Professional presence is a dynamic blend of poise, self-confidence, control, and style that empowers people to command respect in any situation.
Executive presence centers on gravitas, poise under pressure, decisiveness, effective communication, and appearance.
1. Online
LinkedIn
Use an approachable headshot.
Indicate whether you are actively looking for employment.
Share interests and topics that may not be directly related to work.
Facebook
Use as a secondary professional presence.
Leverage your social network as a professional network when job searching.
Indicate employment history and show pride in your career.
Avoid posting anything you would not want an employer to see.
Email
Proofread messages carefully.
Remember emails are permanent and can be forwarded.
Be thoughtful about who you include on copy to avoid using it as a power move.
2. Phone
Details Matter
Evaluate responses and do not rush.
Monitor voice quality, including volume and clarity.
Be prepared with a list of key items, pen, paper, schedule, and contact information.
Good Manners
Avoid multitasking such as chewing, drinking, or clicking objects.
Use friendly phrases and courteous greetings.
Be Concise
Leave short, focused voicemails.
Summarize calls at the end to clarify next steps.
3. Body Language
Avoid using your phone in ways that cause slouching.
Maintain good posture.
Do not cross your arms.
Make appropriate eye contact.
Offer a firm handshake.
4. Clothing
Know and follow your company dress code; ask if unsure.
Avoid fussing with clothing or accessories to prevent appearing insecure.
Ensure proper fit of clothes.
Dress for the specific day and schedule, even on casual days.
Keep a spare set of appropriate clothing for unexpected situations.
Avoid clothing that exposes undergarments or too much skin.
5. Hygiene and Etiquette
Come to work clean and polished with neat hair and nails, and clean, ironed clothes.
Use minimal or no perfume/cologne so scent is not noticeable at a distance.
Keep a small toiletry kit for discreet use in the restroom, not at your desk.
Cover coughs and sneezes, use tissues or your sleeve, and wash hands properly.
6. Verbal Communication
Speak Up
Use clear, strong language and speak with energy.
Avoid rushing through your words.
Be friendly to everyone regardless of their role.
Use the other person’s name appropriately without overdoing it.
Maintain Composure
Stay calm when put on the spot.
Ask for clarification when needed.
Avoid Submissive Language
Avoid unnecessary apologies.
Minimize filler words such as “like,” “um,” and “uh.”
Avoid nervous laughter.
Know What You Don’t Know
Ask questions rather than pretending to understand.
Ask well-researched questions and explain what you know and where you are stuck.
Be Engaged
Listen actively and observe others’ work.
Show interest and recognize when colleagues exceed expectations.
Share ideas and contribute constructively.
7. Feedback
Ask for honest feedback from two or three people about how they perceive your professional presence across online, phone, and in-person interactions.
Data Science Project
Identifying Actionable Treatment Variation in Episodes of Low Back Pain
Source code from a project with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, with data and additional files omitted to respect intellectual property and confidentiality.
Low back pain affects a large majority of adults at some point, and treatment expenditures in the United States are substantial each year.
Despite extensive clinical guidance, practice patterns still vary widely, so this project focused on identifying where providers can adjust care pathways to improve outcomes while reducing overall medical costs.
Data Overview
The analysis used roughly 33,000 treatment episodes of low back pain from 2015–2016, focusing on how costs concentrate in a small subset of cases.
The highest-cost 5 percent of episodes accounted for more than half of total spending, and all of these high-cost cases included surgery at some point, within a clinically homogeneous group of patients with similar health status.
Objective
The central question was why patients with similar low back pain conditions can end up on very different treatment trajectories, with some receiving expensive surgical procedures while others receive non-surgical orthopedic care at a much lower cost.
The model supported an analysis of which factors are associated with these divergent pathways, helping highlight levers that clinicians could adjust to steer patients toward effective, lower-cost options when appropriate.
Methods
Isolate patients into an approximately clinically homogeneous cohort to reduce confounding by baseline health differences.
Identify potentially important and actionable features with clinical input, such as imaging use, physical therapy utilization, and key medical history characteristics.
Address class imbalance so that the model can learn from both common and rare outcome patterns.
Fit a random forest to a bootstrapped training sample and evaluate performance on a validation subset.
Interpret feature importance in close collaboration with clinicians to translate model signals into meaningful, actionable insights.
Random forest
Class imbalance handling
Clinical feature engineering
Cost concentration analysis
Model HTML with Inline R Code
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