You've got the boardroom dialled. But what about the networking event? The industry dinner? The school fundraiser where you run into a board member at the cake stall? Most women in senior leadership have a presence strategy for one room and wing every other context they find themselves in.

In this episode, I break down why adjusting how you present yourself for different rooms isn't code-switching, and what frequency tuning actually looks like in practice. Using real client stories and observations from 25 years in corporate, I walk you through how to carry the same identity across every room by choosing which facets of your leadership to amplify depending on what the moment requires.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Most women have a presence strategy for one room, usually the boardroom, and wing every other context. The hallway conversation, the Zoom call, the networking event, and the school pickup are all presence moments that require different things from you.
   
   
2. Code-switching implies becoming someone else. Frequency tuning means choosing which facets of your existing identity to bring forward depending on what the context requires. Your identity stays constant. Your expression adapts.
   
   
3. Locking into one mode across every room isn't consistency, it's rigidity. A boardroom and a school fundraiser require different things from you, and treating them the same creates friction in both.
   
   
4. Your leadership has multiple facets: strategic thinking, warmth, precision, creativity, directness, collaboration. Not every context requires all of them at the same volume. The skill is knowing which to amplify and when.
   
   
5. When your identity is clear, the tuning feels natural. You're not managing the question "how do I need to present myself?" because the answer becomes obvious. Your wardrobe, your tone, and your energy all serve the same foundation.
6. Building a presence strategy across your rooms starts with three steps: get clear on your leadership facets, map your regular contexts and what each one requires, and audit your wardrobe against all of your rooms, not just the one you've optimised for.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - Opening: The Gap Between Projection and Reality

0:31 - Welcome to the Style and Strategy Podcast

0:51 - Leadership Presence Beyond the Workplace

2:08 - It's a Presence Problem, Not a Wardrobe Problem

3:01 - Why Reading the Room Is Not Code Switching

3:31 - Balancing Authenticity and Projecting Style

5:34 - Fine Tuning Your Frequency

6:40 - The Musician Analogy

7:38 - From Jeans to the Executive Table

8:31 - Strategy for Only One Room

10:16 - When Your Identity's Clear, Tuning Feels Natural

10:56 - Map Your Rooms

12:23 - Wardrobe as a System

12:44 - The Masterclass Follow-Up

13:04 - The Real Cost of Not Having a Strategy

13:26 - You're the Same Woman in Every Room

RESEARCH REFERENCED

No external research cited in this episode. Concepts drawn from Sonya's proprietary frameworks and 25 years of corporate leadership experience.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

➡ Find out what is creating the gap between your capability and how your experience is in under 5 mins. Complete the Leadership Presence Gap Assessment here: Assessment

➡ Download the Wardrobe Guide for women in leadership – Get a curated list of must-have wardrobe staples that blend versatility, style, and impact: Guide

➡ Book Your Strategy Call

➡ Find out more about programs and services

CONNECT WITH SONYA

➡ Connect with me on social media

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• Facebook
• Substack

What happens when you've been told to "work on your executive presence" and you take that advice seriously? You learn to project confidence, manage your body language, speak with brevity, dress the part. And it works on the surface. But inside, it costs you something, and the gap between what you're projecting and how you actually feel keeps getting wider.

In this episode, I unpack the difference between performing presence and leading from identity, using a fascinating psychology experiment from Dartmouth and real client examples to show why the old model breaks down. If you listened to episodes 93 and 94, this is where the conversation gets practical: what does it actually look like when you stop performing and start leading from who you are?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. The Dartmouth scar study showed that when people believed they had a visible facial scar (which had been secretly removed), they reported being treated differently. Their expectation shaped their experience, not reality. The same dynamic plays out in corporate leadership when women internalise feedback about their presence.
   
   
2. The performance trap happens when you build presence on tactics without a foundation of identity. You learn to project confidence, but managing the gap between projection and reality drains cognitive energy in every room.
   
   
3. Confidence is built through mastery experience, not projection. Bandura's self-efficacy research confirms that the most powerful source of confidence is successful action, but you need self-trust to take the action in the first place.
   
   
4. You cannot fix the external components of presence without addressing internal clarity first. A stylist can dress you. A communication coach can sharpen your delivery. Neither will hold without understanding how you're naturally designed to lead.
   
   
5. Identity-first presence changes three things: your morning gets simpler (wardrobe becomes a tool, not a daily decision), your conversations change (preparation is about content, not performance), and the gap between rooms closes (you're the same person in every context).
   
