how to get that corporate "it" factor

the surprisingly simple fast-track to gravitas

Aug 21, 2026

The “it” factor. Executive presence. The quality that makes a room lock in when you speak, that makes hard work look effortless, that makes people follow you without being told to.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett coined it in 2014: an amalgam of qualities that communicates that you are in charge (or you deserve to be.) The core of it, her research said, is gravitas. Grace under fire. Confidence. The ability to command a room.

The standard advice is always things like: Lower your voice. Pause before you answer. Cut half your slides. Absorb the panic in the room instead of passing it down. Project that you are in charge.

Almost all the advice is about what not to do.

Interestingly, the deepest recesses of our brains generally do not respond well to being told what not to do. Whether out of rebelliousness or because it is too complicated for these instinct-driven parts of us to follow, being told what to do is often more actionable.

So here, I will tell you what to do. It is shockingly simple, although perhaps not easy.

I write 1–2 times a week, always for free. If this was helpful or meaningful to you, I’d be grateful if you shared it with someone else who might appreciate it too.

Calm hyper-presence

Here’s what we want to achieve: Groundedness. Listening all the way. Answering with deliberate slowness instead of reactivity.

Contemplative traditions have trained this state for thousands of years, and Tantra is one of the oldest.

Tantra is built on one radical claim: the divine is not an external authority you report to. It is already within you. Its method is intention and attention: the same tools that turn stretching into yoga and sitting into meditation.

When we look throughout history, the tools used to crush a person’s power often focus on crushing their sovereignty. Teaching them that authority is outside of them. That authority belongs to a race, a rank, a title, and their job is to earn its approval.

To pursue this calm hyper-presence, we have to remember that authority lives inside us.

This allows us to respond in our own time and without reactivity. It gives us authentic groundedness, listening, and answering in our own time, rather than auditioning for approval or performative pensiveness.

Effortless followership

The majority of leadership happens without formal authority. Most of the time, you cannot make anyone do anything. You have no rank to pull.

If your model of leadership is patriarchal (hierarchical) at its core, this can be catastrophic because your entire model depends upon compliance. Compliance must be enforced, monitored, and defended. Command is expensive. It costs energy every single day and the moment it stops receiving energy, your legacy disappears.

Under matriarchal (liberatory) modes of leadership, there is neither obedience nor command. Instead, leaders are tasked with removing obstacles to people’s power rather than moving the people themselves. Liberation cannot be handed down by benevolent authorities. It has to be achieved by people themselves. Under this worldview, the leader’s only source of power is the liberated power of others.

That is effortless followership. It is effortless because there is no hierarchy to maintain and no one being held down.

Results

Executive presence is not about conforming to an outdated image of what an executive is supposed to look like. It is four things you grow from the inside out:

Care. The rarest form of generosity is paying attention, and giving it freely.

Clarity. The ability to see what matters and help others see it too, cutting through noise to find signal, through confusion to find direction.

Curiosity. The quality that lets you be transformed, that keeps you open and adaptive.

Courage. The ability to have hard conversations, make hard choices, and stay steadfast when things feel uncertain.

To be honest, I feel the corporate world has wildly overcomplicated these ideas because people selling courses for 4 figures a seat want to pretend there is a bigger secret here than there really is.

There are truly only two steps.

And although they are simple, they are not always easy:

Remember your sovereignty. Remember that authority lives inside you.
Step outside of the hierarchy mindset. Assume the responsibility of removing obstacles to power.

Through these two steps, you will find your care, your clarity, your curiosity, and your courage.

Offerings

FYI: Each week I share stories through For People and Planet, a newsletter focused on climate solutions and hope for the future. You can find it here if you’d like to follow along: forpeopleandpla.net