#503 Executive Presence and Influence: How Leaders Gain Buy-In Faster
Executive Presence and Influence: How Leaders Gain Buy-In Faster
An Interview with Bianca Riemer on the Leadership Podcast by Niels Brabandt
Influence is one of the most underestimated leadership capabilities in modern organisations. Technical excellence, strong analysis and well-researched recommendations are often assumed to be sufficient to convince decision makers. In reality, however, even the most compelling analysis frequently fails to generate the buy-in required for action.
In a recent interview on the Leadership Podcast, Niels Brabandt spoke with Bianca Riemer about executive presence, influence and how professionals can secure buy-in from senior stakeholders quickly and effectively. Drawing on her experience as a former Morgan Stanley analyst and her current work advising professionals on influence and executive communication, Bianca Riemer offers a perspective that challenges many conventional assumptions about leadership communication.
Why Good Ideas Are Not Enough
One of the most striking insights from the conversation between Bianca Riemer and Niels Brabandt is that organisational influence rarely depends on the quality of an idea alone. Many highly capable professionals assume that strong analysis will naturally lead to recognition and implementation.
Bianca Riemer discovered the limits of this assumption early in her career. While working as a stockbroker at Morgan Stanley, she issued a highly accurate recommendation on a Swiss company that ultimately proved correct when the stock declined by forty percent. Despite the analytical success of the call, a senior stakeholder contacted her manager not to congratulate the team, but to ask why the insight had not been communicated more widely.
The lesson was immediate and profound. Professional impact depends not only on the accuracy of an idea but on the ability to ensure that the right people understand it and act upon it.
This experience shaped Bianca Riemer’s work with professionals across industries who must persuade senior stakeholders under conditions of limited time and intense scrutiny.
Executive Presence Without Traditional Networking
Many professionals believe that influence depends on building extensive networks or engaging in highly visible self-promotion. Bianca Riemer challenges this assumption directly. Her approach focuses on strategic communication rather than social positioning.
For technical experts, analysts and specialists who prefer substance over networking rituals, this perspective is particularly valuable. According to Bianca Riemer, influence can be achieved through clarity, preparation and a precise understanding of what matters most to decision makers.
The key is not to speak longer or louder but to speak with greater strategic focus.
The Power of the Strategic Headline
When asked by Niels Brabandt to identify the single most important element of gaining buy-in, Bianca Riemer provided an answer that is both simple and highly practical.
Professionals must think in terms of a headline.
Just as a newspaper headline determines whether a reader continues reading, the opening message of a recommendation determines whether executives pay attention. The objective is not to present extensive background analysis but to immediately communicate the conclusion and its relevance for the organisation.
This requires research. Leaders must understand what is truly important to the decision maker they are addressing. Rather than assuming motivations, professionals should actively investigate the priorities, pressures and objectives that shape executive thinking.
Once these priorities are clear, recommendations can be framed in language that directly addresses them.
Turning Presentations into Conversations
Another common mistake in corporate environments is the overuse of long presentations. Professionals frequently arrive in executive meetings with dozens of slides, hoping that detailed explanation will persuade senior leaders.
Bianca Riemer proposes the opposite approach. Present the recommendation concisely, ideally within a few minutes, and then open the discussion for questions.
This shift transforms a presentation into a conversation. It allows executives to explore the aspects they find most relevant and gives them the opportunity to process the idea actively rather than passively receiving information.
Importantly, Bianca Riemer also highlights the value of silence in these conversations. Decision makers often require time to think. Allowing space for reflection encourages engagement and supports more thoughtful decision making.
Understanding Different Decision Mindsets
Organisations consist of leaders with fundamentally different orientations towards risk and opportunity. During the interview, Bianca Riemer illustrated this dynamic with the relationship between chief executive officers and chief financial officers.
Chief executives often focus on growth, expansion and strategic opportunity. Chief financial officers tend to focus on risk, regulatory constraints and financial discipline. When these perspectives work together effectively, organisations benefit from balanced strategic decisions.
