In politics as in business, charisma rocks!

When marketing a product, starting a business, building a professional career, or aspiring for political office, you have to build a consumer base, or a constituency who identifies with you and the thoughts, and ideas you espouse. You need talent, skills, intelligence and resources to move on and hopefully succeed, but there is another more elusive element that needs to be harnessed – the "it" factor called charisma. This is an element that is hard to put a finger on, but it has to do with the strength and competitiveness of your personality and how it affects your performance. It also covers your plans or platforms, your manner of interacting with internal and external stakeholders, your behavior and attitude manifested in the way you talk or move, and your method in projecting a desired image and character.

Charisma separates the leaders from the followers, the men from the boys, the mavericks from the mediocre, the high flyers from the low performers, from the runaway winners to the sore losers. Charismatics are described as inspirational, passionate, self-confident, insightful, ambitious, visionary and dynamic. You may be born with charisma, but just like every God-given talent, it needs nurturing.

Maintaining charismatic leadership requires persistence in inspiring others. It means consistently lifting their hearts, aspirations and capabilities towards personal and professional excellence. It means constantly maintaining the process of charismatic communications. Robert J. Richardson and S. Katharine Thayer, in their collaborative work The Charisma Factor, share some of their beliefs and feelings on how to spark extraordinary followings and engender amazing allegiance in others, encapsulated and annotated in the following discussion.

Taking The High Ground

Charismatic leaders incessantly bend over backwards to make things better. They meet all disputes and hostilities head on and seek solutions that work. To do that, they must maintain a view that embraces practicability, competence, and optimism.

Charismatic leaders believe in the inherent greatness of the human spirit, coupled with the faith and resolve that short-term as well as long-term goals are carefully laid out and implemented. They know it’s far more important to not let current problems weigh too heavily on themselves or others. They set people working immediately on solutions rather than on worrying about possible failures. Optimism is the prevailing mood, which helps keep others from losing hope in the face of adversaries. It keeps minds open to the vast array of possibilities ahead.

Providing Passion

Charismatic leadership requires passion or boundless enthusiasm that inspires people to bring out their best efforts at every task. Whatever your reasons maybe, you must be passionate about your goals, the direction of your life, your job, or your leadership. When passion is present you become unstoppable. Passion provides emotional energy needed to lead dynamically. When you are doing things critically important to you, it’s as though you are pulling strength from the great beyond. Others know with certainty that there are urgent reasons for continuing to move ahead. They want to know where you are leading.

Passion creates within you a drive that’s inexplicable by standard terms. It’s this drive that has made the impossible possible in countless cases. When nothing is more important to you than the achievement of your goal, this kind of drive is yours. When this kind of drive is yours, you experience successes you once thought were just figments of a fertile imagination.

Communicating The Emotion

Words are vital to the communication process. The excitement of the goals is mirrored in the thrill of the tongue. Charismatic people don’t use bland language weighed down with overextended claims, buzzwords and layered numbers that don’t mean anything. Leadership talk is reinforced with innovative, powerful insights and expressions. The words are framed in a positive, persuasive manner. Above all, the message or goal or vision is expressed in basic expressions where charismatic leaders use anecdotes, icons, symbols, metaphors and analogies to make messages or calls for action and support more vivid and memorable.

Words clarify and define human intentions and thoughts. The extra-verbal aspect, however, is even more vital. It is the extra-verbal that provides emphasis, deeper meanings and believability in the message itself. There are two things you must do to be effective in this level. The first is to unleash your vocal personality. The second is to reconnect your emotions to your body, expressing emotional content though your own persona. Your body becomes like speakers that amplify the opera of your emotions out to those around you.

Communicating emotions does not mean giving everybody a hug during organizational meetings, or shaking hands or kissing babies during campaign sorties. It means putting yourself in other people’s shoes and looking at a problem through other people’s perspective. It means finding common ground, a way to identify with others. A charismatic person is not emotionally flat but is able to show that a human being lives beneath the corporate veneer, or a public service pretence.

Creating The Rhythm Of Leadership

Charismatic leaders have mesmerizing personalities. They possess a likeability factor that gives them the uncanny ability to draw people toward them. The trait is mainly developed by the element of rhythm. Rhythmic interactions are the most comfortable and enticing of all human associations. Whenever people gather, a strong physiologic beat is created among them. That creates a close bond that transcends all levels of rational communications. Once strengthened and sustained, the bond creates the neurological link called entrainment.

Entrainment is best initiated by matching the natural throbbing behavior of another or by creating the most distinct and dominant cadence in a group of people. Once you establish it, people naturally gravitate, listen, follow and support you. Entrainment though can’t be established if you are incongruent or if you breech the values or beliefs of those listening.

Inspiring Greatness In Others

The hallmark of charismatic leaders is the ability to touch the hearts and minds of those they lead. They become powerful leaders, because they harness emotions, the most powerful driver of human behavior. By doing so, they get people motivated and empowered to move ahead and be their best. They make everyone, regardless of rank, feel important. And as Jay Conger of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California states, "They appear to be very skilled at unleashing and directing human energy. At the core of empowerment is the idea of building up the self-confidence of people, so they feel good about who they are and what they are doing."

Demonstrating ‘Out Of The Box’ Actions

Charismatic leaders question the status quo. They take risks, and thrive on innovation and change. They exhibit unconventional behavior, which Conger describes as "beneficial since it showers attention on the leader who can make a successful effort seem heroic because the leader went against the cultural grain."

Unconventional though doesn’t necessarily mean bold and radical. It is the willingness to think outside the box and propose innovative solutions, whether you are managing campaign funds, motivating supporters, or rallying people into action. It means going beyond the predictable and moving to the realm of remarkability, something exceptional, something worth noticing or talking about.

Charisma Is Not Just For Movie Star

A lot of people believe that charisma or personal charm is just for movie stars. Not so. The best leaders, whether in business or politics, are charismatic individuals who are active and devoted in their professional work, or magnetic political personalities dedicated to genuine community service. They are people who zero in on outside interests and get others involved.

Charisma can make a bottom line difference to companies and government institutions, while making professional or public service life more rewarding and enjoyable. Charisma indeed moves. Charisma rocks!

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E-mail bongo@vasia.com or bongo@campaignsandgrey.net for comments and suggestions. Thank you for your helpful feedback.