Free Executive Presence
Self-Assessment
How a room reads you comes down to two questions it asks within seconds: can this person act, and do they mean me well. This free self-assessment turns that into something you can see.
This free executive presence self-assessment measures three things a room decides about you fast: whether your judgment carries weight, whether you hold attention when you speak, and whether people feel you actually see them. Twelve short questions, about three minutes, no signup and nothing saved.
The dimensions underneath are the ones social psychology keeps returning to. Susan Fiske named warmth and competence as the two universal axes of social judgment. Amy Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, and John Neffinger brought them to leaders in Connect, Then Lead (Harvard Business Review, 2013): every audience is quietly asking what your intentions are and whether you can act on them. Sylvia Ann Hewlett folds that same warmth into gravitas, the center of executive presence.
Order matters. Warmth is the conduit of trust, and without it strength reads as cold. This assessment splits strength into two views, authority and command, and keeps warmth as the third, so you can see which one is carrying you and which one is holding you back.
What it measures
Authority
Whether people trust your judgment and treat your view as carrying weight. Not about being loud or senior. It is whether people listen to your opinion on the things that matter, and whether you say what you think clearly.
Command
Whether the room organises itself around you when you speak. Presence and holding attention: staying steady when challenged, holding the floor without rushing, and stepping in rather than waiting to be invited.
Warmth
Whether people feel genuinely seen by you. The human side beneath the authority: reading what people feel, not only what they say, and staying approachable even when you are being direct. Warmth is what keeps authority from feeling cold.
Authority
Authority is whether people trust your judgment and treat your view as carrying weight. It is not about being loud or senior. It is about whether people listen to your opinion on the things that matter, and whether you say what you think clearly and directly.
Questions about the assessment
What is executive presence?
Executive presence is how a room reads you before you have finished making your case: whether your judgment seems to carry weight, whether you hold attention, and whether people feel you genuinely see them. It rests on two dimensions social psychology keeps returning to, warmth and competence, which Sylvia Ann Hewlett gathers under the term gravitas.
How does this executive presence self-assessment work?
You answer twelve short statements about how you typically show up, rating each from rarely to consistently. You then predict how the people around you would rate you. The result plots both views across three dimensions, authority, command, and warmth, so you can see where your self-view and the room's view diverge.
Is the assessment really free?
Yes. It is completely free, needs no signup, and nothing you enter is collected or stored. The whole thing runs in your browser and takes about three minutes.
What does a high or low score mean?
There is no pass or fail. The point is the shape of your profile: which dimension is carrying you and which one is holding you back. Distinctive presence usually comes from one dimension dialled up deliberately, not from keeping all three even.
Want to work on what your result surfaced?
I coach leaders on exactly this: turning a sound but quiet presence into one a room defers to, without losing the warmth that makes it safe to follow.
Let's talk →