However, when departments fail to understand each other's mindset, conflicts arise. Sales teams may prioritise ambitious growth targets while finance teams emphasise risk management. Without mutual understanding, collaboration becomes difficult.
Influence therefore requires adapting communication to the mindset of the audience. Some leaders respond more strongly to opportunities and future benefits, while others respond to risk mitigation and stability. Recognising these patterns allows professionals to tailor their arguments more effectively.
Influence as a Learnable Skill
Perhaps the most encouraging message in the conversation between Bianca Riemer and Niels Brabandt is that influence is not an innate talent reserved for a few charismatic individuals. It is a skill that can be learned and improved.
Bianca Riemer teaches professionals structured methods for framing recommendations, understanding decision makers and conducting high impact conversations. In many cases, these techniques can produce visible improvements within only a few sessions.
For organisations, the implications are significant. Companies invest heavily in technical training and professional expertise. Yet the ability to communicate ideas effectively to senior stakeholders often determines whether those ideas translate into action.
The Strategic Importance of Influence
The interview between Bianca Riemer and Niels Brabandt highlights a critical leadership lesson for modern organisations. Expertise alone does not create impact. Influence does.
Professionals who master the art of gaining buy-in can accelerate decision making, strengthen collaboration and ensure that valuable insights translate into organisational progress.
In an environment where leaders are overwhelmed with information and time is scarce, the ability to communicate with clarity, focus and strategic awareness has become a defining capability of effective leadership.
Niels Brabandt
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Mehr zu diesem Thema im dieswöchtigen Podcast und Videocast: mit Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
Das Transkript zum Podcast und Videocast befindet sich unter diesem Artikel.
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Niels Brabandt ist Experte für Nachhaltige Führung (Sustainable Leadership) mit mehr als 20 Jahren Erfahrungen in Praxis und Wissenschaft.
Niels Brabandt: Professionelles Training/Seminare/Workshops, Speaking/Vorträge, Coaching, Consulting/Beratung, Mentoring, Projekt- & Interim-Management. Event Host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
You need buy-in. You've probably heard that phrase sometime when you think, "Okay, I need to convince people," and unfortunately you don't have much time. And usually you say, "It takes some time to convince people," or maybe it doesn't. So we have an expert on the matter with us here today. Hello and welcome, Bianca Rima.
Bianca Riemer
Hi Nils. Thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast. I'm very excited to talk all about influence and getting buy-in from people.
Niels Brabandt
Brilliant. Thank you very much for taking the time. We get straight into it. So you're not one of these coaches who talk about something you haven't done before. You were a high-ranked Morgan Stanley analyst by yourself. Many people, when I prepared for this interview, told me, "Look, when you want to have buy-in, you need to build the network, you need to get credibility, and all of that takes a lot of time." And yeah, you say it is possible to have that, but fast. The question is how.
Bianca Riemer
Absolutely. So when I was a stockbroker at Morgan Stanley, I completely underestimated how important it was to have the relationships and to manage your own executive presence when approaching people who are too busy to listen to you, right? So I thought it would be all about analysis, and as long as the idea is good, people will love it. But hey, that was not the case.
Bianca Riemer
And I got a really big wake-up moment when at some point I was covering this stock. It was actually a Swiss stock, Nils. It had gone down 40%, and that was my stock call. I'd initiated with a sell rating, basically. The stock went down 40%.
Bianca Riemer
A colleague of ours calls my boss and says, "Oh, I hear that you've made a fantastic call on this and this stock." My boss says, "Thank you." And the stakeholder says, "I'm not calling to congratulate you. Why haven't I heard more about this?" And this is as shocking as it was to me at the time because this was the first-ever stock I covered, and I thought I'd done a good job.
Bianca Riemer
That's when I realized, hey, my job is not just to do the analysis. My job is above all to let people know what my thoughts were, so that people are aware of it. And from that moment on, it was a very hard upward struggle to figure out, via trial and error, how to get people to listen to you and to actually take action on what your ideas are. And that's what I now do as a living: helping other people to get buy-in without building a big network and making a name for themselves first.
