Redefining Executive Presence: Leading With Your True Self With Katherine Lazaruk

In a world that values authenticity, executive presence has evolved to encompass a more genuine and relatable approach to leadership. In this episode, Rosie Zilinskas dives into a transformative conversation with professional presence expert Katherine Lazaruk, who challenges the conventional rules of executive presence by promoting a concept she terms ‘executive being.’ Katherine argues that authenticity and self-expression are more important than conforming to rigid guidelines. She discusses the importance of aligning your inner and outer selves, building character, and making choices that reflect your true essence. Tune in to discover how to redefine your leadership style and lead authentically.

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Redefining Executive Presence: Leading With Your True Self With Katherine Lazaruk

Executive Presence

Have you ever felt like you’re doing everything right in your career but still not getting where you want to go? In this episode, we’re tossing out the old leadership playbook and exploring a new way to stand out. Welcome back to the show. I’m glad you’re here. We will be diving into something that has been on my mind a lot lately. How can you show up as your real self and as an authentic leader without following outdated rules?

In this episode, we will talk about why the old-school idea of executive presence might be doing more harm than good, how you can start showing up as the real you at work, and why reverse mentoring could be the game-changer you didn’t know you needed. By the end of the chat, what I would love for you to have is some principle and practical tips to start leading in a way that feels true to you. No more faking it. That whole fake it until you make it is out the door.

I’m excited to have Katherine Lazaruk with us. Katherine has a fresh take on a professional presence that you’re going to love. I know I certainly loved this conversation. She is all about helping people lead in a way that feels genuine and true to who they are. Katherine has a background in music, education, and coaching. She has the credentials to back it up. She is a certified leadership coach and professional certified coach. She has spent years helping people show up as their best and most authentic selves at work, which is super cool. If you’re ready to rethink what leadership can look like, stick around. This conversation is going to be a good one.

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Katherine, thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing?

I’m well. Thank you for having me. 

I’m excited to talk to you or with you about the executive process being dead. That was one of the things that I have heard you say. You have spoken to my Unlock the Leader Within Membership. That was a lovely conversation, but I did hear you say that the old executive presence is debt. Let’s start there. What do you mean by that? 

What I mean by that is the guidelines or rules of executive presence around speaking low and slow, wearing formal clothes, communicating in a certain way, having a certain look about you, and behaving in a certain way. All of those somewhat rigid guidelines don’t apply at all in today’s leadership landscape. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to pay attention to the way that you’re communicating and how you show up. What’s happening now is finally, I feel the executive presence community is catching up to what I’ve been saying for the last fifteen years, which is to be you. 

It’s interesting because if you read some books on executive presence, you’ll notice that they have the rules haven’t changed. The books they wrote 30 years ago and the books that are being written today say a lot of the same things. What I’m trying to do is come forward with this new idea of executive being. Not executive presence but executive being. Who are you being in the moment? How are you showing up as your whole self and as your real self? 

That can be tough for people who have come up in the corporate world and are very experienced leaders. They have had to learn how to mask, how to be compartmentalized, how to have a poker face about things, and be non-reactive. That has cut us off from the humanity of leadership a little bit. Now, we need to bring that in. That’s what when I say executive presence is dead. 

That makes sense to me. When I used to watch the news when I was a kid, all the anchors were very straight-faced. They were very massive like these suits are buttoned up. Now when I watch the news in the morning, they’re goofing around. They’re having fun and, they try to do goofy contests and stuff like that. To me, that’s almost the analogy between the old executive presence and what you’re talking about, which is being you. Would you agree with that?

I agree. I noticed that it’s important to take important things seriously. It’s important to be playful. We need to find a nice mix between the two of those things. If you are speaking as a leader and you only show your expertise and you’re buttoned up all the time, people won’t respond to you very well. They’ll think you’re cold or they’ll think that you’re arrogant or they tend to think you’re a jerk if you’re only expertise all the time. 

You need to show your humanity and your expertise in equal measure. If you show only your humanity all the time, if you’re oversharing, or if you’re breaking down in front of people without good learning or good purpose behind it, then people won’t respect you as a leader. It’s finding this place of sharing yourself without oversharing and without being too buttoned up. Fine line.

Three C’s Framework

I have been an executive vice president in my past job. I would always say things like, “I cannot share much more with you, but this is what I can share.” It’s trying to also bring in that humanity piece. For so many years in the corporate world, it was almost like, “When you walk in that door, you better leave your suitcase of problems in your baggage out in the hallway because I don’t want to hear it.” Now, a lot of leaders are understanding that they’re dealing with human beings and not robots. That’s how the executive presence is evolving. I know you have a framework, the three C’s of credible presence. Why don’t you walk us through the first C?

