A boss senses that something is missing in a persons tool kit but cant put a finger on exactly what it is or how the person can improve. The boss says something like Youre lacking important intangibles or You need more gravitas but fails to provide specific advice or tools for improving.

It is equally frustrating to watch people with mediocre technical skills move up the ladder quickly because they have an exceptional leadership style. Bosses defend such promotions by emphasizing the employees soft skills, calling them poised, confident, and dynamic.

The truth is that these things matter: A great leadership style can make people appear more competent than they truly are, and a poor style can drag down a superior skill set. So how can aspiring executives improve their leadership style?

First, its important to understand that style is distinct from personality. The latter is immutable; its who you are

on the inside. Style is best described by what you do, how often, and when. More than 30 years ago, the sociolinguist Howard Giles and colleagues first identified a set of behaviors, or social markers, that we all use to express ourselves and by which we evaluate others. These markers are a language we learn in childhood, as we begin to see that people behave dif- ferently depending on whether they hold status or not. Older siblings may bark at you for the remote control, for example, but behave obsequiously to parents when they want to borrow the car. Social markers can be expressed through language, nonverbal communication (such as body language), or context setting (sitting at the head of the table, for instance). Your choice of markers determines how others view you.

Through our own academic research and a combined 30 years of proprietary research, including engagements with more than 12,000 leaders in our executive coaching practice, we have identified the markers most commonly used in the workplace to express status. (See the exhibit A Guide to Leadership Markers.) Together, they make up leadership style.

The signals we send to others about our statusor lack thereoffall into two categories: power and attractiveness. Neither set of markers is inherently good or bad. Powerful markers are associated with expressions of confidence, competence, charisma, and influence but also arrogance, abrasiveness, and intimidation. Examples include interrupt- ing others and grabbing a pen off someones desk without permission. Attractiveness markers are related to expressions of agreeableness, approachability, likability but also diffi- dence, lack of confidence, and submissiveness. Examples include holding the door for someone and favoring questions over statements. People with powerful styles often view more-attractive colleagues as weak. People with attractive styles tend to view powerful colleagues as rude.

The more consistently we express ourselves using the same markers, the more distinctive our style becomes.

When a colleague gives the impression of being arrogant, for example, its most likely because he uses a small set of pow- erful behaviors consistently. Or when a manager offers an appraisal such as Kristin simply does not have a seat at the table with her peers, that usually means she uses too many attractiveness markersperhaps she never states her views publicly, or she speaks so softly that people ask her to repeat what she said. Change the frequency or mix of these markers, and others impressions also change.

Leadership Presence

We all have a particular set of markers that we default to in neutral situations or when the social context is unclear. This can be called our natural style. We behave more

powerfully relative to our natural style when we feel we have the status (for example, we are the more senior, educated, experienced, technical, or connected person

in a workplace interaction). We behave more attractively relative to our natural style when we are the more junior or less-experienced person.

Most peoples natural style falls into one of five categories along a spectrum: powerful, lean powerful, blended, lean attractive, and attractive. Few people favor the extremes, instead leaning to one side or the other. A truly blended style is rare and involves an equal use of both power and attrac- tiveness markers. A blended style can be best summed up as having presence. Leaders who are praised for their polish and gravitas have a deft ability to adopt the right markers to suit the situation.

Our research on blended leadership styles is similar in concept to that of social psychologist Amy Cuddy on warmth and competence. But whereas Cuddy and colleagues gener- ally advise leaders to first project warmth to gain trust and then display their competence to gain credibility, we believe that power and attractiveness should be dynamic. Some situations will call for a leader to exhibit powerful markers from the outset; some will call for a more attractive approach throughout. Leaders often need to tweak their style multiple times in a daysometimes in the course of a single situation. In one meeting, a leader may need to gain the respect of

her peers by projecting subject matter expertise and strong advocacy. But in the next meeting, she may want to be seen as a collaborative partner and will choose to lean attractive by listening attentively and asking more questions.

