Sonya | Leadership Presence Coach: [00:00:00] You soften your tone in one room, you sharpen it for another, and then the whole time there's this voice in the back of your head asking this, is this me? Is it really me? I don't know. That is code switching, right? And that worry and that adaptation is that mental energy and you're starting to actually lose parts of yourself.
When your identity's clear, the tuning feels natural. You're not code switching because you're switching between different versions of yourself.
Welcome to the Style and Strategy Podcast, where personal brand meets leadership and style. I'm Sonya, I'm bringing you practical strategies, bold insights, and honest conversations to help you amplify your presence, unlock your next level, and lead with clarity and confidence.
Sonya | Leadership Presence Coach: Sometimes when we talk about presence, when I refer to leadership presence, many of us just think about, the [00:01:00] workplace. I anchor many of my examples there, however. What I want to talk about today is that
leadership presence really shows up both personally and professionally, and sometimes you can be really dialed in on what that is at work, and then you have to turn up to something for your kids, whether that's a school event or a fundraiser or something like that, and suddenly you've start to separate your leadership identity, you start to think, oh, what am I going to wear?
Because nothing in your corporate wardrobe or what you're wearing in your corporate wardrobe feels right for that room and nothing in what you would describe as maybe your weekend wardrobe feels like you, and definitely not alone in that. [00:02:00] And so there's this balance that you are really looking for between those two worlds, right?
Because you don't wanna be stuck between this, two versions of yourself now, where that's starting to happen for you. It's not always a wardrobe problem, right? Or a closet problem. It's potentially a presence problem. And it's kind of like thinking about you've got one room figured out, you know, in the context of your home.
Maybe it's decoration, your lounge room sorted, you've got it the way you want, but maybe the bedroom isn't as nice as you would like it to be, or it's the boardroom. Maybe it's a team. But when the context changes, suddenly there's this level of apprehension that kicks in and there's no strategy for how to, or necessarily, they don't have a strategy to carry you through all these [00:03:00] different rooms.
So I wanna talk about why you shouldn't have to start from scratch each time, and why reading the room is not code switching. It's actually around amplifying the right frequency for the context you're in and why this is one of the most practical applications of leadership presence that no one really talks about.
There's a question that came up during one of my recent, master classes where someone asked, how do you address the potential conflict between authenticity and projecting a specific style? Now, that is a fair question. And it comes a lot, right? Because it tells me that a lot of people are carrying around this idea that adjusting how you present yourself for a different context means being fake.
And that if you wear one thing to the boardroom and something different to an industry [00:04:00] dinner, then you are not really carrying across all those consistency and that reading the room and choosing how to present yourself based on what that room requires is somehow inauthentic. So I wanna challenge that because I think that it is really the wrong frame, and having that frame leads to two outcomes, neither of which will really serve you.
So the first outcome is that you lock into one mode, ? you seem to have a boardroom presence or meeting presence, whatever is appropriate for you. And then you bring that same energy to everything, the networking event, the team offsite, the hallway conversation. You are that same volume in every room because you've been taught that consistency means
authenticity, but what it can actually create is a different form of friction, ? Because a boardroom and a school fundraiser potentially require different things from you, and treating them the [00:05:00] same isn't consistent. It just makes you feel really uncomfortable and rigid. And the second outcome to this is you do adjust, but you feel guilty about it, ?
You soften your tone in one room, you sharpen it for another, and then the whole time there's this voice in the back of your head asking this, is this me? Is it really me? I don't know. That is code switching, right? And that worry and that adaptation is that mental energy and you're starting to actually lose parts of yourself.
Now, neither of those is really what I'm talking about. What I am wanting you to think about is something I think about as,It's your frequency and really fine tuning that frequency because you are that same person in every room. Your identity doesn't change when the room changes, but which aspects of your leadership you decide to bring forward and how much volume you give them [00:06:00] should really change depending on what the moment requires.
So think about this. You know that I have this concept of please don't box people in, right? Because your leadership actually has multiple facets. You've got strategic thinking. You may have warmth, you've got analytical precision. You know, maybe you're really strong in collaboration. You've got directness.
Maybe you've got creativity, ? All of these are genuinely you. Some elements are stronger than others, but they are all part of how you lead. The thing is not every context requires them at all the same volume. Let's say talking to the broad, you might dial up your strategic thinking and your directness because that is what that room needs.