I can do that. I want to comment on what you said though about leaders making people leave their baggage at the door. People don’t operate like automatons. Sometimes leaders are afraid of opening that door because they’re afraid it’s going to open a big can of worms and they’re going to end up as a dumping ground for someone’s therapeutic concerns. That’s legit. What they don’t seem to understand or they haven’t quite found the way to do yet is to acknowledge that someone is having a challenge and it might be difficult to work today. 

We’ll allow a little extra time for that or we’ll allow if you need to take a break. It’s understanding what’s happening to make allowances in the schedule or the expected production. For example, I was supposed to have an interview with someone today, and his daughter is in the hospital. Business is not that urgent. Shareholders are not that urgent. We needed expectations to check on that, in business in general. I just wanted to make a point about that.

Framework. It relates to this because you cannot be fully present without being whole and considering your whole self. It’s pretty easy or was pretty easy in the past before social media for people to craft a certain image and show up a certain way in a very narrow window, and for people not to know anything else about them. Now, our world is much more holistic. We’re much more connected. People see you in different contexts in business and elsewhere. When you think about your presence, it starts with who you are.

The first C is Character. Who you are at 4 is who you are at 104. At the core of who you are, your character doesn’t change. The essence of you doesn’t change. Your character is also built by your value sets. How do you move in the world? What kind of person are you? The first thing is to know yourself very well and to know what you like and don’t like. For example, my family is thinking about planning a reunion in 2028 and they’re talking about doing it at a very remote camping location. In my mind, I’m like, “No.” 

Camping does not appeal to me at all either.

Now, if they decided to go ahead and do that, would I? Yeah, I would tough it out. It would be an experience. I would charge it up to experience. I know myself well enough to know that that’s not something that I want to do. In leadership, I know myself well enough to know that I have clients ask me like, “Why are you not a CEO?” I’m like, “I do not want that level of restriction on my life. That’s not my journey.” It’s this understanding of where you are.

I’ve had clients in their character pieces where they are excellent right-hand people. They want to lead but they don’t want to be the one that’s fully in charge. They want to be a supporting person. The character is not only about knowing what you like and don’t like, but also knowing what level you like to operate at and understanding those pieces. That’s a bit of a deep dive into who you are. 

Once you understand who you are, you go to the next step, which is Congruence. That is making sure that whatever is on the inside matches whatever is on the outside. If you say to someone, “This is who I am,” you look like that because we are still a visual species. We still make meaning from what we see visually. It’s very kind to help people understand you before you say anything. It’s nice to have that congruence. If you’re a banker, you’re probably not going to want to dress in long flowing robes and a lot of crystals unless it’s a very progressive bank.

The industry isn’t quite there yet. Some leaders are starting to push the envelope and say, “We need a little bit more reality and more flexibility in our demeanor.” We still have those old frameworks of we take someone seriously when they’re wearing a suit. A lot of our frameworks are based on Cis-heteropatriarchy, a framework we’ve grown up in. A lot of our programming is based around “This is what authority looks like,” or “This is what credibility looks like.”

It is important to consider congruence. What do people expect of you overlapping with who you are? Congruence can take a lot of different forms too. You want to think about maybe you’re not in the right industry if you find yourself being constantly an outlier. Maybe you’re not in the right environment to do what it is you love to do. 

I started my career singing in the opera and teaching in elementary school. Both of those environments weren’t great for me because even though I love to sing and even though I’m good at it and even though I love to teach and even though I’m good at it, those boxes were not the right boxes for me to exercise those skillsets. Congruence is not only about what people expect and who you are but also about the level at which those things overlap. That’s worth doing some thinking about. 

Let me ask you a question about the congruence. What happens if you are in an office space and you don’t fit in? Let’s say that I’m a female who dresses with a ton of color or I wear wigs or whatever it is. People look at me and I feel self-conscious because I can very clearly tell that they’re judging me in some way, shape, or form. Yet you’re still doing an excellent job, but you’re not feeling “at home.” What happens in those situations? 

That plays right into the third C, which is Choice. I always ask my clients when they’re doing something that seems incongruent, “How is that working for you? Are you getting the results you want in the career that you have? Dressing and being the way you are now, do you want to shift that? How much do you want to shift that?” If someone loves to wear color, loves to be out there, or loves to wear wigs, nails, and things like that, maybe the law isn’t for them in a big firm. Maybe they need to be an independent practitioner so that they can represent that wigs, nails, and colorful clothes can also be part of the law. 

There’s always a choice involved in that. The congruence not just finding alignment with your soul and what you like and your world. It’s also the container that you came here in. Whatever container you came here in is the perfect container to do whatever you’re meant to do on the planet. The sooner you make friends with your container, the easier your life is going to roll. When I was singing the opera, I wanted to be the third act princess, “Save me, Prince.” I wanted to be the third-act diva, but I am not. I am the naughty chambermaid. I’m the sidekick. I’m short and I’m a little bit round. I’m funny. I’m not that conventional, tall, and gorgeous. That’s not who I am.

