Your Presence Is Contagious | The 7 Leadership Traps: Trap #2 - The Inner Edge

Topics in this episode

Executive presence Leadership development Self-aware leadership leadership imprint leadership traps

Episode notes

Somebody out there remembers exactly how they felt in your presence today. That's the imprint you left, whether you meant to or not. In this episode of The Inner Edge, executive coach Janet Ioli unpacks the second of seven leadership traps: the autopilot trap. She opens with a question most leaders get wrong: presence or competence, and argues that presence isn't a soft skill. It's the thing doing the real work. Janet grounds this in two people from her own past, both of whom shaped her in a matter of seconds without holding any formal leadership role in her life. One left her feeling capable for decades. The other made her feel small enough to walk away from a school entirely. This is the third episode in an eight-part series on the seven leadership traps, based on Janet's upcoming book, Escape the Traps (releasing October 2026). Chapters: 00:00:00 Presence vs Competence: Which Wins? 00:01:19 Two Moments That Shaped Janet 00:04:22 The Excuses Leaders Tell Themselves 00:07:47 Why Leaders Default to Autopilot 00:10:03 The Mirror Question and Self-Audit 00:12:16 Next Episode: Trap Three Read the first chapter of Escape The Traps (available October 2026): Which trap is running you?