability, rather than simply being the loudest voice.

The Executive Amplifier

If leadership presence is the inner force that inspires trust and alignment, then senior executives and PMO leaders are its amplifiers. They set the tone for how leadership is experienced across an organization—not just through their decisions, but also through how they consistently show up.

At senior levels, presence becomes not only personal but systemic. It shapes how strategy is interpreted, how change is absorbed, and how culture is sustained. When executives and PMO leaders embody presence, they anchor stability in times of uncertainty and model the leadership behavior they expect from others.

Insights on Senior Presence

Gunnlaugson (2025) refers to this as presencing—a way of being that keeps leaders connected to both purpose and people simultaneously. Hope (2025) describes it as the art of inspiring through authenticity, while Kerns (2019) notes that leaders with presence “practice awareness in every interaction, recognizing that their tone, timing, and attention all carry impact.” In essence, presence at the top is less about performance and more about representing what the organization stands for.

A Strategic Asset: Three Key Outcomes

For senior executives, leadership presence becomes a strategic asset in three critical ways:

1. It builds credibility across organizational layers. In times of transformation or crisis, employees instinctively scan for consistency between words and actions. Leaders who display calm conviction, listen before reacting, and stay aligned with shared values radiate trust—even when the path ahead is unclear. Their presence becomes a signal of reliability.
2. It creates cultural coherence. Executive leaders and PMO heads are culture carriers. Their energy and behavior ripple across departments, projects, and teams. When they demonstrate attentive listening, grounded confidence, and a clear sense of purpose, they foster psychological safety. This atmosphere cascades down through program and project leads, shaping how decisions are made and how people treat one another. Presence, in this sense, becomes a silent teacher.
3. It amplifies influence without authority. For PMO leaders, this is particularly crucial. The PMO often operates through guidance, governance, and facilitation rather than direct control. A leader’s presence—calm, intentional, and credible—can transform compliance into commitment. When PMO heads embody integrity and confidence, their recommendations are seen as trusted guidance, not bureaucracy.

“Process of reversing unhealthy cultures and making them more adaptive, is effective leadership” – Source: Kotter & Heskett (1992)

                                Visual Representation of Leadership Presence (Source – Authors)

The Five-Fold Model and Systemic Impact

Van Baardewijk’s (2023, 2025) “five-fold presence” model helps us understand why this works. At the executive level, each of these forms is magnified:

• Verbal presence: The ability to communicate vision clearly and consistently.
• Non-verbal presence: Expressing alignment between the message and the behavior.
• Emotional presence: Fostering connection and empathy.
• Representative presence: Embodying the organization’s mission.
• Ethical presence: Demonstrating fairness, humility, and accountability.

When these elements converge, leadership presence turns from a personal quality into a collective force. It aligns intention and perception, creating organizational coherence around purpose.

For PMO leaders, presence is the bridge between strategic direction and project execution. A PMO head who operates with presence doesn’t just enforce standards—they model alignment. They translate corporate strategy into action with clarity and conviction, empowering project managers rather than policing them. These foster trust with both executives and delivery teams, allowing them to influence outcomes far beyond their formal remit.

The Quiet Authority of Presence

Consider a senior executive addressing a significant shift, such as a reorganization or strategic pivot. Teams will remember less of the detailed slides and more of the tone: Was there steadiness? Empathy? Conviction without arrogance? That emotional memory is leadership presence in action; it shapes whether people engage with the change.

Leadership presence also strengthens decision-making. When leaders are grounded, they respond rather than react. They hold space for complexity. As Cuddy et al. (2018) suggest, true presence “projects confidence without dominance and humility without weakness.” In complex, multi-stakeholder environments, that equilibrium is vital for cohesion.

Ultimately, leadership presence allows executives and PMO leaders to operate from influence rather than control. It redefines power as connection—not dominance—and creates an atmosphere in which others naturally align around shared intent. This is what gives senior leaders their quiet authority.

Key Statistics

1. 70% of the variance in employee engagement is determined solely by the manager
2. Executive presence accounts for 26% of what it takes to get promoted
3. Companies with a strong corporate culture see a 4x increase in revenue growth or higher
4. 87% of engaged employees rate their workplace culture as good or excellent, compared to just 34% of unengaged employees

The good news is that presence can be developed. It begins with awareness of oneself and one’s impact. It grows through consistency, showing up the same way whether things go right or wrong. And it flourishes through humility, the willingness to listen, learn, and model authenticity.

When senior executives and PMO leaders embody leadership presence, they don’t just lead organizations, they shape belief systems. Steadiness builds confidence in strategy. Authenticity fosters engagement. Awareness cultivates trust. Together, these qualities create the conditions for meaningful and sustainable performance!

Bibliography

Cuddy, A. J. C., Tannen, D., Su, A. J., & Beeson, J. (2018). Leadership presence. Harvard Business Review Press.

Ford, J., Harding, N. H., Gilmore, S., & Richardson, S. (2017). Becoming the leader: Leadership as material presence. Organization Studies, 38(11), 1553–1571. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840616677633

Gallup. (2015, April 21). Managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement. https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx

Garfinkle, J. (n.d.). 7 surprising executive presence statistics: New research. Garfinkle Executive Coaching. https://garfinkleexecutivecoaching.com/executive-presence-articles/executive-presence-statistics

Garfinkle, J. A. (2022). Executive presence: Step into your power, convey confidence, and lead with conviction. JAG Press.

Gunnlaugson, O. (2025). Emerging paths of presencing leadership: A nature-inspired framework for cultivating presencing as a way of being. The Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 18(2). https://doi.org/10.22543/1948-0733.1589

Hope, A. (2025). The art of leadership presence: Cultivating charisma and confidence to inspire teams. ISBN 9798309066049.

Kerns, C. D. (2019). Leadership presence at work: A practice-oriented framework. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 13(3), 91–109. https://doi.org/10.33423/jmdc.v13i3.2241

Kotter, J. P., & Heskett, J. L. (1992). Corporate culture and performance. Free Press.

Patton, J. (2020). Leadership presence: How to show up, stand out & shake up the world. ISBN 9781732876688.

Society for Human Resource Management. (2025, January 24). Leadership’s impact on building thriving workplace cultures. https://www.shrm.org/enterprise-solutions/insights/leaderships-impact-on-building-thriving-workplace-cultures

Van Baardewijk, J. (2023). The 5-fold presence of leadership: Verbal presence & non-verbal presence. ISBN 9798853589872.

Van Baardewijk, J. (2025). Leadership presence and the power of representing an ideal image. ISBN 9798281492027.