I am perfectly designed to be a good comic relief sidekick. I’m well-designed to be the shit-stirrer. My favorite role to play when I was singing the opera was Despina, who is a chambermaid in Cosi Fan Tutte. She’s the one stirring the pot. She’s the one getting the girls to go along with something. She’s the one who teased. That’s a perfect role for me. 

I suffered because I wanted to be this other thing that is not who I am. Once I got clear on, “This is who I am,” now everything since then has been crafted in my life to fit that and it feels good. What you said earlier was interesting, “I feel self-conscious and I don’t feel good.”That’s a cue for you to make a change of some kind, and then you choose, “How much do I want to buy into the rules and guidelines around me?” 

For example, whenever I’m doing the image part of the work with my clients, everybody has certain colors that look better on them than others. That’s a fact. We all have different colors that resonate with us better. Some of my clients love to be purists about it. They love to stick with it because they feel amazing. Color does have resonance and it does make you feel things. Some of my clients are like, “I don’t want to be restricted by that. I’d like to look at ways to wear more colors and different kinds of things.”

I’m like, “Great. I’ll show you the effect of what those colors look like on you so you can make a decision.” “This isn’t my best color but I love this style. I know this isn’t my best color, but I want to do this with it.” It depends. In my experience, the more congruence you can get with your body shape and your coloring and things, the better you will feel, but not always. This is where that nuance of choice comes in which we don’t often pay enough attention to. Sometimes people get stuck in jobs or they’re in jobs where they think they don’t have a choice. They give away their personal power around it. That’s sad because we always have a choice. 

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When you put on a jacket or something that fits perfectly, you’re like, “I feel like a million bucks in this thing.” Sometimes you put on a sweater and you feel frumpy and you’re like, “I don’t like this.” I’ve been doing a Marie Kondo. When I put something on that I feel like, “I don’t like this,” I’m like, “Goodwill.”

Life is too short to have things in your closet that make you feel bad. Life is too short to have a job that makes you feel bad. It’s too short. 

I love this because it goes into that. Is congruence the same as authenticity? How are those two different?

Authenticity could be under the umbrella of authenticity, but the congruence piece is more about alignment. With character, it is 100% authenticity. Who are you when nobody is looking? In the congruence piece, you take into account your industry, the other external factors, the environment that you grew up in, or the environment that you’re currently in. What you might wear in New York is different than what you would wear here in Vancouver. Vancouver is a super casual city. 

It’s not that you’re not authentic. If you think of yourself as a piece of stereo equipment, you turn the volume up or turn the volume down. You can turn up the level of formality or turn it down, but still be authentic. If I had to be in an environment where I wore a suit every day, I wouldn’t mind, but I would have to wear suits that suit me.

I’d be wearing colors, I’d be wearing patterns, or I’d be wearing different cuts and funky things going on in them. If I had to be in an environment where I had to wear a very conservative Navy suit every day, something in me would die. My soul would be damaged a little bit by having to be in that environment. That’s why I don’t seek out those kinds of jobs.

My daughter is 23 years old and she’s my stylist. She will come shopping with me because she’s like, “Mom, stop wearing blacks, browns, whites, and cardigans.” I had cardigans in all colors. She’s like, “Stop wearing this stuff.” I’m like, “That’s what I’m comfortable.” She’s like, “That’s so old school.” Some of us who have been around the block sometimes need to look at our wardrobe and be like, “This is making me look apart that I don’t want to represent, like an old-style librarian or something.” 

Reverse Mentoring

I don’t want to be an old-style librarian. Not that there’s anything wrong with librarians, but you know what I mean. Sometimes we get stuck in our standard go-to type of clothing. It’s important to have someone like you who can help us with that executive presence. When I think of executive presence, I always like to think of it as leadership magnetism because you’re trying to be a magnet in bringing those people into your stratosphere who are going to help you become the person that you’re trying to become. That’s how I always explain it to my clients and my members. We also can learn from younger people. What can you tell us about reverse mentoring?

I often say to people that if you don’t have a mentor under 30, you’re missing out on the zeitgeist. What happens to people who are over 40 and 50 is we become irrelevant quickly. I’m over 50 now. We don’t adapt our leadership practices to accommodate the mindset of newer people coming in. One of the most common things you hear in the press or whatever is young people don’t want to work. I always say, “They don’t want to work for you because of the way that you’re forcing them to show up, which is ridiculous.”

