The Quantified Communications Blog

“Executive presence.”

It’s one of those buzzwords we hear all the time when we’re discussing leadership abilities, and at a high level, it makes sense. But when it comes time to break down exactly what executive presence (much less talk about how to develop it), it’s not so easy.

But executive presence isn’t just some lofty, intangible “x factor” that indicates leadership abilities. It’s a skill—or, more realistically, a set of skills—that leaders have honed over the course of their careers.

Traditionally, learning and development of any kind has a bit of a bad rap. Being required to attend on-the-job training sounds about as exciting—and useful—as sitting through a defensive driving course. And yet, in today’s business landscape, with Korn Ferry predicting a talent shortfall of 85 million workers by 2030 at a cost of $8.5 trillion per year, retaining top talent by giving them the room and the resources to grow and develop is more critical than ever.

Entrepreneurs looking to recruit investors to support their business ventures are constantly finetuning their pitches, honing the data, polishing the business plan, and looking for just the right way to tell their stories.

The YouTube voice. You can hear it in your head, can’t you? In fact, you’re probably using it to read this paragraph. Your inner voice suddenly sounds uncannily like Hank Green.

As YouTube has evolved from an artistic repository of classics like “Charlie Bit My Finger” and “Harry Potter Puppet Pals” into a platform where influencers and explainers can monetize their every opinion, something else has evolved as well. That’s the YouTube voice.

The standard for measuring your communication skills.

If you’ve been following Quantified, you know our obsession is adding science—algorithms, data, and objective measurements—to the art of communication.

There’s no two ways about it: employee retention is a critical driver of a financially healthy organization. Retaining talent isn’t easy, but research has shown that the cost of replacing just one employee can soar to nine months of that single employee’s salary, and Gallup has found that turnover among millennials alone costs the US economy $30.5 billion annually.

It’s clear that today’s businesses can’t afford not to retain employees, but how can companies keep their top talent engaged? There are dozens of great retention strategies out there, but the way we see it here at Quantified, it comes down to leadership.

Here at Quantified, we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about how organizations can use big data to drive improvement—not only in leadership communication skills (though certainly in that regard) but in operations, back-office processes, customer relations, and, ultimately, the bottom line.

We talk a lot here at Quantified about how artificial intelligence is enhancing personalized and experiential learning—particularly communication skills. After all AI-driven communication development is our bread and butter, and we’re passionate about using the latest innovations to make communication training more effective and more lasting, and to make world-class communication training accessible to millions of people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about inclusive leadership lately.

It’s been a buzzword for years, and years ago we started working with Chief Inclusion Officers to help them improve their narratives and lift their communication platforms, but in recent months, inclusion has evolved from an element of employee and career communications to something that’s front and center for leadership, an imperative for brands, and one of the top training and performance requests from leading organizations.

Think back to your last important communication event. Maybe it was a presentation to five hundred key stakeholders, or maybe it was an innovative product pitch for the CEO and her team. You had your message down pat—you’d prepared your data points, supporting stories, and visual supports using audience-first methodology—and you’d rehearsed until you knew your key points like the back of your hand. Your content was on point. You were talking like a leader.

But did you look like a leader?