Rob Salafia on the Role of Executive Presence and Storytelling to Boost Leadership Impact

Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. This is Jeffrey Amroach, cohost of the holistic leadership podcast, and we are so excited to be here today on another episode. We are fortunate to have with us Rob Salafia. Rob is a keynote speaker, executive coach, facilitator. Rob is an authority on executive presence and transformative learning experiences. He's a lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and MIT Leadership Center Master Coach and the author of Leading from Your Develop Your Executive Poise, Presence, and Influence to Maximize Your Potential. What is most unique about Rob is that for the first half of his career, he was a performing artist where he traveled the globe delivering his unique one person variety show. He's an accomplished tap dancer, rope and wire walker, and storyteller. He now takes his finely honed stage and audience connection skills to business leaders to help them enhance their presence, connect authentically with others, and create momentum behind their ideas be by becoming great storytellers. Rob, it is so wonderful to have you here with us, and and, obviously, you know, maybe we even get a little bit of tap dancing. You know, wanna ask you, first and foremost to talk to us. What you know, why did you write this book? You know, fascinating book, such an important topic, not just for leaders, but for everyone. What what drove you to write it? Well, first, here it is. Leading from your best self. It's a good looking book, Jeff. I love the colors. Me too. But it but it's even a a better read. But, actually, I was I was in a meeting with the, executive director of the CEO Club of Boston, and I'm trying to get him to bring me in as a speaker, this guy Fred. And Fred looks at me and he says, Rob, I I I'd love to bring you in as a speaker, but I can't. I said, why not, Fred? He goes, I only bring in people with books. Said, Fred, I don't have one. He goes, I know. And he wrote down this guy's name and a phone number. He says, here, this guy helps people write them and get them published. I meet with this fellow one town away, and he said, well, you have a really interesting background in theater performing. And at that point, I was the top sales executive in a boutique training company. And, actually, I was just starting my own company. He said, I think there's a book here. And so we went about writing a a synopsis, table of contents. We pitched it four weeks later after his pitch. I said, is anything going on? He said, well, we just heard from McGraw Hill. We set up a call with this woman. She was a like, a twenty six year old editor. She gets on the phone and says, I love the idea of this book. I'm a tap dancer in New York City. I'm in a dance company, and I teach yoga. I love the mindfulness angle. Let's get it done. And that's what it did. So through my coaching clients at MIT, the stories were all there. Mhmm. You know, the the the the seminal pieces were all there, and it just really poured out just poured out of me. I I didn't have to work at writing this book, and it's it's really around stories and exercises. And it's it's like a it's like a manual for executive presence and leadership. I wanna unpack that though a bit. The storytelling, super important. Obviously, you came from a background of that at a young age engaged in that. Yep. You work with leaders and others to help them develop their executive presence. Talk to us about why storytelling is so important particularly for and in the workplace. Sure. So let's just I mean, that's a big topic. But from a story perspective, if if you think of war if you don't know if you know who Warren Bennis was. Warren Bennis was one of the grandfathers of of modern leadership development, on being a leader. Fantastic books that he wrote. And what he said is the most important role of a leader is to look back on their personal histories, extract those teachable moments, those moments, those crucible moments, and then share them in the form of stories. So at the heart and as a storyteller, I work on direct narrative stories to begin with. These are stories that of our own from our point of view. And the direct narrative is first person present tense so that as an audience member, we walk shoulder to shoulder to shoulder with that storyteller. We see what they see. We feel what they feel. We see what they see. Mhmm. And so when a leader steps onto a stage, especially one when there's enterprise level leadership, where they don't have that direct connection with everyone, but everyone is forming an opinion about who they are, is that that story illustrates who they are at the core. Rather than just say, hey. I wanna let everyone I wanna let you know that integrity is important to, to me. So let's get going. No. I say integrity is important to me, but that means different things to different people. Let me tell you what it means to me and then share a story. Mhmm. And stories grab our visual, emotional parts of our minds, our brains. Like, once we put a visual image that has meaning in in the minds of our audience, we have them. They're with us. And so it's an incredibly powerful tool to engage, inspire, and lead people to see things differently. You know, as you as you were describing that, the word that comes to me is connection. Yep. Just last week, actually, I had the, you know, opportunity in my professional career to actually be a part of a a storytelling training, in health care with my you know, with some of my colleagues. And, you know, we all had to essentially, you know, for several hours, be trained and and work as a group and essentially