10 ways to Enhance Charisma
Admiration converts to influence.
Charismatic leaders achieve results through presence and personality. People seek the approval of charismatic leaders. They love giving them what they want.
Magnetism and influence characterize charismatic leaders.
10 ways to enhance charisma:
- Approve of yourself. Charismatic leaders don’t need to be liked and don’t try to please everyone.
- Attack an enemy. Charismatic leaders rage against what’s wrong. “This can’t go on!” Fight against waste, injustice, or abuse.
- Demonstrate optimism. Powerless leaders spew disapproval without optimism. Anyone can complain. Charismatic leaders articulate compelling vision.
- Clarify focus. We are drawn to people who know what they want.
- Act with courage.
- Show commitment.
- Be outgoing. Charismatic leaders mingle.
- Affirm others.
- Express disapprove. Willingness to disapprove gives power to affirmations. The most charismatic leaders expressed strong disapproval. Think of Jesus, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Jr.
- Believe you will win.
Bonus: Earn and receive the approval of people with power.
8 dangers of charisma:
- Isolation.
- Over-dependence. Organizations that relax because the leader will save them are doomed.
- Exemption. “I’m better than others.”
- Exploitation. “Just do what I say.”
- Over-cooperation. It’s already difficult for people to speak the truth to you. Who speaks hard truths into your life?
- Unrealistic optimism.
- Abuse – things like using power to belittle others rather than address issues.
- Self-importance and arrogance.
5 ways to manage charismatic leaders:
- Expect and monitor delegating activities. Charismatic leaders make it all about themselves.
- Provide frequent honest feedback. Leaders who reject feedback are too big for their breeches.
- Focus on results. Dig below the hype and ask, what is really getting done.
- Evaluate peoples reactions. Confront the expectation of head-nodding.
- Establish strong accountability with a board or inner-circle. Any leader who rejects accountability is dangerous.
Charisma enhances influence.
I believe in servant leadership. But, many humble leaders are also charismatic.
What are the benefits or dangers of charisma?
How can leaders enhance charisma?
Dear Dan,
“Do what I say”, rejecting accountability and focusing only on result could be the danger of charisma. When leaders convert these qualities they become effective. Taking accountability is the major challenge for any leader. Ordinary people turn into good leaders when they accept their responsibility and take accountability. There are people in the organization who claim that they are leaders, but they shift accountability to others.In case of project, when it becomes successful,manipulator step forward to take credit, and in case it goes failure, they blame others for failure.
Charismatic leaders are not only hold position in the organist, they develop others. They create pool of leaders who can take responsibility in case of need. They are good at succession planning. What they do is only charisma. When people get influenced, inspired and encouraged to find their potential and work harder to achieve greater goal, charismatic leadership is effective there.
One major quality of charismatic leader is that they are concerned about organizations even they have left. They do not make people scapegoat to remain and succeed in hierarchy.
I think that one way to energize everyone is to just have fun. That’s contagious – accomplishment and fun — fires up everyone.
Billgncs, your “fun and accomplishment” comment as a staff contagion and energizer is not only thinking beyond the usual box of charisma, it is wise. Not many people see work as fun, and not many people understand charisma as charity…a behavior of loving-kindness. In both a Christian and leadership sense, charisma means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others. When you couple fun with accomplishment, and vice versa—the entire staff can become charismatic.
Charismatic leaders can certainly put themselves on a pedestal from time to time. Test them by the way they accept feedback, test yourself to see if you’re really listening. Nice post Dan (as usual). 🙂
This is a big one, Dan, and it couldn’t have come on a better day. I am far from being a charismatic leader, but there are a dozen hot spots for me in your post. I’m just going to write about one of them. ***Demonstrate optimism***.
The demonstration of optimism is, I believe, a hallmark of my style. Rather than identifying something as an issue or problem, I try to cast such as opportunities. “We have the opportunity to do this even better. Look at what we could do!” Sounds great, doesn’t it.
In a reasonable and rational world it sounds great. In real life, not always so much. I am nearing the end of a term of elected leadership in a situation where we had the opportunity to introduce significant improvement. And we did. By and large, our various constituencies saw our Board as a “a breath of fresh air” and supported our initiatives. Communication between the constituencies improved, meeting attendance and volunteerism increased, and we were able to address some long-standing opportunities.
But not everyone perceived this as optimism. A small (but powerful) group perceived this as negativity and divisiveness. Every change or improvement was seen as a personal attack on someone who had done it or tried it before. Transparency was construed as exposure. New ideas were criticisms. And it all lurked in the background until the final general meeting of this Board’s term, where it was unleashed in a lengthy and very personal attack. It came out of nowhere.
The Board was dumbstruck, but stood together and listened. We know that it represented a small minority, but it still carried great weight. And this was not the time to cut and run. Rather, it was the time for us to figure out what we did so wrong and how we missed it so profoundly.
Bottom line, Abraham Lincoln said it best: “You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.” Still, in public and corporate leadership one still needs to perform change management at all levels. What we as a leadership team missed were the people who had been with the institution from the beginning. Theirs is a level of personal ownership rooted in bedrock. Big miss. Our bad.
So yes, ***demonstrate optimism***, but tempered with wisdom from The Music Man. “Ya gotta know the territory.”
Bimuse – what a reflective and helpful set of observations. I love your advice to temper optimism with wisdom from the Music Man. Fantastic – that will stay with me!
Dan, You had me going right up to that bonus “Earn and receive the approval of people with power.” Now that threw me because Jesus, Ghandi, MLK, Jr., did not seek the approval of people with power at least not that I can see. I would love for you to clarify what you mean by this statement because I’m sure your perspective will validate it.
He didn’t say to “seek” the approval. The “bonus” of the 10 ways is that this approval is often earned from those that matter.
Don would you say approval is earned or respect is obtained?
Thanks Earl. Sorry it took so long to get back to you. My observation is that one aspect of charisma is the confirmation of others, especially those with power or position.
It may be that you are uncomfortable with the bonus suggestion, which is cool with me.
By using the term “earn” I tried to indicate that being a charismatic leader is something we earn and that others confirm.
Thanks again for the comment and the question. Best wishes.
Dan, Thanks for responding. I have a better understanding of your thoughts.
A good post, especially on the issue of how they (request) and handle feedback.
Thanks Dr. Tahir. We sure can tell a lot about ourselves and others by the way we receive feedback.