Women Leading With Grace

January 8-22

Presence. Connection. Results

A straightforward approach with a defined process for leaders and people who look to get themselves heard

How do we build trust in today’s world?

How do we build rapport with our stakeholders

so they take the right action?

There is an essence, a nuance, a simplicity that is often overlooked. Our communication and connection to others is critical to our success, particularly today in a world rife with disconnection, distraction and an often unreasonable pace.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve coached and trained leaders who transition uncertain times of rapid change to lead successfully using their body, mood and language.

I developed and refined a process that I’ve been able to apply successfully with my clients, and I call it “Presence + Impact”.

By undergoing this process as part of my programs, hundreds of people, teams, and organizations have attained their goals effectively by enhancing their leadership through deeper listening and communication.

Hello! I'm Martha

For years, I worked with large global organizations that gave me experience in leadership positions. I was able to discover that leadership and the communication of one’s presence and confidence came from inside and through the body.

To augment my skills, I embarked on a journey of training with Master Teachers in Theatre & Performance, Improvisation, Voice and Movement, and I also in an acting conservatory in New York City.

Take my experience in corporations and combine it with my distinctive performance training, and I bring a unique and unprecedented approach to my clients that deeply transforms the way they lead and achieve results.

Ways to work with me

1:1

Coaching

Corporate Training

Online Courses

Vocal Presence

“We are having to develop a new resiliency, adaptability and the great power to change things, to create things, and to bring more opportunity and joy to others.“

Jacqueline Hobbs

What My Clients Are Saying

“Martha, the morning session was absolutely transformative. The opportunity to share space, movement and breath with others was so impactful; understanding we have a kindred bond to connect with others, to share, to learn was amazing. You helped bring out the best of our selves. I would love to arrange a time for you to visit my campus as I would love to gift a session to women of my inner circle…will be back in touch with you shortly to explore.”
CEO, Healthcare Research

“Martha’s work and her techniques transcend both the professional and personal. She individualizes programs to lead to execution, leadership and team development. Her focus on essential skills trains from C-Suite to entry-level. All of the above is most critical at this time when cultures have to blend “old guard” and millennials and we all need to evolve, communicate and empower for success.”
MD, Financial Services

“I am in a new C-Level role and there is nothing that you and I have done over the years we’ve worked together that I’ve ever done before. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t rely on the skills you taught me to be successful in this role.”
CFO – Pharma Business

“Thank you so much for your coaching session over a year. It was a great pleasure to work with you. I strongly feel that your sessions are very effective and useful for my future career. In addition, most importantly, it was fun!”
Professional Services Firm Partner, Japanese Leadership Academy

“I just completed my third training with Martha Gelnaw and each session builds on one another. The classes are motivational, fun and highly educational and seem to get better each time! Martha is an experienced professional that has help me both professionally and personally. I am a big fan of the Improvisation session because I believe that every sales call is an improvisation. “Feeling my Feet” and “Being in the Moment” are two skills learned in the training that could be implemented immediately.”
Director, Global Pharma Company

“Working in the male-dominated trading floor environment made it hard for me [a woman] to feel recognized. Martha’s use of role-playing situations made it easier for me to introduce myself, assert my ideas in meetings, and gain credit for my work which allowed me to advance in my career.”
Director, Sales & Trading, Global Investment Bank

“I contracted Martha to work with my senior team who was preparing to present at a high stakes internal conference with an audience of 800 during a critical juncture for our practice. She worked carefully with each person to bring out their best, most engaging style and persuasive message. This was no easy task as these were people who are highly technical and not used to exhibiting a compelling stage presence. The results were very good and each person was happy with the outcome from the meeting.”
Senior Project Manager, Big Four Professional Services Firm

“Martha helped me become confident, relaxed, clear and organized – and to come across as an expert willing to help the audience while presenting trade ideas to greater than a hundred clients who had various levels of expertise.”
Director, Sales and Trading, Investment Bank

“I attended a program that Martha facilitated early in my career … [her] coaching has made me more self-aware of my communication style … I attribute the outstanding results to Martha’s deep experience in advising executives at all levels, acting training and sincere interest in seeing everyone succeed. Martha has really made a difference!”
Finance Director, Pharma firm

