What the heck is Professional Presence?

Many accountants have the technical skills and acumen to rise to the top of their organizations, however, their careers are made or limited by a somewhat elusive set of qualities that can collectively be called “professional presence”.  Professional presence is a combination of verbal and non-verbal abilities that are recognized as a poised, authentic communication style, particularly in spontaneous or impromptu interactions.  This kind of “style”, however, is not superficial - it is critical to your productivity and effectiveness. Some might call this leadership style, but it goes beyond that.  Even when you are not leading - even when you are at the beginning of your career and doing a lot of following - clients and coworkers notice your ability to handle situations.  What you say and do, how you react, all become part of your professional identity.

The Accountant's Dilemma

Like other technically trained professionals, accountants often have a "bait and switch" experience.  As you pursue your career you learn an essential fact: what gets you hired is not necessarily what gets you promoted. After diligently studying accounting systems, auditing, FASB's, costing methods - the technical canon of your profession - you will find that, while "hard skills" are always necessary, beyond the entry level what becomes increasingly important are the "soft skills": talking to clients, salesmanship, presentations, conflict resolution and team management.  Even at the entry level, effectiveness in accounting and consulting is determined by the confident communication of ideas, and of course, to get that entry level job you have to sell yourself - yet another application of soft skills. Unfortunately, most accountants have not trained in these skills so they are left to their own instincts, with quite variable and uncertain results.

The Big Four

What are the toughest situations for accountants?  Most of the answers you get to this question can be grouped into the "Big Four".  No, we are not talking accounting firms here! We are talking about the four most challenging areas of professional communication: networking, interviewing, impromptu speaking and creative team leadership.  All four of these determine your effectiveness on the job and your career progress, yet how do you learn them?  Mastering these areas requires professional presence, but then how do you learn THAT?

The Business School Dilemma

Truth be told, business schools find it easier to teach hard skills than soft skills. Every B-school has a course in Intermediate Accounting, but how many offer "Networking for the CPA"?  Probably none. Presentations classes are useful for organizing ideas and  connecting with audiences, but that is only one communcation mode among many.  The challenge you face is that most business interactions are not completely rehearsed, they are to a large measure spontaneous - you show up, you do your best, you learn from others, and from your own mistakes (and hopefully those mistakes are not too big!). Learning this way is an organic process and therefore very difficult for business schools to train.    

On-the-Job Training Before the Job?

This is an unusual kind of course: a workshop practice space for spontaneous, professional interactions. Accountants can profit greatly from the training received by some of the world’s experts in spontaneous, creative communication: improvisational theater actors.   Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the bestselling book, Blink, identified the improv actor as a model of the poised, sophisticated and infinitely adaptable speaker.  “Spontaneity isn’t random”, he said, “how good people’s decisions are under the fast-moving, high-stress conditions of rapid cognition is a function of training and rules and rehearsal.”  The Professional Presence course is an adaptation of improvisation training to the business world. 

Goals & Structure

Using workshop exercises of graduating difficulty, this course creates a safe laboratory for students to experiment with the elements of their own professional presence.  This is a “presentations course” in the sense that we study how you present yourself in a variety of professional communication modes: networking, interviewing, creative team leadership and impromptu speaking situations, like client interactions or panel discussions.  

The class is 90% experiential workshop with readings of relevant literature.  Our exercises come from my experience in public accounting, consulting, executive coaching and improvisational theater.   Immediate application in the "real world" and reflections on those applications are an integral part of the course.

Office of Accounting Information Systems
Department of Accounting
University of Illinois at Chicago

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