The eight-hour day is gone. It’s over. There’s enough proof to show that outcomes can be achieved remotely. We’re starting to find the balance between where we need the connection and the face-to-face time with the remote. It is still true that the face-to-face connection gives you a complete picture of somebody in a way that digital cannot do. There’s that. We’re finding the balance of that, but the idea that someone is going to come to an office from 9:00 to 5:00 and they’re going to be there and they’re going to produce, that’s not how it is anymore. That flexibility is a good thing for experienced leaders to adopt.

I was talking to an individual who is older than I am, and they were saying the same thing. They were saying, “These young people don’t want to work.” I was like, “They don’t work according to your values. They’re working according to their values.” You cannot expect a nearing retirement age to have the same thoughts, ideas, and values as a 23-year-old, 25-year-old, or whatever. You’re making them wrong according to your values. I’ve heard this in many different places, “The Millennials are so entitled and they’re lazy.” They’re not. It’s so interesting. It’s crazy.

The other thing that’s an issue is people are saying things based on their experience. The advice that people are offering is not applicable to someone in Gen Z, Gen Alpha, or even some Millennials. The Millennials are 30 years old now? 

I think they’re older. They’re in their late 30s.

The advice that someone is giving about careers like wearing a suit, speaking this way, sucking it up, or coming to work does not apply to their experience of the workplace. The reverse mentoring comes in when experienced leaders stop to listen and get curious about what is your experience in work and what is it that you value.

I’ve met some stellar 20-somethings that honestly have done more. Either their parents must have done a great job of providing an environment for them to be curious and have good self-inquiry and good work ethic at the same time. Some of the personal development stuff that they already know or are already working on are the same personal development things that I have clients in their 40s and 50s working on now. 

I understand more about how humans operate. A lot of our old logic tried to strip away a lot of that. They tried to make us more mechanized. Leaders who are over 50 are going to have this idea of no feelings, move forward, and have that rigid view. It does not apply anymore. People want to see who you are. 

You can’t blame these young people either. It’s like, “Who is putting up with this? Forty to sixty-year-old lawyers and doctors who work 80 hours a week, how can you even physically work? 

It’s crazy. This is the thing too. I know some of the big professional services firms are struggling with this. They’ve had the culture of burn and churn for so long that if you cannot make it, then you’re not tough enough. Who needs to be that tough? Come on. That is not a healthy way to live. I think that some of the values that are coming up behind us are way healthier than our values, the 60 to 80-hour workweek. That’s crazy because then you see the effect of it. 

We had hardworking parents or we were hardworking parents. You see the effect of emotional neglect. They’re now having their my age or whatever that are having to reparent themselves because it’s like, “We missed this whole part of our development.” Our parents believed that they needed to do this and that they needed to provide the physical needs, which is great. Nothing is wrong with that. We’re layering some better things on top now and I feel like sometimes our experienced leaders are missing out on, “This might be a better way to operate.”

In maybe the late ‘70s or early ‘80s, the latchkey kids started coming out. It’s so interesting because we went from this to the old generation. When my grandparents were born, kids were to be silent and not be heard from. Now the pendulum has shifted so far to helicopter parenting and the parent doing everything for the kids, which is also not good.

To your point about those young people that you had experience with, if parents don’t allow our young kids, especially our young girls, to have that critical thinking, then that’s when they go into high school, college, and even the workforce with that lack of confidence and that lack of knowing what they think about something so that they can start building that confidence.

That often goes into this leadership magnetism or executive authenticity because you don’t let them make the decisions and start informing that person. It’s important for everybody, especially parents, to understand that you don’t have to do everything for your kid. They can do it for themselves.

Age-appropriate choice and age-appropriate power is excellent. This is why the Montessori school system is highly valuable. I follow a number of different people on social media, but I’m on TikTok because the micro-learning on that site is amazing. One parenting person that I follow in particular shows her journey with her children. An example is they’re cooking in the kitchen. They have their little kid-size kitchen and they’re doing some cooking in it. 

The cabinet got moved and a glass broke. There are all these people in the comments saying, “Why would you give glass to a child?” She came back and said, “Kids need to know that sometimes things break and sometimes things are fragile and they need a different level of care. When it breaks, this is what you do. Stay safe and clean it up.” It’s such common sense. There’s this practical element of that. 

For any teenager, what is developmentally appropriate for a teenager to be able to do? What kind of choices are they able to make? Where do they need the benefit of the frontal cortex? You can co-regulate them. Kids and people need emotional regulation. How can you be the person who is setting the temperature, not the person who is reacting? 

How can you be centered and be regulated so that you can help other people, whether it’s your children or the people you are reporting to or your managers be like, “We’re going to move through this world calmly. That’s how we’re going to do it, instead of chaotically.” That’s a big piece. You shouldn’t be doing everything for people. People in your work world are adults. In your parenting world, it’s age-appropriate. You’re doing your children a disservice when you overparent them in that way. 

