Originally published on Linkedin September 2019 Pressure. It's a fact of life and it can either make you better or it can crush you. In the corporate world, being great under pressure is often called "Executive Presence." Executive presence is one of those hard to define things, kind of like these other difficult-to-define words: Success. Happiness. Pornography. You get the picture. In my mind, executive presence involves operating from your true nature and being able to handle situations in the moment as they arise, based on a deep reservoir of capability cultivated over time. While it may sound like a contradiction, the people I know with executive presence are both relaxed and energized at the same time. Recently, I stumbled upon an interview with Tim Ferriss, Laird Hamilton and Titus Kinimaka. You can watch it here and if you take the time to watch it, you will see two surfing masters talking to Tim Ferriss, who was just learning to surf for his show The Tim Ferriss Experiment. Pay particular attention to their presence and the way they carry themselves as they talk about surfing. What struck me most as I listened were the principles that they embody. These are very similar to the principles I've observed in the corporate world that apply to executive presence - the very ones I've been learning and teaching for much of my career. Many of these principles are counter-intuitive, yet they apply across multiple domains. In my "top ten" list below, I highlight moments in their conversation that reveal truths of mastery that apply anywhere ...