Charisma - A Vital Skill to Develop

We all know people in business who exhibit tremendous personal charisma.

They exude an aura, an energy, that those around them find highly attractive, even intensely magnetic.

This personal force allows them to lead people easily, persuade sales prospects and enables them to make large amounts of money.

Now most people assume that this charisma is natural- you’re either born with it or you’re not.
I think they’re wrong. I think charisma can be developed by almost any entrepreneur, and I believe doing so can have an extraordinarily positive effect on your success in business.
So how can you develop mesmerizing charisma?

You need only focus on three areas:

1. Enthusiasm.
People who are highly passionate about their work captivate others. When they talk with delight about an idea, business or product those around them are drawn into their way of thinking. The fact is most people are ambivalent about what they do, even by their own ideas for their business. So when they suggest to others a new thought or direction it often has no power to persuade. The same idea however expressed with enormous enthusiasm immediately becomes more attractive and is usually taken more seriously.

2. Expertise.
Very few people are experts at their industry. Most stop serious study as soon as they graduate from college or university and even those that continue to learn about their field do so in a haphazard, half hearted way. But those rare entrepreneurs that endlessly learn more about their industry eventually find that they know much more about their field than everyone around them. When they express that immense knowledge and understanding in meetings or sales presentations it is often mesmerizing to those in the room. Who hasn’t at times been in awe of somebody’s deep knowledge of their field? It is a highly attractive trait.

3. Certainty.
We live in an age of ever increasng complexity, caused by fast technological advancement, increasingly global markets, and more intense competiton. As our own industry gets more complex, if we don’t continuously update our skills and knowledge we begin to slip a bit behind the cutting edge. When this occurs our sense of certainty that we are right declines. We become more unsure of ourselves, which quickly erodes our charisma.

Certainty is also an attitude, and all attitudes can become cultivated merely by focusing on developing them. When you deliberately strive to behave with certainty it soon becomes your normal way of thinking. As Advertising legend Donny Deutch amusingly entitled his autobiography, “Often Wrong, Never In Doubt”. As long as it’s not taken to extremes of dogmatic or bombastic behavior, this sense of certainty is very charismatic.

So those are the primary elements of charisma, as I see it. Note that none of them are difficult to develop in your life.

Indeed by merely increasing each of the three elements by just 20% you can become vastly more charismatic.

The epitome of charisma was of course Steve Jobs. He was famous for creating what became known in Silicon Valley as his ‘Reality distortion field.” He exhibited so much charisma when attempting to persuade others that they would be fully in agreement with him while in his presence, but in the hours following would realise the absurdity of many of his assertions, once they escaped his ‘field’.

How did Jobs exude such captivating charisma?

Enthusiasm. Expertise. Certainty.