“I worked with Martha during a time of much change in my career, including a significant increase in responsibility. I realized that having great drive, a creative and strategic mind, and a successful track record were not going to be enough, and that I needed to SHOW my confidence in my capabilities in order to have credibility in my new role. Martha helped me learn how to portray my full confidence, and to have my presence embody my strength. Her coaching and guidance has had a significant impact on my ability to shine!”
SVP, Director, Financial Services

Discover how you can be next success case

Presence and Impact will get you excellent results at managing teams and clients

If you lead a team or manage clients, these might sound familiar:

risk-taking
courage
ability to make teams work
cross-cultural awareness
creative thinking
tolerance for ambiguity
understanding organizational and system dynamics
flexibility, adaptability

Your role demands being persuasive in your communications to clients, stakeholders, team members… And, whilst you’re required to be persuasive, it’s not always that easy.

The programs within Presence and Impact have profoundly transformed the work lives of already hundreds of leaders. They’ve been able to learn how to communicate with a strong presence, command, confidence and credibility, both verbally and non-verbally. And that inevitably led to greater business results.

When leaders maximize their most important assets -leadership, presence and the ability to impact others-, they feel more in control and find that aligning teams and clients comes quickly and naturally.

By the end of the program, you’ll be more persuasive and much more efficient at achieving your team’s objectives and desired results.

Here are some client results…

An Executive Director of Worldwide Strategy was struggling to get the executive leadership team to buy in to a critical initiative.

He was highly intelligent and talented yet possessed minimal self-awareness and demonstrated an excess of nervous/extraneous movement, including pacing, and low/no eye contact when communicating. As a result, he had little connection to his listener.

This was a leader who was charged to inspire confidence and foster organizational change. His lack of awareness of those around him negatively affected his impact on others and how he was being perceived. In addition, he had alienated his team and had not gotten full buy-in from his executive leadership team.

During a corporate training engagement, he gained greater awareness of his behaviors and instead it was emphasized and practiced how he could ground himself and comfortably focus on others in the room in order to observe, project to, and connect with.

With his greater awareness, he lost 90% of the extraneous movement previously exhibited, connected himself and his message to his audience, and was seen as much more powerful and credible.

Post-program feedback from his direct reports was that he has become a better listener, more tolerant of others’ communication styles, more supportive, and more effective in his daily interactions.

A Director for Technology Strategy and Solutions was incredibly passionate, intelligent, and full of important ideas for the success of the business.

The problem was that he lacked a grounded, stable, confident presence. His enthusiasm created excessive movement, an overabundance of words, and a lack of focus. This caused him to lose the clarity of his thesis and the attention of his stakeholders. He lost credibility, and was not taken seriously (having nothing to do with the actual content of his message). The trouble was that his role was dependent upon him interfacing with senior leadership and they had lost respect for him due to his communication style, which lacked a stable/credible presence.

Using learning gained within the Presence + Impact program, he adopted techniques to show himself as strong, self-contained, grounded, and present in the moment.

This executive was finally seen as authoritative, composed, powerful and, therefore, highly credible.

A senior director of worldwide innovation and business development, was called upon to speak at many internal and external conferences, and he had grown to view the audience not as people or individuals, but as a “wall” of inanimate objects. When he spoke publically, he was in effect speaking to a wall, and that is exactly how it felt to his audiences. This defensive routine he had adopted blocked the necessary relationship-building that would ultimately gain him buy-in and get stakeholders to take action on his initiative. He had been charged with the job of bringing a new sustainable business model to the company.

Through working on creating connection, he focused on impacting others through “giving and receiving” communications and rapport building. As a result, he began to comfortably and confidently engage with the people in the room as individuals, not a block wall.

He no longer feared connection with the audience and was able to create an engaging exchange that opened up greater interest in his appeal. His presence grew, his words connected with audiences, his communication had the impact needed to make his case.

An executive who was in line to become CEO was “excessively expressive,” often at inappropriate moments—meaning, he used a big, broad dynamic in all interactions. The current CEO asked he and I work together. His words and actions missed their targets and had no lasting impact. He used his overly expressive dynamic as a smoke screen to real relating. Great fun at a party, perhaps. Not as effective in a real conversation, as it did not build one-on- one rapport. He had received this feedback and needed to address it in order to get promoted.

After selecting applications that connected his inner thoughts, feelings, and motivations with authentic expression, he practiced delivering using “dynamic objectives” – using a spectrum of dynamic options for expression, not just the large, fast ones he had grown accustomed to using.