   
6. When presence comes from identity rather than performance, it sustains without the energy cost of constant recalibration.

TIMESTAMPS

• 0:00 - Opening: The Gap Between Projection and Reality
• 0:25 - Welcome to Style and Strategy Podcast
• 1:10 - The Dartmouth Scar Study
• 2:41 - Corporate Version: Executive Presence Feedback
• 3:27 - Putting On vs. Leading From Identity
• 4:52 - The Founder Who Rated Herself a 3/10
• 6:18 - The Three Components of Leadership Presence
• 7:23 - Style Serves Identity
• 9:19 - What Changes When You Lead From Identity
• 10:49 - The Scar Study Revisited
• 12:11 - Where the Real Work Begins

RESEARCH REFERENCED

Kleck, R.E. & Strenta, A. (1980). Perceptions of the impact of negatively valued physical characteristics on social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 861-873.

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215.

LINKS AND RESOURCES

➡ Find out what is creating the gap between your capability and how your experience is in under 5 mins. Complete the Leadership Presence Gap Assessment here: Assessment

➡ Download the Wardrobe Guide for women in leadership – Get a curated list of must-have wardrobe staples that blend versatility, style, and impact: Guide

➡ Book Your Strategy Call

➡ Find out more about programs and services

CONNECT WITH SONYA

➡ Connect with me on social media

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Substack

Every senior woman I work with says some version of the same thing: "I know I need to work on this, but I'm so busy." The busyness is real. The workload is real. But what most women don't realise is that busyness isn't a neutral holding pattern. Every week you show up without strategic intent, the perception people have of you is hardening. The "safe pair of hands" label, the "reliable executor" reputation, those calcify into how people read you.

In this episode, I name the busyness pattern for what it is, share the research on why perception doesn't wait, and give you a five-minute starting point that breaks the cycle. This episode is for the senior woman who rates her capability at eight or nine and her presence at three or four, and keeps telling herself she'll get to it when things calm down.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. The gap between capability and presence widens while you wait. Perception isn't static. First impressions and early labels shape how people interpret everything that follows (Asch, 1946; Sullivan, 2019).
   
   
2. Delivering is safe. Positioning is vulnerable. For women who've built careers on output, claiming space through presence instead of performance feels like a risk. Busyness becomes the acceptable reason to avoid it.
   
   
3. Unintentional signals are still signals. Research on the Red Sneakers Effect (Bellezza, Gino & Keinan, 2014) shows that deliberate nonconformity signals status and competence, but only when it's perceived as intentional. Showing up without strategic thought sends the opposite signal.
   
   
4. The "safe pair of hands" perception calcifies over time. The primacy effect means early impressions carry disproportionate weight. The longer the "reliable executor" label sits, the harder it is to shift.
   
   
5. Working on your presence doesn't require a sabbatical. The first step is diagnostic: naming where the gap between capability and how you're experienced is actually showing up. That takes five minutes.
6. Clarity comes before the wardrobe. The first thing that changes isn't what you wear or how you speak. It's your ability to articulate who you are as a leader and how you want to be experienced.

TIMESTAMPS

• 0:00 - Opening: Strategic Presence
• 0:28 - Welcome & Introduction
• 1:24 - The Capability vs. Presence Gap
• 2:20 - When Busyness Becomes the Problem
• 4:04 - Three Women, One Pattern
• 5:53 - The Primacy Effect
• 7:56 - Deliberate vs. Unintentional Presence
• 9:04 - Breaking the Cycle
• 10:21 - Identifying Your Gap
• 12:11 - Take the Leadership Presence Profile
• 12:19 - Final Thoughts

RESEARCH REFERENCED

• Asch, S.E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41(3), 258-290.
• Sullivan, J. (2019). The primacy effect in impression formation: Some replications and extensions. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(4), 432-439.
• Bellezza, S., Gino, F. & Keinan, A. (2014). The red sneakers effect: Inferring status and competence from signals of nonconformity. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(1), 35-54.
  

LINKS AND RESOURCES

➡ Find out what is creating the gap between your capability and how your experience is in under 5 mins. Complete the Leadership Presence Gap Assessment here: Assessment

➡ Download the Wardrobe Guide for women in leadership – Get a curated list of must-have wardrobe staples that blend versatility, style, and impact: Guide

➡ Book Your Strategy Call

➡ Find out more about programs and services

CONNECT WITH SONYA

➡ Connect with me on social media

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Substack