The Stoic and Buddhist approach to building executive presence

Impediments aren't a distraction in your career; they are the way.

Recently, my teammate and I simultaneously went off camera on a tedious call with a difficult partner. When we later checked in on each other, it turned out that we both felt such rage that we—independently—broke into sets of curls and push-ups off camera.

Unfortunately, we don't always have the presence of mind to go off camera. And, sometimes, we're stuck in a room with nowhere to hide. Without the tools to manage these moments, the tells are visible and can betray a career reputation built over years — in ways that senior leaders with executive presence never seem to do.

Fortunately, two ancient philosophies, Stoicism and Buddhism, have plenty of useful instructions and both arrive at the same counterintuitive conclusion: anger is an emotion that the aggrieved actively creates.

"Choose not to be harmed — and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed — and you haven't been"

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations that anger isn't a product of what happened; it's a product of your judgment of what happened.

His central argument has two parts. First, no one does wrong deliberately. Anger toward someone for who they are is as sensible as being angry at a fig tree for producing figs. Aurelius concludes: "that sort of person is bound to do that." Even those with malice in their heart believe, however misguidedly, that they are acting correctly. Second, and most importantly, whatever wrong has been done to you has not removed your fundamental freedom in life: to choose how to respond.

"So other people hurt me? That's their problem. Their character and actions are not mine... They haven't diminished your ability to choose."

From there, Aurelius concludes that the people who obstruct you are not detours from your path; they are the path: "the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

He continues by saying that the slights that feel most damaging are actually powerless against you unless you choose to carry them. "Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so."

A modern embrace of Aurelius's point was well exhibited by Amanda Knox, who was held in prison for four years and constantly smeared by the media after being wrongfully accused of murdering her roommate. As she explained in her recent book tour for Free, she saw herself as having a choice: to endure the slings and arrows thrown at her, or to end her life. Because she chose not to end her life, her conclusion of her awful trials was the wise mantra: "I choose this".

The through line is consistent: anger isn't strength, it's yielding to weakness. And, practically speaking, it breeds the social isolation that is one of the surest routes to both professional and personal diminishment.

"How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?"

Buddhism arrives at a similar place through different reasoning. The Four Noble Truths hold that suffering is caused by craving, attachment, and desire and that relief from suffering comes from recognizing and withdrawing the mental energy that feeds this cycle.

In The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh describes this as refusing to ingest the 'spiritual food' of negative reactions. "Meditation and mindfulness of the present moment/activity is the path to both quitting the mind of creating its own suffering and of finding the peace necessary to uncover... what physical or spiritual thing you are ingesting that has caused the suffering." Feeding negative feelings is watering their roots; without water, the feeling will wither.

The author & illustrator apologizes to Jerry Colonna. This over-simplistic characterization of him is a cheap attempt to get a laugh.

The practical question this raises was put most directly by executive coach Jerry Colonna: 'How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?' It's an uncomfortable question precisely because this type of reflection often reveals self-destructive behaviors.

I'm prone to getting angry when I feel my team is put at risk. What I now try to acknowledge is that: the threat of negative change is a natural element in the corporate world, that I have the freedom to choose how to react to these threats, and that I and my team will ultimately be okay — even the end of something is the beginning of something else. These thoughts don't eliminate my anger, but they can stop it from taking root.

Hanh further captures the distinction between those who extract value from their anger and those who self-destruct:

When a wise person suffers, she asks herself, 'What can I do to be free from this suffering? Who can help me?...' But when a foolish person suffers, she asks herself, 'Who has wronged me? How can I show others that I am the victim of wrongdoing? How can I punish those who have caused my suffering?' -Thich Nhat Hanh

Hanh's guidance is that awareness is the first step: notice what you are ingesting mentally and honestly examine how you may have contributed to what's provoking you. 'If someone betrayed you, ask why. Perhaps you have watered the seed of betrayal in her.' That may be hard to sit with but, in many cases, it reveals the truth needed to flourish in difficult environments.

The value of difficulty

There's a third perspective that goes even further to illustrate the beauty in frustration and suffering.

Alan Watts, the philosopher who spent his life translating Eastern thought for Western audiences, once gave a talk comparing life to music. He explains that, in a song, you don't skip to the best part. You experience it in order — the quiet passages and the crescendos, the tension and the resolution — because each part is what makes the others meaningful. A life without difficulty has the same problem as a song without contrast. The anger, the obstruction, the frustration: these are not interruptions to a good life. They are part of what makes a full life.

Thornton Wilder's play Our Town makes the same point starkly. In the third act, the deceased are shown watching their living relatives but are no longer able to feel anything: no joy, no grief, and no anger. What's revealed is that the volatility of living, including its most difficult moments, is precisely what made it vivid.

Even a difficult day at work, seen from a sufficient distance, is evidence of being fully engaged with something that matters. That reframe doesn't remove frustration from a difficult colleague, but it allows you to find value in it.

"Bless you" and other tips

A friend once told me that when someone approaches him with anger, he simply says "God bless you", and they become immediately disarmed. If you're the subject of someone's ire, recognizing that they are suffering and responding with kindness rather than defense protects your equanimity as much as it defuses theirs. Anger can't defeat anger, but kindness can.

A colleague offered a different version of the same principle. When she gets frustrated with her kids, she looks at their hands to remind herself how small they are and how little they know. This is an application of what Aurelius argued: consider the whole character of those who frustrate you, not just the specific behavior that triggered the reaction. Most people are doing the best they can with what they have. That doesn't excuse the behavior, but it makes it easier to respond well.

Both of these are small practices. But small practices, applied consistently, are how philosophical frameworks become something more than interesting reading.

Cultivating executive presence through composure

Stoicism and Buddhism arrive at the same destination: Aurelius says anger is a judgment you can choose not to make, while the Buddhist tradition says it's a seed you can choose not to water. Watts says that difficulty is part of what makes the experience worth having. None of them are telling you not to feel anything. They're offering something more useful: a set of practices for what to tell yourself in the moment between provocation and response.

That moment is where professional reputations are made. A leader who responds to a difficult stakeholder with curiosity rather than defensiveness, who can sit with frustration long enough to ask what it's telling them, and who can extend kindness to someone who isn't being kind builds trust in a way that no amount of strategic competence can replicate.

The push-ups were a painkiller. The philosophy is the cure.

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