Women In The Corporate World

If you were talking to a woman in the corporate world who is trying to figure out how to get from a place where they feel stuck in their career, they’re trying to advance in their career, and they’re trying to establish themselves more as a leader, even if they were individual contributors, what would you recommend for them to start doing? 

Be more visible immediately. This is one of the things that I work on with clients. I’m thinking of maybe doing a little course on this called Articulate Your Value. What I find sometimes, you might find this with your clients as well, is it’s hard for women in particular to speak about what they’re doing. If you don’t speak about it and you’re not sharing what you’re doing, people don’t think you’re doing anything. 

Visibility is very important, which means when you’re working remotely, you need to show up, have your camera on, and speak up, whether you’re remote or in person. If you’re in person, dress, go to the office, talk to people, and share about your work. One of the most important things that women in particular don’t do is they don’t tie a hard ROI to the work that they’re doing. 

Even on resumes and stuff, I see it when I’m working with clients where it’s like, “I was responsible for this.” Who cares? Nobody cares. You were responsible for it, but what did you do with that responsibility? For example, one of my clients was in finance. She was a senior manager and she wanted to become a director of finance.

We worked on her sound bites and we worked on her resume to reflect, “As a senior manager, I was responsible for month-end close. We reduced the month-end close time from two weeks to five days.” I forget what her exact stat was, but a very specific stat, saving the company X amount of dollars. Being very specific about what it is you’re working on and the accomplishments that you’re doing along the way like keeping your bosses informed of what it is that you’re doing. Visibility is massive.

That’s perfect because, without visibility, you could be working hard, but it may be that your manager does know what you’re doing if you cannot quantify it. If you’re not able to show them how you’ve contributed to the bottom line, when it comes to raises, they’re not going to think of it because you didn’t take the time to put all those numbers together or meet with your manager and say, “I worked on all these projects. These are my five big accomplishments.” Almost make it a point to make them aware of what you’re doing because they’re not going to remember. 

Sometimes I’ve experienced this with clients and I sometimes feel this myself. It’s a little bit of resistance to adapting our way of communicating with our manager. What I mean by that is, “You should know. You should know what I’m doing.” That’s like in a relationship when you say to your partner, “You should know.” Nobody is a mind reader. 

With one specific client, she’s a director who was looking to be a VP. She’s reporting to a VP. The man that she was reporting to is an incredibly linear thinker. She can do linear thinking. She has a great business mind and she makes great business cases. In the one-to-ones, she was describing the situation to me and complaining about it, which is fair. Sometimes I listen to my clients complain about situations. I had to say to her, “You’re not giving him what he wants. Give him what he wants. Go in with an agenda. Go in with your highlights. Go in with your business case for what you think should be done next. Make his life easy. That will be helpful.” 

We had to talk through her emotional reaction to that and her resistance to that. There was always a little bit of projection going on. I find that if someone has a strong reaction to something, there’s either projection or you’re tying it to a historical context. A lot of people often have trouble talking to figures of authority because, for whatever reason, they were criticized as kids.

Sometimes there’s emotional stuff caught up in that. That’s a great thing to unpack therapy. I’m a huge fan of therapy for that.

It’s this idea that if you’re experiencing resistance to something, that’s the place to look and go, “What’s going on here?” Sometimes we need to adapt. Going back to that choice piece in credible leadership, you can choose. If you don’t want to adapt, then you have to accept the results that you get, or you find another environment where they understand you a little bit better. 

It brings a little bit of a tangent thought for me. I’m a podcast host because you’re on the No Woman Left Behind podcast. You and I found each other through Pod Match. Pod Match is like this dating of podcasting. I have a lot of people and now I had my 100th-plus episodes. I’m excited about that, but now a lot of people are applying to be guests on my podcast. It’s funny because sometimes people like yourself, you’re very well prepared. You send me a nice message as to why you would be a good fit and all this stuff. 

Then other people send me a line that says, “Can I please be on your podcast?” For those people who are listening, I delete those because I am not going to do your work for you. I’m tying it to what you said. If I’m the manager, I am not going to manage your career for you. You are responsible for managing your career. If you want me to pay attention, come prepared. That’s the difference. When someone pitches for a podcast and they’re not prepared or they don’t tell me how they’re a good fit and what they’re going to bring for my audience, for my show, or whatever, then I don’t even bother reading those anymore.

That even brings another thought. One of my sisters has always worked for a small company where people would apply. This is in the olden days when people would mail in their resumes. If they mailed a resume and the envelope was handwritten, she would toss it in the trash. She would not even look at it. She would not even open the envelope. I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” She’s like, “It’s an easy way to discard those that didn’t even bother to type the envelope.” That’s like a modern example of what I was telling you about my podcast. 

