Kathryn Janicek owns Janicek Performance Group, and JPG has quickly become a wildly successful coaching company, and one you should look at.
Kathryn writes smartly about her clients and about executive presence. Recently, Kathryn used a word you don’t hear very often in management books.
That got me thinking about the great bosses I’ve had.
The memorable ones almost always had it.
Not the costume-jewelry version. Not chest out, chin up, everybody-look-at-me swagger.
The real thing.
During a time when it was still okay to have a larger-than-life confidence without HR trailing behind you.
Nothing wrong with HR, so save the emails. We all understand each other and where the lines are, okay? okay.
You knew when that type of boss walked into the room. People sat up a little straighter. The conversation changed. And the room, always, got quieter.
They didn’t have to announce who they were or that they were in charge.
They just were. That would be screen left.
Swagger, properly used, is confidence made visible.
It says: I have this. Stay with me.
And there are moments when a leader needs exactly that.
A company is in trouble. A deal is going sideways. The newsroom is in chaos. Everybody is looking at everybody else, and eventually everybody looks at the person in charge.
That is no time to search under the conference-room table for your executive presence.
But swagger has an evil twin.
We all know that boss, too. Say hello to our little friend on the right. We have met him somewhere along the way.
Loud. Performative. Endlessly impressed with himself. He mistakes volume for authority, domination for leadership and everybody else’s silence for admiration.
I think the polite word for them is “blowhard.”
They’re not admiring you.
They’re waiting for you to leave.
That’s where the other circle in One Additional Thing logo comes in.
Wisdom.
Swagger without wisdom becomes ego, theater or intimidation.
Wisdom understands that leadership has a volume knob.
Sometimes you turn it up.
Sometimes you turn it down.
And sometimes the smartest thing the most powerful person in the room can do is shut up.
One of the clearest examples of genuine swagger I can remember happened three days after 9/11. The 25th anniversary is still lingering in many—I hope all—of our hearts.
President George W. Bush stood at Ground Zero, speaking through a bullhorn. Someone in the crowd yelled that he couldn’t hear him.
Bush answered:
“I can hear you.”
Then came the rest: the world could hear them, too, and those responsible for bringing down the buildings would soon hear from all of us.
He didn’t suddenly manufacture swagger on top of the pile.
It was an extension of the man, the personality and the moment. Some people were surprised to see it. That’s not the point. It was the right time, right place, right amount.
And that may be the trick.
The best swagger isn’t borrowed. You can’t pick it up at an executive seminar. You can’t rehearse the hand gesture and manufacture the pause and expect people not to notice.
People always notice.
The best leaders I’ve known had swagger because it was genuinely part of them.
But the really good ones had something else.
They knew when to use it.
And, as I think about it, and see if this is true in your work life, they almost always walked into a room, up to a podium, out to hail a cab, with determination and purpose.
Always on the move. In constant motion.
Once again, we’re talking about that wonderful center in our OAT logo.
The overlap, where Management and Wisdom are shared.
Your title can put you at the head of the table.
Swagger may make people pay attention to you.
Wisdom tells you what to do once they do.
And speaking of swagger…
Gotta say, I’m walking briskly this week. We’ve got swagger in our step.
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