One thing I have noticed repeatedly in my work with leaders is that capability does not always translate into influence.
I have worked with leaders who are exceptionally good at what they do. They have deep expertise, strong track records and years of experience behind them. Yet, in certain rooms, their impact is smaller than their capability would suggest.
That observation connects closely to what I call The Influence Gap™ — the distance between the value a leader has and the value other people experience from them.
It made me curious about what happens in that space.
Why does one person’s point of view travel further than another’s, even when both have comparable expertise? What makes people lean into someone’s thinking, trust their judgement and remain open when they are challenged?
Over time, I found myself noticing three things consistently: Presence, Influence and Value.
That became the thinking behind my PIV Model.
I don’t see PIV as another leadership framework to memorise. I use it as a practical lens for understanding what is happening in the room and, importantly, where a leader’s influence may be getting lost.
Presence is how you show up. It includes your steadiness, clarity, attention and ability to stay connected to yourself when the situation becomes demanding.
Influence is what happens because of how you show up. Can you move thinking? Create alignment? Challenge an idea without immediately creating resistance? Influence someone who does not report to you?
Value is what people experience from engaging with you. Do they leave with greater clarity, a useful perspective, a better decision or a way forward?
These dimensions are often treated as separate leadership skills. In practice, I find they are closely connected.
A leader can have strong presence but struggle to move a decision. Another can be highly influential but create little trust. Someone else can have extraordinary expertise but communicate in a way that makes it difficult for others to see the value quickly.
The issue is often not one missing capability.
It is how the capabilities come together.
The Irresistibility Quotient
I use the term Irresistibility Quotient carefully.
I am not talking about charm, popularity or becoming the person everyone likes. Leadership is not a popularity contest. Some of the most influential leaders I know are quite willing to challenge people and make a room uncomfortable when the issue requires it.
What I mean by irresistibility is much more practical.
It is the natural pull towards engagement that your leadership creates.
People want to hear your thinking. They trust that the conversation will go somewhere useful. They are willing to consider your perspective, even when they do not initially agree.
I see the Irresistibility Quotient as an emergent quality of PIV, rather than a numerical score.
When Presence, Influence and Value come together, something changes in how a leader is experienced.
There are interesting parallels in established research. Work on warmth and competence has shown that people make important judgements through both dimensions. Amy Cuddy, Matthew Kohut and John Neffinger’s work in Harvard Business Review similarly argues that effective leadership requires both warmth, which supports trust, and strength or competence, which supports confidence.
Research on leader credibility points in a similar direction. A systematic review of 108 peer-reviewed articles found credibility to be an important leadership construct, while also noting that researchers have defined and measured it in different ways.
For me, the practical implication is simple: people need a reason to trust you and a reason to believe in your judgement.
How I use PIV with leaders
The value of a model is not in how good it looks on a slide. It is in whether it helps a leader see something they could not see before.
So when I use PIV, I start with a real situation rather than asking a leader to rate themselves.
Perhaps they have an upcoming board conversation. They need to influence a global stakeholder. They are struggling to get their peers behind a decision. Or they know they are being overlooked despite having strong expertise.
We look at the situation through the three lenses.
Presence: What happens to you in that room? Do you become overly cautious, overly detailed or too quick to respond? What does the pressure change in how you show up?
Influence: What are you actually trying to move? Whose thinking needs to shift? Where are you relying on authority when influence is really required?
Value: What does the other person need from this conversation? What will they understand, decide or see differently because you were part of it?
Those questions can change the conversation quite quickly.
A leader who initially says, “They don’t listen to me,” may realise that they are giving people information when what the situation requires is a point of view.
Another may realise that their expertise is strong, but their response to challenge makes others less willing to engage.
Someone else may discover that they are adapting so much to different stakeholders that their own position has become difficult to see.
That is where the model becomes useful.
It gives us somewhere to look before deciding what needs to change.
Why this matters more as leadership becomes complex
As leaders become more senior, formal authority becomes less sufficient.
They influence across functions, countries and cultures. They work with peers and stakeholders who may have different priorities and greater positional power.
Research into leader communication reinforces the importance of this. A systematic review of 260 studies found that what leaders communicate, and how they communicate through verbal, vocal and non-verbal behaviour, can influence stakeholder perceptions, motivation, behaviour and performance.
Your expertise may get you into the conversation.
Your position may give you authority.
Neither guarantees that people will engage with your thinking.
That experience has to be created.
This is particularly relevant in global leadership, where the behaviours that signal confidence in one environment may be interpreted differently elsewhere. PIV therefore also requires enough cultural awareness and adaptability to understand the context without losing your own centre.
That is where it connects with my work around Anchored Leadership Presence.
Looking at The Influence Gap™ differently
PIV gives me a practical way to understand what may be sitting inside an Influence Gap.
If your capability is strong but your presence changes significantly under pressure, part of your value may remain unseen.
If you have presence but struggle to move stakeholders, the gap may sit in influence.
If people trust you but do not clearly understand the value you bring, there is another part of the gap worth examining.
None of this is about becoming more impressive.
It is about understanding the experience you are creating.
That is why I find the Irresistibility Quotient useful.
It asks a different question from the usual leadership conversation.
Not simply:
“How do I become more influential?”
But:
“What is it about the way I show up that makes people want to engage with my leadership?”
For me, that is where Presence, Influence and Value come together.
And perhaps that is also where capability begins to translate into impact.