As a result, he offered that he was now confident that he had the tools to deliver his communications in a much more powerful, focused and connected manner, thereby making him a more effective leader.

A head of Internal Audit at a large financial institution was having daily meetings with internal clients that she termed as highly contentious interactions. She felt that she was not seen as powerful or credible in these situations. She felt blindsided and ill prepared to deal with the level of negative response she was being confronted with.

By practicing the precepts of Improvisation, she became very aware of how frozen and fixed she’d become in her communications, beliefs and manner. This awareness moved her toward letting go of the unsupportive behaviors that were holding her back. She quickly gained greater confidence to react more fully and powerfully in these high-pressure situations.

She was able to connect to her audience more immediately, maintain greater control over the interactions without being fixed in her position, and more deftly move issues in a positive direction. She reported that these interactions were no longer contentious.

A C-level leader in a global professional services firm had recently arrived in this position because of his notable leadership qualities. And, yet, he didn’t fully feel confident and in control. Through coaching it was discovered where he felt at his best. To restore this quality, he asked if we could work to “get my field presence back.” He’d been an athlete in high school and university and he described field presence to be when he had all systems fired up to know what was going on around him 360° whether he was on the court or the field

Our work in physical presence had him return to his field presence. It was integral to leading his practice during an extremely challenging time. I find it interesting that it isn’t only about gaining the respect of others – it’s also about having your own self-respect.

Get your own results now!

Here are some client results…

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is this thing called Presence?

It’s this subtle and powerful aspect of your communication – and is often noticed in you by others even before you speaking a word.

Everyone can find it.

First, and foremost, it’s where you put your attention. The world tells us to embody “Look at me!” What if we were to embody “There you are!”?

When we attend to our presence – a deeper way of listening

– we connect to ourselves and other people in a more meaningful way.

Why be Present?

Our interactions are relational, not transactional.

What happens when we offer our distraction rather than our full attention? We lose the trust of others. To be present is to give attention and to take attention in equal measure. It’s a deeper form of listening.

Why would I want to focus on my Presence?

There are many reasons.

Here’s one: When your body is misaligned with your intention, it creates an incongruence that potentially produces a lack of trust from your listener.

People believe what they see more than what they hear. If an inconsistency incongruency exists, they may not accept what you say as true.

What does it take to have Presence and Impact?

When one become fully connected to one self, then they can connect to another person in a more meaningful way. The coaching and training programs offer you insights and practices to get you there. We work into an ease and comfort and what is authentically you and your unique personality.

The name of the game is connection. We, in our essence, are human beings. We are a species of animal who at the core communicates with others to find safety, security, companionship, community, and trust.

Do you have to be a leader to need Presence and Impact?

Absolutely not. We don’t need to be a leader by title or role. It has nothing to do with rank. To paraphrase Simon Sinek’s What makes a great leader?

“Some sit at the highest level of an organization and they are not leaders. We do as they tell us because they hold authority but we do not trust them.”

He goes on to say: “There are those who are at the lower levels of the organization who have no formal authority but they have made a choice to look after the person to the left of them and to look after the person to the right of them and we would follow them anywhere.

Leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise. Every one of us can choose to be the leader we wished we had. We will lead our teams and our clients when we do everything in our power to see them rise – to see them achieve their ambitions and their dreams.”

I’ve found that people look for the body of a leader. If they don’t find it, they move on.

What’s the difference between Presence and Impact?

Presence is a state of alignment with your physical. It’s a deeper form of listening. Impact is the effect that it has on the listener. It can also have a physical component to it as well.

Why Vocal Presence?

We must get ourselves heard at the back of the room. I’ve noticed that even the most seemingly powerful person can retract their voice in some way. If our listener cannot hear us or experience our resonance and our breath is cut off, they may not have the psychic energy to struggle to tune in. They can simply give up.

What does it look like to work on this?

When you join a course, a class or coaching, you bring your real life, real-time situations. The principles and practices are applied directly to the outcomes you seek. It’s not theoretical nor hypothetical. You are able to take away those applications that work for you. And then you use them over and over again until it becomes second nature.

What would characterize your style?

I don’t do anything unless it involves a measure of fun. I like to say, “It’s not brain surgery.” Why not relax and have fun learning and not take ourselves so darn seriously.

Let's work together!