share stories and, and then, you know, share them in our small groups and then share them in the big group. Yep. And, you know, it's interesting. I mean, throughout my whole career, storytelling has been a massive amount. Right? But I always go back to you know, in college, I had to take a public speaking course. And, you know, what most people don't realize is when I was young, Jeffrey, I was very shy. And then in college, you know or actually, I should say in grade school, high school did act, you know, was part of theater. Oh, okay. But I didn't really realize that connection from theater to public speaking. So come into college, have this public speaking professor, doctor doctor Ramsey was his name. He's now passed, but doctor Ramsey was also the theater director. And so what I learned was he used his public speaking class to also try to basically pick his actors and actresses. But what I also learned was how difficult doctor Ramsey was. And I can remember having to give this speech. And, you know, for the first time in my life, having a professor just tear you apart. And I remember walking out of that classroom and thinking, is that what he gets paid to do? And I remember coming in the next class, and I remember him looking at me. And he's looking at me with a smile, and I'm thinking, yeah, what what do you have to say at this point, pal? And he goes, we're gonna be we are gonna be organizing a phenomenal show, and I've decided that you're in it. And I looked at him and I said, not after what you did to me the other day. And he said, you don't have a choice. It's part of your grade, bud. And I said, is that how this works? So that not there's no invitation, Just declaration. Here it is. So I look and he looks at me and he goes, you're just getting started. He goes, that the other day is an exercise of what you're gonna see in your life. And he said, I will guarantee to you that it will be transformative later in life. You're gonna look back. So moral of the story is I got in the show. It was a phenomenal show. It was actually the Laramie Project. You know, very important very important show, certainly with a lot of meaning. And and, Matthew Shepard's mother, actually, Judy, graced us with our presence when we performed it, on campus. And, you know, certainly, a show that I think everyone should watch. But the point is, I I thought about this entire time during the storytelling exercise because I was like, oh, boy. So I told a story about the birth of my first child, and and I could tell many people resonated with it, but it didn't have the same level of emotions in the small group. We got to the big group, and as we're preparing, I'm thinking, I have the story, but it's gonna take me a lot of courage to be able to tell it. And so I started to write down things and started to go in my memory. How am I gonna do this? Never had told this story before other than close family members. And even then, they didn't get the same level of of detail. And this was in front of my colleagues, including my boss. So I went up and, you know, told the story in essence of of how my father passed away. And it was interesting because to your exact point on the on the art of storytelling, what people afterwards said was they felt as if they were with me when it happened. That's it. They felt as if you know, my boss even said he said, I felt as if I was in the car when you were racing to get to your father. And, my father passed of a sudden cardiac arrest. So when I was you know, and I lived two hours away. So when I got there, he had already passed. But the whole story was the moment I got the call, to the moment I left, to the moment I got to to see my father, the things I had to do in between. But to your exact point, the raw emotions, in a story and and most importantly, the connection. Afterwards, several colleagues came over to me, and they said, I lost my father too. I didn't Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So there's resonance. There's relatability in it. You know? It's, you know, it's such an interesting point that you make that in the workplace, it can solve some of our biggest issues in so many ways. And it's just a matter of understanding the framework of it. Like, I I talk about the the why, the how, and the what of storytelling. Why is that they're engaging. You know? They they they they grab our focus and attention. They're relatable and relevant. We see ourselves inside of the stories. Mhmm. And they're memorable. They're easy to be retold. Yep. The the how of storytelling is the the structure of a good story. And I think of the structure as there's a main character. Yep. They have a worthy goal. There's a barrier or some sort of challenge in their way. They have to make a decision. Mhmm. They have to take an action, and then they have to live with the consequences. And so, you know, a good story has has the as the protagonist or the main character, right, if if if you will, You know, focus in on that main goal, and that's what they want. Mhmm. And then the other part of the how is to be a good storyteller. Be a great storyteller is to be able to willing to step into that moment, that leadership moment, and grab the focus and attention of your audience and know what you're doing. Storytelling is like creating an atmosphere over people, and that takes courage. It takes it takes, you know, being solid in in yourself and knowing that you're putting pictures in people's minds. You're you're giving them an experience. You you don't know what that experience is. You just know that it's happening. Yeah. And the what of storytelling is the right story for the right moment. That's that's the art form and the skill. Let's