I have two conflicting thoughts about that. One is it doesn’t take a lot of effort to listen a little bit to somebody’s podcast. Do I like this person? Is this the vibe? Why do I like it? It doesn’t take a lot of effort to do that. When someone says “Can I be on your podcast?” it’s a little bit like an employee going into a manager and saying, “I’m ready for a raise.” It’s like, “Show me what you’ve done. What’s in it for me?” That’s an important thing to consider. 

The interesting thing about the access piece, like where she would toss out somebody’s handwritten anything, I understand the importance of a level of attention to detail. I sometimes want to check my privileges around access. In the example you gave specifically, I understand sometimes we need a way to sort and that’s what happens, which is unfortunate. 

What if somebody typed up their resume and then didn’t have access to a typewriter, but they’re still great at what they do? It’s my own personal little spidey sense that goes, “Hmm.” Sometimes about stopping and questioning the guidelines that we use. I also understand sometimes the need is to adapt to the guidelines. This is a fun exercise that I’ve been doing now for all this time and thinking about how much I want to adapt and how much I need to try to change the system. 

It’s so interesting too because, at the very beginning of my podcast, I try to respond to every single inquiry. I looked at everybody’s profile. As you evolve and continue to grow and now that I have 40 to 50 people applying on a regular basis, I can no longer do that. It’s a whole process of management. Again, it goes back to a leader. If you are trying to get promoted, you need to do the work. You need to show your math. 

You have to. Time will take you a long way, but it won’t take you all the way. There is still personal work and internal work that needs to be done. I don’t know if it’s heartbreaking, but there’s a thing where I see with VP, SVP, RVP, C-suite, and high-level people, where they get to a level of external achievement, and they still don’t feel good about themselves. I’m like, “We have to do the personal work.”

I’m a huge believer in alignment all the way down the line, and congruence all the way down the line, which means that if I have something external manifesting, it’s manifested because I’ve done some of the work. If it doesn’t feel good internally, then what are we doing here? Did you just do it because you were expected to do it? Did you become a radiologist because your parents wanted you to? What do you want to be doing? That’s why I feel like my work is a little bit like soul work. It’s like let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of who you are and how you want to show up because then you can do the work you’re meant to do in the world. You’re not going to be able to do it if you don’t get right with who you are. 

Leadership Communication

I have one last scenario that I wanted to run by you because, in the corporate world, we’re all about results. When I was an individual contributor early on in my career, a manager would walk by the halls and it’s like, “More, better, faster.” They’re kidding but kind of not because they wanted you to do more. They wanted you to do better and they wanted you to produce the work faster.

Especially in large corporations, they are beholden to the stockholders. I’ve always had this feeling that if the leaders, not necessarily the high C-suite leaders, but if the senior leadership would just talk to the people at the desk who are actually doing the work and implementing all of their big ideas that trickle after 5 or 6 levels of leadership. A lot of times, these strategies or the next big thing that’s going to come down the pike, they’re created six levels above you. You never know how that’s going to trickle down. 

The one thing that I always found puzzling was that even as an executive vice president in my old corporation, I was in charge of learning and development for my team. I would always make it a point to try to talk to the people or the individuals. What is your take on that? Going back to my example where I get too many applications now for my podcasts and I cannot sit through them all, how do we reconcile that?

It’s important to listen to your frontline people. I feel sometimes that particularly old-school companies are all top-down like, “Here’s the direction. Do it.” They don’t do a very good job of bottom-up. They don’t do a very good job of understanding that something is untenable or something isn’t working. If there’s a process improvement, they don’t always want to implement it. I think that leaders do need to be regularly taking input from people and not just through engagement surveys because people can say whatever they want on engagement surveys. I don’t think that’s useful.

Boots on the ground, even if it’s once a month. You’re going to go walk around and talk to people and find out who’s doing what and get the scuttlebutt down at the water cooler to connect with people. I know with very large companies, it’s impossible because you have too many things to manage. It becomes 100 times more important for you to be strongly connected to your executive, for your executive to be strongly plugged into their next level down, for the next level of directors to be strongly connected to their senior managers, and for the senior managers to be getting the feedback from the frontline people.

Each level needs to move into lockstep. The people on the frontline need to understand what they’re contributing and why, and what their work means to the company. It’s like, “If you’re doing this chunk of the work, that’s awesome. Here’s how that chunk of work ties into us achieving the larger vision. Here’s how your contribution directly impacts us. Here’s the stuff that you’re responsible for that directly impacts the company, the revenue, how we do it, and our daily work life.”