At a team offsite, you might dial up, the warmth and the collaboration At an industry dinner with people you don't know well, you might lead with more curiosity and let your expertise surface naturally [00:07:00] rather than leaning directly into it. At a school event where you run into a professional contact, you might lead with warmth and then let the professional dimension sort of stay in the background.
None of these adjustments change who you are. You are really just tuning to the frequency of the room. So think about it, the way a musician adjusts for playing, in an intimate venue versus in a concert hall instrument is the same player is the same. The expression changes because the context may demand it, and it's not all the time, it's just something to consider.
I had a colleague once that, transitioned from a very casual, industrial environment into a very formal executive leadership position. In a previous role, she'd worn jeans and t-shirt every day because that's what the environment required and that was fine and she was very comfortable in that. But when she moved into a role where she's sitting at the exec table [00:08:00] representing her organisation externally, meeting with government stakeholders, she needed a different
expression of that same identity. The work wasn't about turning into someone else. It was actually helping her to understand which facets of her leadership she wanted to amplify in those new contexts. Her creative energy, her directness, her strategic mind, they were all still there, but what she changed was made them more visible depending on the room she was walking into.
Many women that I work with have a strategy for one room because those are the rooms that they've received feedback and where the stakes feel the highest. But think about how many presence moments you actually have in a given week. Might be a formal meeting, hallway conversation zoom call, where half your body language is invisible.
The network function where you are meeting people cold. The industry dinner where table dynamics are [00:09:00] completely unstructured. And then of course, if you've got kids, the school event where you are a parent first and a professional second, except where the CEO is, your clients.
Each of those requires a different context. Each one requires a different frequency, and many are winging every room except one. I used to work, with someone in a previous organisation and he really understood this instinctively. He wore custom Nike sneakers with his suits and his statement jewellery, in an environment where everyone else was really in the standard corporate dress.
He made a real deliberate choice about which facets of his identity to make visible. This is how he used style as a way to signal something about who he was creative, innovative, and confident in his own taste. Someone who really thought for himself, he tuned into that frequency. He wasn't rejecting the corporate [00:10:00] context, he was just adding his own signal to it.
And the interesting thing is, many were entertained by it and it used to become a, point of conversation. And that is part of that external expression. So that's the principle. When your identity's clear, the tuning feels natural. You're not code switching because you're switching between different versions of yourself.
You're choosing which facets of that same identity you wanna bring forward, and that choice becomes your strategic tool rather than something that is stressful. So if you are listening and thinking, I only have one strategy for one room, and it's exhausting even for that one, get clear on all the different facets right around your lifestyle, work home, and then really articulate some of those qualities around your leadership.
Are you someone that leads with warmth or precision, or do you influence through [00:11:00] questions or decisive direction? You probably do all those things at different times, but you'll have natural tendencies and understanding those tendencies. Can be a really great starting point. Then map your rooms.
Write five or six different contexts you find yourself in regularly. The boardroom, team meeting, client dinner, school, zoom, and for each one, really ask yourself, which facets of my leadership does that room need most? You'll notice that some rooms require maybe more warm, less directness, and some the opposite.
This is not a formula. It's a practice of starting to really fine tune and pay attention to what each context requires and matching your expression to it. And then of course, have a look at your wardrobe against these norms. This is where the style has an opportunity become strategic.
If you only have clothes for work that work in one environment, you'll either feel overdressed or too casual [00:12:00] in those contexts, and that's when you start to feel like a different person. And your wardrobe really does need to support all of your rooms. Otherwise, you're only wearing a portion of it. And that's not good.
ROI, right? So that is the difference between a wardrobe, that's a collection of nice things and a wardrobe that is a system built across your real life.
So if you were at the recent masterclass, you've already started this work, the next step is really getting specific about your situation. Not the general principles, but the actual rooms you are walking into, the frictions you're experiencing. And so that's what happens with a call with me. We get clear on that, so you know what the next steps are.
If you are interested in having conversation like that, have a look at the show notes. There's a link to book in and have a chat. So if we come back to where we started. 20 minutes potentially [00:13:00] trying to figure out who am I going to be in that room. The real cost here is not having a strategy across the rooms.
It's a time you lose getting dressed. It's the mental energy you spend managing the question, how do I need to present myself right now? That's the energy that could go in a conversation, the next relationship opportunity. So maybe stop asking that question And start remembering that you're the same woman in every room, just choosing which frequency to lead with. And I will be running a podcast soon, which covers off more around frequency and just how important that is. But for now, I'll see you next week.
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