Cuddy and others instruct leaders to focus on how they feel (feeling strong will help you project strength, and feeling warm will help you project warmth). Our work with exec- utives focuses on their actions and behaviors. Power and attractiveness are determined by what you display toward others, regardless of how you feel on the inside. For instance, you may be very nervous going into a large presentation,

but by consciously favoring power markers, you can project confidence, and your audience will be none the wiser.

In our work, we have observed thousands of leaders who have successfully experimented with markers, created a blended style, and reaped professional rewards as a result. Some developed a blended style early in their work lives; those leaders are the naturals. But others struggled to move up the ladder and learned to modify their behavioroften through painful trial and error. The learning curve can be steep, but we believe that any leader can achieve a blended style by following several steps.

Know thyself. To balance powerful and attractive mark- ers, you must first diagnose where you fall on the leadership style spectrum. Often, executives can read between the lines when they receive feedback from managers, peers, romantic partners, or even their own children. Comments such as Youre too nice and You need to speak up might suggest a tendency toward attractive markers. Comments such as Youre intimidating or You dont listen to me might sug- gest an overly powerful style. Theres no shortage of people around you who can provide helpful insight; just ask them.

If youre unsure where you fall on the spectrum, keep a list of markers in front of you during various interactions and check off the ones you use. Which column ends up with more check marks? As more meetings move online because of the pandemic, it is an ideal time to try recording video meetings and assessing your behavior after the fact.

Experiment with various markers. Once you have a sense of where you fall on the spectrum, begin to experiment with markers to try to move toward a more-blended style. As a start, pick one verbal and one nonverbal marker and find a way to use both during an interaction. This may feel foreign at first; rehearsing with a friend, mentor, or coach can help make the new behaviors more familiar.

As you become more adept, add to your repertoire.

We suggest a pick and mix approachtaking a selection of powerful and attractive markers and experimenting with them. Consider in advance how you want to be seen in a given situation and then choose markers that reinforce that style. If you want to be seen as a trusted adviser, lean attractive. If you want to be seen as a respected adversary, use mostly powerful markers. But dont go overboard: One or two markers in each category should be sufficient to establish or alter others impression of you.

As you experiment, some markers will be easy to adopt, but others may feel contrivedand thats OK. Emulating the style of others or flexing your own in new ways to create a broader range for yourself does not make you inauthentic; it means youre growing as a leader. Successful leaders are true to who they are while continually making small adjustments in how they carry themselves, how they communicate, and how they interact depending on the circumstances.

Consider football coach Vince Lombardi, who led the Green Bay Packers to five world championships and remains an enduring symbol of leadership. After struggling early in his career as he transitioned from college football to the NFL, he quickly learned that he had to adjust his leadership style. What worked with his college players was not effective with the pros. In his first job as the offensive coach for the New York Giants, his style, which fell on the extreme end of pow- erful, antagonized and alienated his more-seasoned players.

According to When Pride Still Mattered, by David Mara- niss, Lombardi was seen as loud and arrogant. The players referred to him as Little General and Little Mussolini. But then something unexpected happened: Lombardi adjusted. He began roaming the hall of the Willamette dorm at night, visiting with the...players, Maraniss writes. He acknowl- edged that he had much to learn and sought their advice, help, and loyalty....He tried to become one of the guys, not the authoritarian boss but the smarter older brother; they called him Vince or Vinnie, not Coach or Mr. Lombardi. He drank beers with them, laughed loudly at their jokes, told them how much he wanted them to succeed.

An executive we worked withwell call him Martin had a similar problem. He grew tired of the constant feedback that he was intimidating, domineering, and coercive. Our observations revealed that Martin, like many other people weve studied, exhibited a much more powerful style in professional settings than he did in other social contexts.