It’s that tightening up of the relationships in each of those levels, and the tightening up of the communication across the company, up and down, to make sure that everybody is being heard, seen, and valued. That’s why when I wrote my book Executive Being: Humanizing Business One Leader at a Time, one of the things I talked about was bringing this humanity into things saying, “We’re all working towards a vision. This is a normal amount for people to work. If somebody wants to work more or less, if somebody is driven this way or that way, let’s find the right fit.”

In Good to Great, they talked about finding the right seat on the bus for people. That’s important, but it’s also important to find what kind of seat. It’s not all the same set of seats for people. It’s not just putting people interchangeably in and out of seats, but it’s also figuring out what’s the best fit for the people in the company, and how the company needs to change to accommodate the diversity of people that are coming in.

The other thing I see sometimes is companies want people to come that are different thinkers. They’re like, “We can harness this innovation by bringing all these diverse voices to the table.” When the diverse voices come, they don’t stay because the table is uncomfortable for them. You’re not preparing the table for people with their whole selves. In the book, I talk about practices for humanizing yourself as a leader, but also how it works at work. What you need to do to start preparing the table for more different kinds of people to come in and help you grow your vision and grow your work. 

I know your book is coming out in October or so.

It’s in October. It’s available for pre-order now on Amazon.

I already pre-ordered the book, so I’m excited. 

Whoever pre-orders, if you send me a screenshot of your receipt, I’ll make sure that you get in on the bonuses. We’re going to do sign bookplates. You get a bookplate that has the author’s signature on it, my signature. We’re also going to do an exclusive Q&A just for pre-orders. 

I am so excited about that. 

If you want to get the bonuses, you have to do the work. You have to send me a screenshot of your pre-order and then I’ll make sure that you’re on the list for those things. You and anyone else who would like to order. 

Katherine’s Career Journey

That sounds amazing. I’m going to shift the conversation a little bit to your career. You are an image consultant.

I say professional presence expert because that encompasses the image consulting part of my practice and also the executive coaching part of my practice. It’s an interesting intersection. 

I like that. How did you become a professional presence expert? You said you were in teaching before in opera. 

A million different things. 

I don’t want you to go back to when you were born, but how did you make that transition into a professional presence expert? 

I graduated from university. I got my degrees in Education and Music. I was singing in the opera and teaching elementary music in a public school. I’m doing that and I’m freelancing. The farther along I get in those careers, the less I like them because they’re all quite small-box careers. I’m not a very small-box person. I had a lung tumor and figured out that I was getting suffocated. It was very scary. I went on medical leave, and then I quit. 

Six months later, the tumor was gone. I had a job doing corporate training at Price Waterhouse Coopers, which is one of the five big professional services firms in the world. In between times, while I was working on my health and making sure that I was fine, I was working with a coach. He’s an alpha male dude and he was like, “What do you want to be when you grow up, little lady?” It’s so funny because today, I would look at him and say, “You’re fired. Don’t speak to me like that.” 

At the time, I just laughed and he is who he is. I had this weird vision of the first company. It was ICU in a circle, Times New Roman font, silver lettering, and purple background, image consulting. The first tagline I ever used was “Intensive care for your image.” I started to laugh. I’m like, “That’s so silly. That’s not even a real job.” He goes, “No, it’s a real job. You could do that job.”

There’s no regulation in the industry at all. You could hang your shingle out tomorrow and say, “I’m an image consultant,” and nobody would blink because of zero regulation. I thought, “I look all right. I’ve read some books. I’ll get a website and some business cards and start practicing.” That’s what I did. However, I don’t recommend that approach now. Please, anyone who is listening and who wants to think about getting into image consulting or styling, get some training. 

The reason for that is image is such a deeply personal and psychological thing that you can do a lot of damage if you are not highly aware and sensitive to the things that you’re saying and the impact that they have on the people that you’re saying them to. I’m speaking from experience. There were a couple of missteps early in my career where I was like, “That’s not my intended outcome at all.” There’s a piece in there that you need to be aware of. That was then, this is now. That’s what I did. 

When my job ended at Price Warehouse Cooper in the recession, I was like, “This is a great time to start full-time in my image consulting business.” My husband told me a couple of years ago, “When you said you were starting an image consulting business in the recession, I thought you were crazy, but I didn’t say anything.” I’m like, “Good husband.”

I was practicing. I went and got my training. I went and got my certifications in image and advanced image consulting here at the International Image Institute in Canada in Ontario. Karen, who runs that company, liked me. I interned with her and then she liked me. She made me her Western Canada image trainer. For the early part of my practice, I was practicing but also teaching consultants how to be consultants because of my education background, and all my corporate training background. I had that already. She let me do that, which was great.

