Hello, Reader
I want to tell you about a moment that changed how I coach executive presence.
The strategy session had been scheduled for weeks. Three Directors. Full agenda. High tension. The CEO had already started without her.
Then Tola walked in.
40 minutes late.
No flustered apology. No rushed explanation. No "I'm so sorry, traffic was terrible, let me catch up."
She set her notebook down. Took her seat at the table. Made eye contact with the CEO. And said one sentence:
"Thank you for starting without me. What have I missed?"
That was it.
The room kept moving. She caught up by listening for two minutes. And by the ten-minute mark, she was the one the CEO turned to for the read on the proposal they'd been debating for the previous forty.
I've watched senior women walk into boardrooms for over two decades.
Most of them spend fifteen years trying to never be late.
Tola had spent fifteen years learning what to do when she was.
That distinction is the whole game.
What Tola did differently
Let me break down the four shifts that made the room rearrange itself around her.
She didn't apologize for taking up space.
This is the move most accomplished women miss.
When women walk in late, they perform an entire ritual of remorse. The whispered sorry. The exaggerated quiet entrance.
The hand pressed to the chest. The "please, don't let me interrupt." It's meant to be polite.
The room registers it as smallness.
Senior leadership doesn't promote smallness. They promote composure. The moment you walk in like you're sorry to be there is the moment the room subtly reorganizes itself with you slightly further from the centre of power.
Tola walked in like she belonged there. Because she did.
If you're going to walk into a room late, the goal isn't to disappear into your seat. The goal is to enter cleanly, sit fully, and pick up the thread. Anything else costs you.
She didn't try to catch up.
The instinct most women have is to ask "Can someone fill me in on what I missed?"
It feels respectful. It is, technically.
It also puts the burden on the room and signals you're behind.
Tola listened her way back in. Within two minutes she knew the temperature of the conversation, who was advocating for what, and where the unspoken disagreement was. By the time she spoke, she sounded like she'd been there the whole time.
This is a learnable skill. You're already doing it in social situations. You can do it in meetings too. Walk in, sit down, listen for two minutes before you say anything other than "thank you for starting without me."
The room will fill in the gaps faster than you think.
She didn't perform her competence.
When she did speak, she didn't review her credentials. She didn't say "based on my fifteen years in this space" or "from what I understand the data shows."
She just gave her read of the room:
"The risk in this proposal is that we're optimizing for Q4 numbers and ignoring the structural problem in distribution. If we don't name that, the win in December becomes the loss in March."
One sentence. The whole room sat with it.
This is the part most women find hardest. We've been trained to justify our authority before claiming it. To prove we deserve to be heard before we speak.
At the executive level, that's backwards.
You earn the right to be heard the moment you say something the room needs to hear. Not before. Not by warming up to it.
If you have the read, give the read. Skip the credentials. They're already in your title.
She owned the lateness without explaining it.
When the meeting ended, the CEO walked out with her. He said, "Everything okay? You're never late."
She smiled and said, "I had something I had to handle. I won't make a habit of it."
That was the whole conversation.
No story. No justification. No long apology. Just confirmation that she was still the woman he knew, and a quiet promise that she respected his time.
He nodded. They moved on.
This is the part I want you to sit with.
We are taught, especially as women, that the right response to lateness is a detailed explanation. The story of the meeting that ran long. The traffic. The sick child. The vendor crisis. The proof of why this wasn't our fault.
Senior leadership doesn't need the proof.
They need to know two things: that you're aware your lateness affected them, and that it won't be a pattern. One sentence does both.
Anything more is over-explaining.And over-explaining is rarely about the explanation. It’s often about seeking permission to be believed.
Women with executive presence don’t explain themselves into credibility.
What this is really about
Executive presence isn't about being perfect.
It's about being unshakeable.
The room doesn't promote the woman who never makes a mistake. The room promotes the woman whose composure doesn't break when she does.
Lateness, interruptions, hard questions, public disagreement, being put on the spot, getting something wrong.
The woman who handles those moments without shrinking, over-explaining, or going small is the woman who reads as ready for the next level.
Long before anyone formally decides she is.
Before you close this email
I want to ask you one question.
Where in your work life are you still performing remorse?
The unnecessary apology before the recommendation. The "sorry, this might be a silly question." The "I might be wrong, but…" before stating something you absolutely know.
Every one of those moments is you negotiating with yourself about whether you have the right to be in the room.
The Tolas of the world stopped negotiating a long time ago.
That's not a personality trait. It's a practiced posture. It can be learned.
I have something I'm building specifically for women who are ready to stop performing remorse and start operating like the women they're trying to become. More on that in the coming weeks.
Before you go…
Which unnecessary apology do you catch yourself making most often?
Reply to this email and tell me. I read every response.
Talk soon,
Cheers To Your Next Chapter,
Coach FAA
PS: In my last email, I asked you to reply with the number that best described where you're getting stuck with executive presence.
One of you replied with #4: "I soften my expertise too much."
If that was you (or if you saw yourself in that answer), here's what I want you to try this week:
Stop cushioning your expertise.
Instead of saying, "I could be wrong, but maybe we should..." say, "Based on what I'm seeing, I recommend we..."
Instead of, "Just an idea..." say, "Here's the approach I'd recommend, and here's why."
Notice the difference?
Executive presence isn't about sounding certain all the time. It's about owning your perspective instead of apologizing for it before you've even finished the sentence.
Your job isn't to make your expertise feel smaller so other people feel more comfortable.
Your job is to make your expertise easy to trust.
Forward this newsletter to a woman who walks into rooms apologetically and shrinks herself to fit. She needs to read it.