|CHAPTER 11|
Act As If
“If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.”
—WILLIAM JAMES, psychologist
“I said, ‘I don’t think I can give you that kind of emotion.’ And he [Hitchcock] sat there and said, ‘Ingrid, fake it!’ Well, that was the best advice I’ve had in my whole life.”
—INGRID BERGMAN, actress
What’s the opposite of executive presence?
Executive absence. Here’s what absence sounds like if, for example, you’re giving a presentation. You begin with excuses:
“I’m not very good at this,” you might say. “And I didn’t receive the PowerPoint slides until a few minutes ago, and right after that, the entire left side of my body went completely numb.”
The message: “Audience, don’t expect too much. In fact, let’s not focus on you at all. ...
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