Niels Brabandt
Brilliant. What do you do with people who now say—because when I prepared, some people said, and I quote, they said, "I'm an introvert. I am not one of these networking people. I'm a very good analyst. I am very good on the matter, but I'm not one of these horse-and-pony show people." That was a word-by-word quotation by an analyst. What do you do with these people who say, "I'm just not the type for this"?
Bianca Riemer
Fantastic. So these are the people that resonate a lot with my methods because there's no networking involved. There's no schmoozing involved, and there's no—you know, I don't drink. I don't eat a lot of food that you eat in restaurants. None of that required.
Bianca Riemer
My work hours at Morgan Stanley were—I was working less than 12 hours per day. So that's not lazy. That's efficient. And that's what technical people like about my approach.
Bianca Riemer
So what do we do, right? We go in with a completely different approach to what most people assume, and then people are very surprised that it actually works.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. So do you think that anyone can learn this skill? Absolutely anyone.
Bianca Riemer
Anyone can learn the skill as long as they're ready to question their own assumptions about what it takes to get buy-in from other people.
Niels Brabandt
What do you think is the most important aspect when you could only choose one, when people want to give you buy-in? Because most people will say, "When you have the best reasoning on your side, you will get the buy-in from management." Anyone who worked in a corporation will have a hard wake-up call that having the best reasoning on your side does not always get you where you think you should be. So what, in your opinion, is the most important aspect when you could only pick one?
Bianca Riemer
Yes. So the most important aspect is to have the newspaper headline on your newspaper that makes the executive pick up your newspaper. That's the way to think about it. So obviously, you have to do your market research on what is important for the executive. And it's exactly those words that you choose when you do your marketing research.
Bianca Riemer
You ask, "What is important to this person?" Not what motivates them, not how are they incentivized. You ask them, "What is important to you about this?" So ideally, you have a direct conversation with them, or you just have a think, or you do internet research, AI research. What is important to this person or somebody in this role? And then you target your newspaper headline to what this person is interested in, what's important to this person.
Bianca Riemer
And it has to be the conclusion. So you're not saying, "Hey, here's my research on topic X." It has to be, "Here's my recommendation. I think we should do this. It will prevent this. It will help us achieve this goal." So by using your language very strategically based on what your research has shown you about what's important for the other person, you can hit the nail on the spot very quickly.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. What do you deal—how do you deal with people who say, "I'm just a natural presenter. I am not very good at this pitching stuff. I'm better at the research thing"?
Bianca Riemer
Yep. You don't need to present very long. You just go in with your recommendation, a couple of slides that are on point exactly about what the people in the room are interested in. And then you say—at the beginning, you say, "I'm going to present my recommendation for two minutes, and then I open up for questions." So rather than thinking about it as a presentation, you think about it as a conversation.
Bianca Riemer
Because here's the thing: so many technical experts who go and present to boards say, "Hey, I had a 50-slide presentation, and there were no questions at the end. They said they would get back to me, and they never did."
Niels Brabandt
Surprise. And then they take, "It's interesting." That's something I learned the hard way. When someone in Britain tells you, "It's interesting," hint: it's not what you think.
Bianca Riemer
Absolutely. Especially over here in London, if somebody says, "Huh, interesting. Yeah, I think about it. Thank you very much." And then all of a sudden, they have to go into a meeting. Yes, that happened to me a lot, by the way, at the beginning. So here's the thing: you turn it into a conversation.
Bianca Riemer
It allows the other person to ask you exactly the questions that are important to them. It also allows them to think. So don't be scared of silences. It's actually very, very important, especially when influencing skeptical people. Here's the thing about skeptical people: people are skeptical because they like to make their own decisions. They're not skeptical because they don't like you. Certain professions are skeptical by default.
Bianca Riemer
So say my client base were fund managers and financial analysts working for fund managers. By default, their job is to be skeptical and to make up their own decisions. So my job then was to present contrarian ideas, but also to help them think these ideas through to help them make a decision. And it doesn't matter whether their decision is aligned with my recommendation or different, because what matters is that they do take a decision.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. So how do you deal with setbacks then? Because some people might say, "Okay, I tried to learn this method," and they wonder, "How quickly will it work? How quickly will I have either the breakthrough or the first big wow moment? How quickly can I implement this?"
