Here is an excerpt from an article written by John Beeson for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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If you ask a group of managers who aspire to the C-suite what it takes to get there, they’ll invariably mention executive presence, but they aren’t always so clear about what it means. Not too long ago I conducted a series of off-the-record interviews with senior executives responsible for executive placement in their organizations. I asked them about the “make or break” factors they consider in making C-suite promotion decisions. Executive presence was one of the handful of decision criteria they cited, but even these experienced executives struggled to define what it is and why one person has it and another doesn’t. In an increasingly diverse world where senior executives are no longer all 6 foot 2 inch tall males who look they were sent from central casting, what does it take to create a commanding executive presence? The right clothes? A firm handshake? Those matter, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Although executive presence is highly intuitive and difficult to pin down, it ultimately boils down to your ability to project mature self-confidence, a sense that you can take control of difficult, unpredictable situations; make tough decisions in a timely way and hold your own with other talented and strong-willed members of the executive team. If that’s the nub of the issue, what style, what behaviors combine to signal that level of self-confidence to others? For some answers consider three talented managers — two of whom didn’t make it to the executive level and one who did.

Every manager would love to have a Frank Simmons on his or her management team. Experienced, results oriented, collaborative, and committed to the company, Frank showed up on succession lists for a number of years — but was never promoted. Although a top performer in his area, Frank always looked a little rumpled and his posture was a bit hunched. When he made presentations to the executive team, he was invariably well-prepared, but his lack of comfort was evident in his body language. Normally highly articulate, his presentations were long-winded and rambling. In the Q&A portion of his presentations, he tended to be overly deferential to members of the executive team, and he was hesitant to insert himself into the conversation when the executives got into a debate. As one senior executive said privately, “Frank’s an incredible asset to the company, but I just can’t envision putting him in front of a customer.”

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To read the complete article, please click here.

John Beeson is Principal of Beeson Consulting, a management consulting firm specializing in succession planning, executive assessment and coaching, and organization design. He is also the author of The Unwritten Rules: The Six Skills You Need to Get Promoted to the Executive Level (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons.). Follow him on Twitter @johnrbeeson. To read more blog posts by John Beeson, please click here.