AI Can Write Your Words. How Will You Show Up in the Room?
AI can help you prepare the email, presentation or talking points. But when the stakes rise, your presence shapes how you communicate, make decisions and earn trust.
12 questions · About 3 minutes · Free · Personalized pattern read
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Your presence is already communicating. The question is whether it's communicating what you intend.
Accomplished leaders rarely struggle because they lack expertise. The challenge is what happens internally under pressure.
Under pressure, internal patterns can shape how you communicate, make decisions and respond, and that is what others experience as your leadership.
Presence by Design helps leaders recognize those patterns and deliberately change how they respond.
- Not seeing the issue objectively.
- Moving too quickly.
- Second-guessing.
- Avoiding tension.
- Trying to control the outcome.
- Becoming reactive.
- Losing clarity when the stakes rise.
Presence isn't charisma, appearance or public speaking. It is how you process a moment, and it is trainable.
The core mechanism of the Presence by Design Method™
Every high-stakes moment runs through this chain. Something happens. You interpret what it means. That interpretation shapes your response, and your response shapes what others experience from you as a leader.
Greater objectivity creates space in that chain. It lets you respond to what is actually happening, rather than automatically reacting to what you believe the moment means about you. That difference shows up in how you communicate, decide and lead.
See what happens to your presence when the stakes rise.
Most leaders know how they want to show up. The more revealing question is what happens when they're challenged, uncertain, overlooked or under pressure. In 12 questions, the diagnostic identifies the pattern that takes over in real conversations and what it is costing you.
- Your primary pattern: the specific way friction shows up in your high-stakes meetings
- How the pattern plays out, based on the moments you identified as most familiar
- Why it matters: the concrete cost of leaving the pattern in place
- One practical action for your next meeting, plus a full results page you can return to
12 questions · About 3 minutes · Free · Personalized pattern read
The diagnostic is the starting point of the Presence by Design Method™: understand the pattern first, then learn how to change it.
Built for leaders who already know how to lead, and want to be more deliberate about how they're experienced.
- Executives and senior leaders
- Founders and business owners
- Advisors and financial-services leaders
- Leaders stepping into greater visibility or responsibility
- Leaders navigating growth, change or high-stakes decisions
- High-performing professionals whose expertise has outpaced their intentional development of executive presence
Kathryn Ficarra
Executive Leadership Advisor | Creator of the Presence by Design™ Method
Two decades leading organizations as a Vice President across media, gaming, technology and consumer brands. Built high-performing teams, led through rapid growth and acquisitions, and advised executives making decisions under pressure.
Presence by Design came from one question: why do smart, capable leaders sometimes create confusion instead of clarity?
The answer was not competence. It was awareness. Kathryn is the author of Presence and speaks and facilitates for executive audiences nationwide.
Presence
The Currency of Modern Leadership
A leadership book about the internal work that shapes how executives are experienced in the moments that matter. Written for leaders who want presence to be deliberate, not accidental.
"Kathryn has a rare ability to unpack something leaders often feel but struggle to name. Her approach gave me a clearer understanding of how I was being experienced and what needed to change."
Ready to see what happens to your presence under pressure?
Take the Executive Presence Under Pressure Diagnostic12 questions · About 3 minutes · Free · Personalized pattern read
“This got me thinking about my perception of situations, as opposed to what the reality might be for how my team is perceiving those interactions.”
“Will help you recenter your focus and understand the reflection each situation you go into, and come from.”
“This is gold.”