To help him soften his style, we asked him to adopt four specific markers of attractiveness. First, we pointed out how often he interrupted and talked over others, especially in group situations, and asked him to reduce those interjec- tions. That took some time, but eventually he learned to wait for others to finish before commenting. Second, we asked him to accompany his opinions with questions more often. That was also a difficult adjustment because he maintained a strong preference for declarative statements. Third, we asked him to incorporate partnership language by using fewer I references and more we and our references. That was easier for Martin; he deeply valued inclusive language and had not noticed his overuse of self-referential (I, me) and possessive (my team) expressions. Last, we asked him to demonstrate empathetic listening by slowing down and restating what he had heard from others. The unintended consequence was that he also made more eye contact when he listenedanother attractive marker.

Martin was highly committed to changing his style, and it worked. After six months, colleagues noticed a favorable dif- ference. By moving from a powerful style to one that leaned powerful instead, Martin began to earn more-favorable evaluations.

Read the room. One question we often get from execu- tives is how to know when to lean powerful and when to lean attractive. Gaining an ability to read the room is part of fine-tuning your leadership style. Although you may have an idea of how you want to be perceived when entering a situa- tion, your plan may need to change once youre actually there. Generally speaking, you should assess the markers youre receiving from others before deciding on your own approach. More often than not, if youre receiving power markers from someone, you will want to match them to garner respect. Similarly, if youre reading attractive markers from others, youll want to lean attractive so as not to seem overbearing.

Executives make a common mistake by using power markers with subordinates and attractive markers with higher-ups. The opposite approach is often more effective. Using power markers with juniorssuch as ignoring them, abruptly changing topics, or talking too much in their presencecan make you less effective. In contrast, using too many attractive markersphrasing statements as questions, speaking more slowly, and using nonfluencies (such as um and you know)can lead executives to conclude that youre not their peer. Overemphasizing attractive markers when communicating upward to show respect is particularly likely to backfire in U.S.-based companies. To solve this problem, lean powerful with more-senior people, and lean attractive when talking to more-junior people.

A Blended Style Matters More for Minorities and Women

Our research and coaching are complicated by the fact that leadership style cannot be fully divorced from unconscious biases and discrimination. Leadership is a normative construct; when asked to draw a leader, people (regardless of their gender) tend to draw a man. Research shows that women face a competency-likability trade-off: The more they demonstrate proficiency, the more likely their peers are to find their style off-putting. Minorities and LGBTQ execu- tives who look or act in a manner that doesnt conform to an organizations dominant culture may also be penalized by colleagues who characterize them (perhaps unconsciously) as not like us.

Despite the fact that the hallmarks of leadership style

are similar around the world, people of diverse groups are often judged differently even when they display identical style markers. When a woman disagrees with her colleagues, for example, she may be labeled abrasive or aggressive, while her male colleague is seen as candid or direct. We certainly dont advise women and minorities not to get angry, disagree, or promote their accomplishments. Rather, we advise them to carefully select markers that will help them develop a blended style. The right assortment can allow

you to show loyalty to the group you want to lead while still maintaining your uniqueness. Certain minority leaders will want to adopt more power markers; others will need more attractive markers. But again, dont go overboard. Altering your style to conform in a way that hides your diverse traits, or overplaying your differences in a way that distracts from your leadership, can backfire. Women must walk a narrow tightrope: They must have the courage to interrupt, use

fewer nonfluencies, and use more-intense words while blending in more relational and empathetic responses, statements as questions, and happy expressions. Male leaders who are perceived as outliers in a group also have a small margin for error. We wish this werent the casebut as long as unconscious bias and discrimination exist, minorities and women will need to put extra effort into developing a blended leadership style.

The late U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg used a blended style to her advantage. She was known for her ability to disagree agreeablywhich helped her create unlikely friendships with more-conservative judges and foster loyal followership beyond the Court. No pushover, she picked her battles wisely and used attractive markers when necessary. As she wrote about her style, reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance ones ability to persuade.

IN OUR RESEARCH andconsulting,wehaveseenthatstyle is a significant differentiating factor in the reputation and career success of leaders. The good news is that style isnt like personalityit can be intentionally altered. Dynami- cally integrating a broader range of powerful and attractive markers in everyday interactions can make a big difference in how we are perceived. The result is a true blended style that enables leaders to become powerful enough to be heard and attractive enough to be followed.

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