Course Preview | Executive Presence and Influence from Wharton Executive Education
3:39 min
31
Hello everybody, this is Mike Yuseim. I'm on the faculty at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and our topic is going to be executive influence and presence. I studied leadership, I study governance, I study management. I teach in all 3 of those areas. And to sum up those 3 areas very briefly, I think we, we would all agree that we need more of that leadership piece.
We need more management and we need better governance and just about any organization, including your own. And that's why Kate Massey and I are focused in in particular on this dual topic or this 2 sided agenda of looking at your leadership influence and your leadership presence.
Kate, I'm going to bring you into the conversation. Thank you, Michael. Kate Massey, practice professor here at Wharton in the Operations Information and Decisions group. I studied decision making. That's what my PhD is in. That's my original research interest. And early on in my career I kept my distance from influence and power and politics. I figured that was for people who weren't good at their job. But I've discovered as I went along, and especially as I started working with industry, that it didn't matter how good my advice was. It didn't matter how good my models were. Even when I had the best data in the world, it didn't matter unless I could convince others to come along with me. And that got me real interested in this issue of influence.
I hope for people to make better decisions, but it's all for not unless they can convince others to go along with them. So since I've been award and I've been teaching influence, I think I'll be teaching it for the rest of my life. I can we can all get better at it until the last week that we're working and I'm excited to spend a little time with you, Mike, talking about this stuff. It's a great partnership with you. I've loved watching your lectures in this class, and I think this leadership and presence combination with influence is extra powerful. OK, let me ask. Let me add to what you have just said in particular around this issue of the vital importance of influence and presence.
If we take a step back from our kind of active focus now on these 2 topics and focus more generally on the context of people making a difference in the lives of other leading others, maybe the residents of the community could be the employees of the company, could be the citizens of a country. We're going nowhere with that leader. If that leader doesn't have a vision and a strategy to go with it and an ability to bring those ideas to life, call that execution. That said, I don't think anybody can move anybody else 's needle or draw people to the agenda that has been stepped forward if they don't have a presence, literally almost a physical and metaphorical presence in the minds of others, number one.
And number 2, that vision and that strategy to go with it and the execution of it is unequivocally not going to come to life if there's not an ability to influence others to have them join you on that, that long March. So it took me a while, OK. And I think you're in the same category to appreciate how vital presence is. You've just said the same thing for Influence.
I look forward to working with you on the 2 topics because they go together and they are a foundation of moving the needle. Thank you, Mike. Also looking forward to it.
We need more management and we need better governance and just about any organization, including your own. And that's why Kate Massey and I are focused in in particular on this dual topic or this 2 sided agenda of looking at your leadership influence and your leadership presence.
Kate, I'm going to bring you into the conversation. Thank you, Michael. Kate Massey, practice professor here at Wharton in the Operations Information and Decisions group. I studied decision making. That's what my PhD is in. That's my original research interest. And early on in my career I kept my distance from influence and power and politics. I figured that was for people who weren't good at their job. But I've discovered as I went along, and especially as I started working with industry, that it didn't matter how good my advice was. It didn't matter how good my models were. Even when I had the best data in the world, it didn't matter unless I could convince others to come along with me. And that got me real interested in this issue of influence.
I hope for people to make better decisions, but it's all for not unless they can convince others to go along with them. So since I've been award and I've been teaching influence, I think I'll be teaching it for the rest of my life. I can we can all get better at it until the last week that we're working and I'm excited to spend a little time with you, Mike, talking about this stuff. It's a great partnership with you. I've loved watching your lectures in this class, and I think this leadership and presence combination with influence is extra powerful. OK, let me ask. Let me add to what you have just said in particular around this issue of the vital importance of influence and presence.
If we take a step back from our kind of active focus now on these 2 topics and focus more generally on the context of people making a difference in the lives of other leading others, maybe the residents of the community could be the employees of the company, could be the citizens of a country. We're going nowhere with that leader. If that leader doesn't have a vision and a strategy to go with it and an ability to bring those ideas to life, call that execution. That said, I don't think anybody can move anybody else 's needle or draw people to the agenda that has been stepped forward if they don't have a presence, literally almost a physical and metaphorical presence in the minds of others, number one.
And number 2, that vision and that strategy to go with it and the execution of it is unequivocally not going to come to life if there's not an ability to influence others to have them join you on that, that long March. So it took me a while, OK. And I think you're in the same category to appreciate how vital presence is. You've just said the same thing for Influence.
I look forward to working with you on the 2 topics because they go together and they are a foundation of moving the needle. Thank you, Mike. Also looking forward to it.
