What Leaders Can Learn from Alicia Keys About a Powerful Presence
Janet Ioli
Top-rated Executive Advisor, Leadership Coach & Speaker | Career Strategist for Women Leaders
Sunday, January 26, 2020 was to be a challenging night for whoever would be the host of the annual Grammy Awards scheduled for that evening.
Just less than a week earlier, the recently ousted Recording Academy President & CEO, Deborah Dugan, filed a sexual harassment and discrimination complaint against the Academy. Some of her statements cast questions about the overall integrity of the entire organization, including the validity of the Grammy awards themselves.
Then on the morning of the scheduled Grammy awards event it got worse. The legendary basketball star Kobe Bryant was killed in a tragic helicopter crash along with his 13-year old daughter and seven other people traveling with him. The world was shaken—saddened at the tragedy and humbled at the somber reminder at the fragility and brevity of human life.
Among this simultaneous controversy and tragedy, a black cloud formed over the upcoming Grammy awards event. Was this really the time to celebrate and give out awards? The heavy mood and energy thrust the participants into a complex dilemma—how do we move forward in the midst of this heaviness and grief? It seemed meaningless and trite to facilitate a conversation on the red carpet with Arianna Grande or Gwen Stefani on the designer of their outfits in the reality check aftermath.
Should the event be cancelled?
How could we move forward as nominees, attendees, and viewers of the event and not feel insensitive or, superficial?
Enter Alicia Keys, the Grammy host for the evening. She used the power of her presence as a vehicle to hold our collective emotional weight, lift us up, and lead us forward. Just the sheer impact of her presence on that stage created a safe, real, and potent container for our souls to hold the conflicting and unharnessed emotions swirling amok. Her choice of words and heart-centered transparency inspired the room to raise their energetic vibration to one of healing positivity. It reminded everyone why they were making music in the first place—not for awards or fame but to tell human stories that unite us all in a common experience, one song at a time.
Here are three things she did as the host leader of the evening that tapped into the full power of her leadership presence.
1. She acknowledged the unspoken feeling tone and made space for people to acknowledge their feelings
Alicia walked out on stage and didn’t start reading a teleprompter. She didn’t act as if nothing had happened, or make a quick remark to brush it off. She didn’t proceed with business as usual. She instead acknowledged what had just happened that day and the collective feeling. “We all are feeling heartbroken”. She honored the feeling with a tender tribute and asked people to take a minute to feel and acknowledge their own grief for themselves.
She also briefly acknowledged the negativity that had bubbled from what had happened the previous week and in our nation as a whole. She didn’t avoid the tone, ignore it, or brush it off.
2. She inspired people to connect to a mission greater than themselves and move forward
After the sincere acknowledgement, she connected and grounded them back to their greater purpose. She reminded everyone of the music that united them all, and that they would move forward to do what they were all here to do. She highlighted individuals in the audience and the talent and contribution they were making. And finally, she told them that they were going to raise their collective vibration out of negativity into a positive and healing one together by choice. She shifted the energy in the room just by the power of her sincere words and clear, luminous energy emanating from her presence.
3. She didn’t make it about her but focused on what was needed from her to serve in the moment
It was clear that Alicia was not focused on herself. The evening was not about her. It was about being a facilitator, conduit, catalyst, and servant leader. She drew not upon her ego and what would make her look good to others, but instead accessed a deeper source of grounded, heart and soul-powered service. In a song she wrote for the early part of the show, she reassured the audience. She gave them confidence that as the host of the evening, she was going to help lift them up and lead them through the muck they were experiencing.
A powerful leadership presence doesn’t come just from wearing the right clothes, looking good, and reading a carefully crafted script. Those things may serve as the polish, but they aren’t the source.
A powerful leadership presence like the one modeled by Alicia Keys as host of the Grammy’s comes from accessing a firmly grounded, pure, real, raw, and luminous place deep inside of yourself. This is a place separate from your ego, divorced from fear, and connected to everyone around you. A place of unity, inclusion, empathy, strength, courage, and service. It is there for you to access every single moment, with each choice you make. What you think, what you say, what you do, and how you make people feel creates what it is like to be in your presence.
We can all learn a lesson about power presence from Alicia Keys.
Your thoughts, words, and actions create your reputation as a leader, and the story of what it is like to be in your presence. My work with leaders focuses primarily on creating your most powerful presence. I help you define and access the thoughts, words, and actions that are in alignment with your most powerful self— and maximize the impact you have in the world. Check out my books, blog posts, articles in Forbes or Thrive Global, or my regular videos that all serve you on your quest to embody your most powerful presence.