go into executive presence. Sure. Obviously, you have worked with individuals probably at various different walks of life. There are leaders in organizations that probably the highest, well, not probably. There are at the highest levels that certainly don't have much, if at all, any executive presence. I wanna ask you about, you know, when you work with someone in executive presence, can you unpack that a little bit? Like, what what what does that look like? Why should even aspiring leaders look to develop that executive presence? Sure. Well, it's a it's a pretty big concept. But if somebody and I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said, Rob, my boss just told me I need to improve my executive presence and walks away. And this happened to a friend of mine, and she had no idea what it meant, what the person meant by it, let alone how to develop it, how to put it into practice. And that's pretty much the realm. I I think there's something that the talent of, the talent, talent innovation organization did a research that said eighty one percent of people that get feedback on executive presence have no idea what it is or how to develop it. But it's the in my research, it's the number one deficit keeping rising talent from ascending to the enterprise level or to that next level leadership. Yeah. So it's important for us to understand what it is, and it has two components. There's an internal self awareness and external self awareness. Internally, we have to become aware of who we are, our values, motivators, poise starts from inside of ourselves, self regulation skills, all of those things inside of us. Externally, we have to understand the how we show up in in in the impact that we have on the people and the environment around us. And it's in context to the culture as well when you talk about executive presence. So how do people experience us? I I think of it like layers of experience. How people experience us, how they experience themselves when they're with us, and it's a story they tell about us after we've left the room. That's your brand. So from a theater perspective, I like this idea of how people can experience us. They can experience us energetically, physically, vocally, emotionally. Mhmm. These are all the tools that we have in our communication toolbox. So I help people develop a good strong vocal cadence. Breathe in, speak out cadence. Learn how to land a point. Put the put a period on it, and stop. Take a breath in and begin again. That's that demonstrates comfort that we're comfortable in our own skin. It demonstrates and instills confidence in others and our ideas. Then there's physical presence. That's the messages you send without saying a word. So I remember when I was just starting, I went from being a performer to behind a desk. I was a top sales executive in a boutique training company, but it was busy. It was different. Right? So I don't I'd I'd walk around. I'd always wear this face. You know, it was like I was busy. And when I wanted to leave the my my office and go down to the printer, I'd still wear the face. I didn't realize I was making myself more important, other people less important, and that I was a bit of a jerk until a friend of mine gave me feedback. He goes, Rob, do you realize we were in this space? I had no idea. Wow. Then she gave me a quote from theater. She said, think of it like this. It's from Tom Stoppard. Think of every exit as an entrance to someplace else. I wasn't leaving my office as much as I was entering into the common space. Mhmm. So how did I want other people to experience me as open? You know? How did I want them to experience themselves as connected, as important too? And what was the story that I wanted them to tell after I left that room? That, woah. So I went to work on that. So I I, you know, I took the advice. I put a sign stop on my door and said, don't exit, enter. I would stop. I would take a breath. I would just get grounded first. And I came up with these three words, breathe, connect, land. I took a breath. I connected with how I wanted to show up, and I would land with other people. And so that made a difference. People began to notice it. It actually we can impact and affect the environment around us. So, you know, working with this one CEO from from MIT and, really powerful, and he would talk about walking into the office. When he was having a good day, everyone was having a good day. Mhmm. When he was having a bad day, everyone was having a bad day. Mhmm. You know, such a powerful example. And and to your point, I think all of us have had, you know, some element of that moment. Right? I can remember early in my career, one of my senior vice presidents, you know, said to me, there's one thing we've gotta work on, Jeffrey. And I was like, and, you know, when he did this in a nice way, it was a one on one. He said, wow. He said, you're so expressive. He said, I can sit in this big meeting, and he said, I know there's, you know, people in the organization that will say something, and you'll just be like, are you serious? They just said that. And he's like, and you will show it so clearly in your face. And he's like, I appreciate that about you, but what I don't want it to create is them to feel as if you don't appreciate them. Wow. That is such great feedback. And I remember, like, sitting there and thinking What a great feedback. Just crushed me. And then I thought, you know, after and and then and he and I, you know, I showed it. Right? Like, I literally just showed it, and he goes Right. No. No. No. He goes, stop. He goes, stop. We all have had done something or have something about us. He's like, I just and I remember this vividly. He's like, I just wanna help you to develop your executive presence. He said, because guess what? One day you're sitting here and I'm not. That's the poise. That's when you mentioned it earlier when we were talking, that's poise. Yep. Being able to stay composed Yep. And and and neutral. It's not like it it's not having the one business. It it's not the trap of the professional persona. Like, I have to have a veneer. No. It's just being neutral. It's just being like a a witness. So I'm coaching this other fellow at MIT. He's a physician in the Boston area. He said, Rob, my I have a problem. My team are not bringing me their issues anymore, and I think it has to do with my expressiveness. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, when somebody brings me less than better good results, he he goes, oh, really? Which means he just he just totally communicated his disappointment. And so that has an impact on the direct report. Well, one thing, they don't wanna disappoint the boss. Two, it's embarrassing. Three, so neutral, meaning, hey. These weren't the results we were looking for. No problem. Let's take a look at it. And then you go into a developmental conversation or performance conversation, and you really help the person cultivate their strategic problem solving capabilities. Right? So now you kinda tune up. You help them see how to improve as opposed to embarrassing them. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Well and to your point, right, in that, you know, when I look back, you know, it was such a powerful learning moment. And then, you know, I started to work on it, and and he would notice it. And he would say, that's exactly. And I'll never forget, you know, I've worked with him for for almost a decade. And so, after our health system was acquired and and my position was part of restructuring, which, you know, he no longer was my my senior vice president. At that time, he was we were reorged. He said to me, he said, I can't tell you how much growth I saw over time. And, it's just interesting when you look back onto your point how important poise, executive presence, storytelling are. I wanna delve into, though, one of the other aspects that you work on a lot, which is authenticity. Today, in the workplace, survey after survey suggests that people don't feel as if they can really be who they are. Right. And, certainly, it's absolutely contributing to retention. But I think most more importantly, we as leaders and organizations and employers have to think about, it's not just the retention part. It's the part of what also are we doing to them when they walk out every day and walk back in. You know, how are we impacting who they are? When you do this work around authenticity, you know, you're working to your point with some of the most highest level leaders in a very, you know, big metropolitan area. What do you tell them about authenticity? What do you coach them on about authenticity? Well, this is really interesting because I think authenticity can be confusing to a lot of people. So I'll explain it with a story. I'm in a session with Ernst and Young, their valuation group. I had eighty five consultants for a full day in in the room. These are, like, the smartest people in the world Mhmm. In their minds. And so at the beginning of the day, I asked there were five leaders, and I I asked I said, would one of you be willing to come on stage with me and do an exercise? So this one guy said, yeah. Happy to do it. Now you have to understand, this guy was, like, six foot three. He was built like, he was manicured. He had a five thousand dollar suit on. I mean, this guy was like perfection. And I said, okay. It's doing a listening exercise. I'd like you to share something that you're currently working on that's unresolved, that you don't have the answer for. He got a little uncomfortable, but he said, okay. I'll do it. We did the exercise. It worked great. At the end of the day, he comes up to me and said, Rob, can I speak to you? Said, I wanna let you know I wanna thank you, number one, for that opportunity to step onto the stage. You have to understand that was one of the most difficult things I've done in my entire career. Twenty years, I've been working to develop a professional persona, this veneer of invincibility that I had to have all the answers, and I couldn't show any signs of weakness. I thought today on that stage that they were gonna laugh me out of the room. Wow. Wow. Think about that. Think about that. He held that he said he's never been comfortable with that sort of persona. That's not who he really is. So in other words, that sense of vulnerability Mhmm. Is that vulnerability a sign of weakness? Authenticity? Can you get your voice in the room? Your voice in the room. I always ask people, have you ever been to a meeting and you knew something needed to be said? You knew you wanted to say it, but you held your tongue for fear of retribution, retaliation, dot dot dot. Every hand goes up. So that's essentially dysfunctional. Mhmm. That means we don't value your voice. That means you, you know, speak when spoken to. Yeah. And then I ask, you know, what happens to your ideas in that type of environment? And everyone says, I don't bring the ideas in. You know? They're they're not gonna be valued. You know? I leave a part of myself home. It it's it's it's a feeling of being being smaller Yeah. You know, in inside. So from an authenticity perspective, we have to create that in the the term psychological safety that is pretty pretty, I think well known now, that idea of feeling like I can bring an alternative point of view. So when those things start to change, people feel a little more relaxed inside