The further up the chain my clients got, they said, “We want you to come and work with our executive teams. We’re tired of explaining to the people who write the checks that you’re not an image consultant. We need you to change your business name because image consulting was too narrow and the optics on it were not that great.” They’re like, “Why would I hire an image consultant to help me with this communication issue?” I’m like, “That’s what we do.” The perception was tricky. I changed to Lazarus Consulting and now I can do what I like. I’m not bound by any buzzwords or any particular narrowing of any field. I’m doing all kinds of things. 

Actionable Tip

That is amazing. Katherine, you have shared a ton of incredible information with us. If there was one actionable tip that you would leave with the audience, what would that be? 

Go within to go without. 

I like that. Say a little bit more about that, please. 

If you want to have a different external result, you need to do the inside work to make sure that it’s aligned with who you are and what you’re meant to do. Don’t go running around chasing something because it looks good on somebody else. I’m doing some work right now with a woman named Kate Northrup and she’s fantastic. Her mother, Christiane Northrup wrote Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. Kate has her own body of work that’s fantastic. 

I’m doing a course with her right now called Relaxed Money. The funny thing is it’s a lot about being embodied. I was on a call with her yesterday and a fellow named Noah Levy who does publicity and talks about being visible in the media. He said, “You’ve all heard the phrase compare and despair.” What he said was so brilliant, and I highly encourage you to check out both Kate’s work and Noah’s work. It is “observe and swerve.” I’m like, “That’s so amazing. I’m going to use that all the time.” That’s where you see something. You like it or, you don’t like it. You say, “How am I different?” The only way you can do that is if you start to build the confidence and the safety in your body and the safety in your world to get out there. That’s why I say go within to go without. 

I know a little bit about that only because I’ve been doing a lot of meditation over the last few months. I was thinking about the energy centers and trying to clear them up, and clearing the inner wounds because we’re all behaving as adults and little wounded kids or children that we were five years old. You’re right. I love that tip. Katherine, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom, wonderful knowledge, and expertise. I appreciate you. 

I appreciate you inviting me to be here because, without podcasts, there would be nobody for me to talk to.

Wonderful. Have a great day. 

Thank you. You too. 

—

Key Points

I am tickled pink with the conversation I had with Katherine because it was packed with insights. Let’s go ahead and quickly break down the highlights. The very first thing is that we learned that the old idea of executive presence is out. It is gone. It is time to embrace who you are. That’s identifying with who you are authentically and bringing your whole self to the workplace. 

Second, Katherine’s three C’s, which are Character, Congruence, and Choice. They are the new guideposts for authentic leadership in the workplace. Finally, reverse mentoring isn’t just a buzzword. I can attest to this because my kids who are 23 and 26 are constantly teaching me things. I love reverse mentoring. Reverse mentoring is a powerful way to stay ahead in your career and connect with those younger people. 

They learn from you, you learn from them. It’s awesome. Katherine’s quick tip is to go within to go without. She said to start by aligning your inner self with how you show up at work. It’s simpler than you think and it makes a huge difference. If you want to dive deeper into Katherine and all of the goodness that she has to offer you, you can find all of Katherine’s links and resources right on the episode website, including the link to her book, which is Executive Being: Humanizing Business One Leader at a Time.

If today’s chat got you thinking about your own career, don’t forget to take the Promotion Readiness Quiz. It is a fun way for you to see how close you are to landing that next big promotion. If you’re ready to take things to the next level, please check out the Unlock the Leader Within Membership. It is an amazing space to grow, connect, and shine in your career with other like-minded amazing women.

You can grab the links to the Promotion Readiness Quiz and the Unlock the Leader Within Membership right on the episode website as well. Remember, this episode was all about aligning who you are with how you lead. It is a no-brainer when you show up as your true self and everything else falls into place. As always, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.

Important Links:

• Katherine Lazaruk – LinkedIn
• Executive Being: Humanizing Business One Leader at a Time
• Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
• https://LZRKConsulting.com/ – Katherine Lazaruk
• https://www.Instagram.com/katherinelazaruk – Katherine Lazaruk
• https://www.Facebook.com/LazarukConsultingInc – Katherine Lazaruk
• Promotion Readiness Quiz
• Unlock the Leader Within Membership
• 4-Hour VIP Accelerator Bootcamp: https://NoWomanLeftBehind.com/product/career-accelerator-bootcamp/
• Book a Strategy Call with Rosie: https://NoWomanLleftBehind.activehosted.com/f/2

About Katherine Lazaruk

Katherine comes from a performance and education background with bachelor’s degrees in music and education from the University of British Columbia. Katherine holds certificates in Image Consulting and Advanced Image Consulting from the International Image Institute (Ontario, Canada), as well as her second level international designation (Certified Image Professional) with the Association of Image Consultants International (AICI) and two coaching certifications, Certified Leadership Coach (CLC) with Essential Impact and Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation. She helps professional women and men learn to walk, talk, act and look like leaders.