Your cart is empty.
Keep shopping
Executive Presence: Confidence, Credibility and Impact
2,518 students
Executive Presence: Confidence, Credibility and Impact
executive presence | leadership communication | executive communication | confidence at work | credibility | gravitas
Last updated 9/2026
English
English [Auto],
What you'll learn
- Name the specific competencies executive presence is built from, instead of guessing
- Notice your own reaction before it becomes the thing you say
- Read the scale you are being assessed against in a high-stakes conversation
- Ask questions that make you look like the most prepared person in the room
- Communicate to people who are not in the room and be understood the same way
- Facilitate a group where several participants outrank you
- Adapt your leadership style to the person rather than to your own comfort
- Say no to a request without damaging the relationship or your standing
- Learn alongside Mike's 1.6 million students from 185 countries
- Get the author's experience from Preply, Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank
Explore related topics
Course content
15 sections • 40 lectures • 20h 15m total length
Requirements
- Regular contact with people more senior than you, or a team that reads you daily
- No prior training in communication or leadership required
- Willingness to hear how you actually come across, including from a recording
- English at intermediate level or above, since all lessons are in English
- Honesty about which rooms you go quiet in
Description
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
Executive presence gets described as something you either have or you do not. It is actually about fifteen specific behaviours, and every one of them can be named.
Why the vague version of this advice fails
People are told to be more confident, more strategic, more visible. None of that is actionable, so nothing changes, and the person concludes it is a personality problem. It usually is not. It is that they have never been shown the list — which competencies senior credibility is actually assembled from, what happens in their body two seconds before they speak, what scale they are being read against in a high-stakes room, and why the same argument lands differently depending on who is facilitating. I spent years assuming the people with presence knew something I did not. They mostly had specific habits.
What this course actually covers
Six blocks, from the inventory to the room. First, the competency map: which behaviours make up professional credibility, from listening and influence to accountability, ethics and admitting a mistake without losing authority. Second, the internal layer — noticing your own reaction before it becomes your answer, the effect you have on a group, and changing a communication habit rather than masking it. Third, the assessed conversation: how high-stakes assessment is designed, the scorecard, how bias is controlled, and how the final comparison is made. Fourth, communicating to people who are not in the room — audiences, channels, bad news, and measuring whether the message landed. Fifth, facilitation: preparing, running and closing a session where several participants outrank you. Sixth, leadership itself: matching style to person, motivating from task to feedback, inspiring a team, and saying no.
A note on the material
Eighteen of the thirty-eight lessons were recorded inside a people-management frame: competency models, interviewing from the assessor's side, internal communications from the function that owns it. That works in your favour here. Competency models give the one thing generic advice never does — an actual list of what presence is made of. And seeing an assessment conversation from the assessor's chair tells you the scale you are read against.
Who is teaching this
I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.
What is included
Lifetime access to all 38 lessons
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
A Udemy Certificate of Completion
Working material: the competency inventory, the STAR structure and scorecard, message templates, the facilitation agenda, the leadership style model
Practical exercises you run on your own next meeting rather than on a case study
Where to start
Record yourself in your next team meeting, audio only, and listen to two minutes of it. Whatever makes you wince is the specific thing this course works on, and it will not be your personality. Enrol now and start today.
Who this course is for:
- Senior specialists who are competent and somehow not counted as senior
- Managers stepping into rooms where everyone else is more experienced
- Leaders whose message is right and lands flat every time
- Professionals told to be "more strategic" without being told what that means
- People who present well one-to-one and disappear in a group of eight
- Team leads about to sit on their first hiring panel or leadership meeting
- Anyone who has watched a weaker argument win because of who delivered it