of themselves. So I think at its heart, authenticity and there's a there's a there's a proverb that says, tension is who we think we should be. Relaxation is who we truly are. So we're relaxed inside of ourselves when we can bring a point of view. Now we have to do it in a in a way that's appropriate, you know, not inappropriate. Hey. You know, it's like, that's an ugly hat. Looks good on you. That's like a borscht belt comedian. You know? It's like, no. You know? That's not what we're talking about. You know? We just what we wanna do is we wanna be appropriate, but we wanna be relaxed inside of ourselves. If we feel that tension, we have to go into that tension and find out what that is. Mhmm. And is that a is that culture? Is that climate? You know, can I can I say what I need to say? With respect. You know? So if it's an alternative point of view and you put your put your goal and your direction is in alignment with the team, then it's your responsibility to bring up let's say, you know, if if we take that route down to Connecticut I know you wanna go that way, but, you know, there's construction. If we go that way, we're gonna be stuck in traffic for five miles. But why don't you tell us about that? I didn't think I could. Mhmm. You know, in that circumstance, it would be so interesting, and maybe you have already done this with that example of of that leader to go back and see what's changed. You know? Because, you know, I mean, that's kind of an moment, right, where where we you know, at some point, we all, without question, you know, just like the example I shared that I I didn't really realize how much my expressions were so facial, you know, until an executive said to me, like, wow. You know? And and, you know, and and and what I always appreciated about how he said it is he's like, look. I've got the same feelings. I'm just not showing it. You know, and and, you know, that piece is really important. And so those moments are so so plentiful from a learning and growth perspective. So so one thing I I wanna pick up on that is it's not that we are muting ourselves and that we're not being expressive. We need to learn how to be expressive. That's what theater is about. So when because if you don't, then the meaning behind your words doesn't come out. And so and and there's a there's a study by Albert Mehrabian, talked about the impact of communication. And this gets a little bit of it's a confused point of view, but it's, words, voice, body language. As receivers, we're looking for meaning. We wanna create meaning out of what someone else says. So if somebody says something and it's not congruent, in other words, what I say and how I say it, I'm very excited. No. You're not excited. You know? It's like, you know, it's a that sort of thing. It's your your face, body, voice, and emotion are not congruently communicating that message. What we will do is interpret the meaning of that, of what the person's saying will attribute to the body language and the voice, what they can hear in the voice as opposed to the words. The words will have less power because we're seeing the body language. In other words, we can see someone's emotional, opinion or point of view comes through in that communication. So it's not that we wanna mute ourselves. What you're saying is, in that meeting, we just wanna be neutral and be like an observer. Yeah. And then if we have a point of view, then we express that point of view, and we do it with care. Yep. But there's come a time when you need to express something. You need to have that range. So as a theater performer, that's what I do with leaders is I help them develop that range. So then it's a choice how they want to communicate. That's super, super profound. I know we're getting close to to time, so I wanna make sure that I give you an opportunity to to, encourage everyone to, you know, know where to find you, how to connect with you, anything else you wanna share, you know, around the work that you do. Well, thank you very much. Over the past since COVID and, you know, working remotely, I've really worked on my virtual presence. And so I have a home office shed here in Lexington, Massachusetts, and I've developed a program called, Effortless Executive Presence Accelerator. So it's a sixteen week program, virtual learning platform. And I started to do open enrollment programs over over the last year, and it they're going really, really well. So transformative learning online, which is really cool. My is protagonist consulting dot com. You can see information there, and my email is rob salafia at protagonist consulting dot com. And happy to answer any questions, and, I'm I'm thrilled to offer some of these programs now that are accessible, virtually that are equally as powerful as when, used to teach in in person. That's awesome. That's awesome. And I will say I have Rob, sent me the obviously, a great copy of his book, but an amazing mouse pad too that I I keep here all the time to kinda remind me about I love the fact that it talks about, you know, master your transitions, breathe, connect, and land. It's just it's just perfect. So, Rob, I wanna thank you and and, obviously, not only for for the awesome work that you do, but also really for the coaching, that you do because, ultimately, I'm certain through that coaching, we also get better leaders. And through, better leaders, we get better supported workplaces and and certainly cultures and and and in the end, more support for for all the people that are doing the work. So thank you for all that you do. Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate you inviting me onto your show, and have a great summer. You as well. Thank you so much.