“You either have it or you don’t.”
I’ve heard this said about executive presence more times than I can count. And every time I hear it, I feel frustrated on behalf of every brilliant cybersecurity professional who has been led to believe that something essential about their career is fixed.
So let’s set the record straight.
The Myth: Executive Presence Is About How You Look
When most people hear “executive presence,” they picture something visual. The confident posture. The commanding voice. The person who fills a room before they’ve said a word.
How you carry yourself physically is part of the picture, yes. But it is a small part. And it is probably the least interesting part.
I’ve witnessed cybersecurity leaders who tick every box on that stereotype list and still generate confusion the moment they open their mouth. And I’ve worked with others who would never be mistaken for the loudest person in the room, and yet when they speak, people listen.
Executive presence is not a costume. You cannot buy it, and you cannot perform your way into it.
The Myth: Extroverts Have It and Introverts Don’t
This one frustrates me particularly, because cybersecurity attracts a lot of deep, thoughtful, introverted people. And the message they often receive is that they need to become something they’re not in order to be taken seriously at senior level.
They don’t.
Some of the most compelling leaders I’ve worked with are deeply introverted. What they’ve learned is how to channel their natural strengths in a way that reads as presence.
Presence isn’t how loud you are, or even the ability to dominate a room.
Presence is the ability to make people feel that what you’re saying matters, and that they matter.
And that is absolutely learnable, whatever your personality type.
The Myth: You Either Have It or You Don’t
Let me be direct: it is simply not true.
Executive presence is a set of skills. Skills can be developed. And like any skill, they develop faster with the right support and a deliberate practice.
What does tend to be slow to change are the underlying beliefs that get in the way, such as:
I am not senior enough yet.
People will find me out.
I need to know more before I speak with authority.
Those aren’t presence problems. Those are confidence problems. And that is exactly where the real work happens.
So What Is It, Actually? Let’s Call It Grounded Confidence.
I want to suggest a reframe, because I think the term “executive presence” is part of the problem.
It sounds like something you perform for an audience. It implies a destination rather than a practice. And it suggests it belongs to a certain type of person: senior, polished, probably quite loud.
I prefer to call it grounded confidence.
It feels more accurate and it points to something you can actually build.
Here’s how I think about it, after years of working with cybersecurity professionals making the step from technical expert to senior leader.
Grounded confidence is the convergence of three things:
Clarity – knowing what you think, and being able to express it simply and directly. Not dumbing it down. Translating it. There is a difference.
Conviction – saying what you think with enough internal authority that people trust it. This doesn’t mean certainty. You can hold a position with conviction and still be genuinely open to challenge.
Connection – making the person or the room feel that you are speaking to them, not at them. This is the piece that technical experts often underinvest in, because the content feels so important that the relationship gets forgotten.
Clarity. Conviction. Connection.
When all three are present, people lean in. When one is missing, something feels off, even if no one in the room can name what it is.
The Skills Worth Developing (One at a Time)
Grounded confidence isn’t one skill. It’s a cluster of them. And you don’t need to work on all of them at once.
Here are the ones I see making the biggest difference for cybersecurity professionals specifically.
1. Translating complexity into clarity
This is the foundational skill. The ability to take something technically dense and make it land, without losing its accuracy or importance.
Start here: before any high-stakes conversation, ask yourself: what is the one thing I need this person to understand, feel, or decide? Build from that, not from the full technical picture.
2. Regulating your state under pressure
Grounded confidence collapses under stress. The voice tightens, the thinking speeds up, the qualifications multiply. Learning to regulate your nervous system in real time, so you can think clearly when it matters most, is one of the highest-leverage things you can do.
This is where Stoic philosophy has genuinely useful things to say. Viktor Frankl put it well: between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is your power to choose. That space is where presence lives.
Start here: notice when pressure is affecting how you communicate, not just what you say. That noticing is the beginning of the skill.
3. Owning your perspective
Technical experts are trained to qualify. “It depends.” “There are a number of factors.” “I’d need more data before I could say.” These are intellectually honest responses. They are also, in certain contexts, presence killers.
Grounded confidence means saying what you actually think, clearly and directly, without apologising for it, while remaining genuinely open to challenge.
Start here: in your next meeting, practise giving your view before you give your caveats. See what changes.
4. Reading the room and adjusting
Grounded confidence is not a fixed performance. It’s responsive. The ability to sense what a room needs, more energy, more stillness, more detail, less, and to adjust in real time is a skill that develops with practice and self-awareness.
Start here: after high-stakes conversations, ask yourself: what did the room need that I didn’t give it? What did I give that it didn’t need? That debrief, done consistently, builds the muscle.
5. Taking up space without overfilling it
Taking up too little space reads as uncertainty. Taking up too much reads as dominance. The sweet spot is knowing when to speak, when to pause, when to ask, and when to simply hold the room.
Start here: practise the pause. Silence used intentionally is one of the most powerful tools there is. Most people fill it out of anxiety. The ones who don’t tend to command the room. 😊
Questions to ponder on
Think about the last time you were in a high-stakes conversation. A board presentation, a leadership meeting, a difficult conversation with a stakeholder.
How did you feel walking in?
How did you feel in the room?
Did you say what you actually thought, or a safer, more qualified version of it?
Did you take up the space you deserved to take up?
If there’s a gap between the version of you that exists in that room and the version of you that exists when you’re in your element, that gap has a name. And it can be closed.
The Good News
Grounded confidence is not a personality trait you were born with or without.
It is a set of skills, built on a foundation of self-awareness, that can be developed at any stage of your career.
And for cybersecurity professionals specifically, the starting point is usually not the presence itself. It’s the story underneath it. The beliefs about who deserves to take up space, whose voice carries authority, and what it means to be ready to lead.
Change the story. The confidence follows.
Ready to explore what grounded confidence looks and feels like for you? Feel free to book a free 30-minute coaching consultation with me and let’s get started!