What is Executive Intelligence and how can I improve it?

A while ago at a board meeting, a complicated topic came up related to some tough financial choices for the upcoming year’s budget.

Many of the board members had very different opinions about how to move forward. Some wanted to allocate funds to improve the organization’s physical campus, while others felt strongly that more support staff were critical. The conversation became “my opinion this,” “my opinion that” and - I’m sure you’ve sat through similar meetings in the work world - felt really circular and frustrating.

Until the leader spoke.

He had been holding back, listening to all of the various voices and points of view, drawing out differences of opinion. And when he spoke, he quickly encapsulated the pros and cons of capital investment versus staff investment, he wove in the strategic objectives and bigger picture, and he suggested that a sub-team look into a multi-phased approach that could stagger resource allocation over a five-year period.

The group was relieved, and the conversation moved on.

I’ve worked with a ton of executives over three decades, and that moment was a masterclass in leadership.

This leader is a perfect example of someone who has an executive “It Factor”, or executive presence.

If we could bottle and sell that exact leadership ability, which shows up in many ways like that meeting when he heard everyone out, sussed out what was most important, didn’t hog the air space, and quickly found a novel path forward, we’d be trillionaires.

It’s this “It Factor” that inspires teams to do great things.

What makes up the “It Factor”

In my experience, the “It Factor” is a combination of three different skills, and the good news is that all of them are learnable. You can have only one of these and be a star, or you can combine all three and be a supernova.

Here’s the “It Factor” formula:

Executive Intelligence + Executive Presence + Emotional Intelligence

Executive Intelligence (ExI)

Executive Intelligence (ExI) means the ability to synthesize, simplify and communicate complex information in a way that turns chaos into clear action. Leaders with high ExI are fantastic at cognitive processing, problem-solving and designing smart, often novel strategies along with concrete execution plans.

High-ExI folks, like this leader, can listen to a complex conversation and pull out the key points and possibilities. Their voice is often sought out during meetings toward the end of a discussion, because the group feels that no one else could possibly summarize the issues better or inspire better action.

Hallmarks of someone with high ExI are high business and functional aptitude, the consistent creation of frameworks and playbooks, on-point and concise topic summations, and the ability to sort signal from noise when solving critical issues.

Someone can be very IQ-intelligent, but not be able to synthesize information and build a clear plan. Executive Intelligence isn’t about being the smartest one in the room; it’s about the ability to consistently make smart assessments and smart bets.

This skill is foundational, and it’s something strong leaders continue to hone for decades. And, in fact, search firm Russell Reynolds bakes an ExI assessment into many of its senior leadership hiring processes, with many companies increasingly taking this into consideration for their C-suite hiring.

You can read more about ExI, and how to build it, in the “What I’m reading” section below.

How would you rate your own Executive Intelligence, and how might you work to improve it?

Executive Presence

Executive Presence is a topic that gets a lot of LinkedIn air time, but is often misconstrued. The traditional material on the topic focuses on building inside-out executive presence: your posture, confidence, clarity of expression, authenticity, and ability to speak publicly and command a room.

Those are all true, but they are only half of the equation. Your “executive presence” is actually not static but dynamic; it’s measured by your specific audience at any given point in time.

(And by the way, the ideal executive presence would differ depending on cultural and social contexts, so there’s no singular definition anyway!)

The outside-in things in the paragraph above are ways you can attempt to influence your “Presence”, but fundamentally, it’s not about how YOU feel but about how you make YOUR AUDIENCE feel.

Can you measure it, and therefore improve it? Perhaps. Similar to an aggregated customer Net Promoter Score that companies collect to understand how their customers feel, let’s call this your Net Presence Score. How likely are the people around you to feel positively about your presence? 

I personally think the goal should be that you work on estimating your Net Presence Score, which means building in a habit of constantly reading the room you’re in (virtual or otherwise) to understand how your presence is affecting others.

Do they look up, and perk up, when you walk in the room or join the Zoom?

Do they seek you out to ask your advice?

Do they look toward you when conflict arises, knowing you’ll step in with wisdom? Do they relax in your presence, or tense up?

When you speak, are they listening closely or looking away, waiting for you to get to the point?

Based on ongoing self-assessment like this, you can know exactly what to work on to help elevate your executive presence.

What do you think you might work on this year to elevate your executive presence?

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is, of course, a well-worn topic. I’m including it here only because I believe you can’t have a lasting “It Factor” without it, and I won’t belabor what I’m sure you’ve already read about it over the years.

The only thing I’d add to what I’m sure you already know is that when people mention emotional intelligence, they often mean high empathy, and think of it mainly as other-focused: how you treat the people around you.

Instead, true emotional intelligence involves much more self-awareness and self-regulation than other-awareness and other-regulation. When you are centered, you help other people feel centered, and therefore they trust you and want to continue to be around you.

Can you do anything this year to improve your Emotional Intelligence, specifically your self-awareness and self-regulation?

Where could your own “It Factor” use some attention?

All good leaders continue to hone their skills over time. If you had to think about where you could level up, would you choose to focus first on

Executive Intelligence,

Executive Presence,

or Emotional Intelligence?

What I’m reading / sharing about this:

Article: How Important Is “Executive Intelligence” For Leaders (Harvard Business School), by James Heskett.

I have been thinking about this topic a lot: so much of what makes a leader great is their “executive intelligence”: their ability to synthesize a lot of complex information and then make critical decisions, often in dynamic and confusing environments. This article is a look at the book Executive Intelligence by Justin Menkes, and what I love about this approach is that research shows this skill can be honed with practice, along with enough of a feedback loop to help a leader know the outcome of their decisions.