Bianca Riemer
Yes. People are very surprised how quickly this works. So for most people, it works the first time they actually do it. Because here's the big difference: by asking people for a conversation, you get their thinking muscles engaged. It's not a passive, you know, they just have to listen to you, and after five seconds, they stop listening. By having this conversation and getting them to ask the questions that they're really interested in, they are actually going to listen a lot more when they get to ask the question. And also then that helps them come to a conclusion.
Bianca Riemer
And you ask about setbacks. Hey, when their conclusion is different from my conclusion, okay, this is great because they have formed an opinion. Then I want to know all about what their opinion is because then that gives me more food for the next time I go and have a conversation with them because I can address the points that they think are important at the moment. And if I think they've got it all wrong, I can address that in a way that then works with their style of thinking.
Bianca Riemer
And what do I mean by their style of thinking? In many situations, people either want to go away from something they don't like, or they want to go towards something they like. And here's the problem in big corporations: you have different departments who are incentivized differently, and also the mindset in different departments is very different. So say the CEO of a company, their job is to grow the company. So they will have an empire-building mentality. They will be very enthusiastic about growing, expanding new products, new markets. They are not usually aware of all the risks, all the problems, all the stumbling blocks, the budget, all that boring kind of stuff from their point of view, right? So they need a good CFO whose mindset is more aware of risks, aware of budget constraints, aware of regulations. Quit it, get
Niels Brabandt
solved. Yeah.
Bianca Riemer
Exactly. So it's very interesting to see the dynamic between CEO and CFO of large-listed companies who have spent a lot of time with them—my 10 years at Morgan Stanley. The CEO will usually have a very towards attitude towards goals. The CFO will be very aware of all the risks. And then if the dynamic between them is good, they're the dream team because they're very strategic as a team.
Bianca Riemer
Where the dynamic between different teams is not that great because they can't speak to each other, that's where then you have the siloed thinking, a lot of unresolved conflict at board level. So when people learn how to see the mindset of different departments—say sales is very towards, they like goals—finance people, risk people tend to be very aware from. They're very aware of risks.
Niels Brabandt
Their job.
Bianca Riemer
Yeah, budgets, etc. When they learn how to speak to each other with the different language patterns I just mentioned, then the conflict goes to the side, and there's more—you know, we're all rowing in the same direction, but we've actually thought about it strategically rather than just fighting in a sandpit.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah. Excellent. Two more questions now. When now people think, "I think this is helpful to me," and they wonder, "How does it work to learn? Is it like a year-long one-to-one coaching? Is it an online class? Is it a group class? How does it work in reality to get this program on the road and to actually just learn it for themselves?" What's your approach there?
Bianca Riemer
Yes. So the best way to learn it is either one-on-one or in a group setting, and it just takes a few sessions. So I've just taken the sales team through this approach. They had three one-and-a-half-hour sessions, and they've already seen massive improvements in how open their prospects are to seeing them as a trusted advisor rather than a salesperson who just wants my money. So it's very, very fast.
Bianca Riemer
I take a structured approach where I take people through it step by step, but the minimum would be three one-and-a-half-hour workshops. With individuals, obviously, I can do it a lot more tailor-made to their specific presentation. With groups, we take a more structural approach, actually taking the step-by-step approach so that they learn the whole system, and they can then apply it to their specific situations and, if needed, have a one-on-one follow-up session with me.
Niels Brabandt
Brilliant. Perfect. There's, of course, one last question which I have to ask, Kate. When people now think, "This is for me," how can they get in touch with you?
Bianca Riemer
Absolutely. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Bianca Rima.
Niels Brabandt
Excellent. So we see executive president influence. You know who to talk to. So at the end of this podcast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Bianca, thank you very much for your time.
Bianca Riemer
Absolutely. It's been lovely speaking to you, Niels.