Could Your Leadership Lack Charisma?

Despite all the research that has taken place about the nature of leadership, practitioners and scholars have long acknowledged that many aspects of leadership remain a mystery. One such aspect is the concept of “charisma.” Charisma has been described as a quality that enables leaders to influence others, to attract followers, and achieve remarkable outcomes.

But how is charisma defined? What impact does it really have? Can it be learned or acquired? Read on to find out!

Highlights from the article Unlocking the Mystery of Inspiring Leadership:

“Charisma” is defined as the ability to inspire and motivate. Why is it important?

1. The author’s research with roughly 14,500 leaders confirms that being “inspiring and motivating” is the single most important leadership competency.

2. It is the leadership competency on which leaders overall receive the lowest scores from their manager, peers and those who report to them.

* The authors identified the behaviors that differentiated leaders who received the highest scores on the item, “inspires and motivates to high performance.” They found ten behaviors and qualities that set inspiring and motivating leaders apart from all the rest. These ten fall into three areas.

* Area One: Attributes. The first was a set of attributes or somewhat broad and general qualities.

1. Role Model – Inspiring and motivating leaders are excellent examples of what they want otners to do.
2. Change Champion – Inspiring leaders are constantly challenging the organization to change.
3. Initiative – These leaders are a constant and driving force to make things happen for the better. If status quo is the goal then there is not a great deal of inspiration required.

* Area Two: Behaviors. There are six discrete, actionable behaviors used by inspiring leaders.

4. Stretch Goals
5. Clear Vision and Direction
6. Communication
7. Developing People
8. Teamwork
9. Innovation

* Area Three: Emotion. Being inspirational hinges on the ability of the leader to evoke a positive emotional response in others.

10. Emotion - Much research is currently showing the highly contagious nature of emotion and leaders are in a particularly powerful position to have their emotions infect those about them. Their position acts as an accelerant to any normal emotional contagion that occurs. Inspiration and motivation are the energy source for leadership. Powerful, positive emotions turn the energy on. And as you can imagine, negative emotions shut down the flow of energy

* The authors suggest that leaders focus on developing one of the behaviors or attributes listed above and infuse it with positive emotion with the people around them. By doing so, a leader will become more inspirational and, in turn, more productive and profitable.

Resources:

1. Gifted Leaders (giftedleaders.com)

2. Zenger Folkman Leadership Resource Center