HAVE YOU PERFECTED YOUR EMOTIONAL SIGNATURE?

WHY WE NEED LEADERS WITH CHARISMA, NOW MORE THAN EVER.

At a time of great crisis, with an unprecedented global pandemic in full flow, we need leaders who can give us hope, keep us focused, keep us working together and keep us connected. This is what truly charismatic leaders do, and we have never needed them in our businesses more than we do now.
We are all facing INCREDIBLE pressure to change our personal and working lives and habits, yet still perform at work; to become simultaneously more cost-effective and more innovative, while dealing with huge levels of uncertainty and complexity. Managers will have to put themselves between the chaos of this crisis and their people.
To do so effectively, will require managers to ensure they are skilled in the key traits of charisma.
In my research for my new book,  Charismatic Leadership, I have found that there are many kinds of charisma, many different definitions of charisma, and many different ways that each of us can display charisma. And that’s part of the problem. For many of us, charisma seems somehow unattainable – gifted to a few lucky people who have it naturally in abundance.
Not so. I believe charisma lies within all of us – and all we need to do to be more charismatic and influential is to understand and learn the skills that will make us far more inspiring.
My research says that charismatic people  can inspire confidence, galvanise people to action, motivate people to be focused and energetic, even in difficult circumstances, build teamwork and innovation in the face of overwhelming challenges, keep people feeling worthwhile and valued, and keep people talking together to solve problems. These outcomes need leaders to display five distinct traits.
These are the five traits they need to concentrate on now:

1. Authenticity

Managers with authentic personalities will be able to build the levels of trust that are essential to good teamwork and collaboration. Without teamwork and collaboration, there can be little successful change, nor innovation. Without innovation, companies will quickly fall behind their competitors, especially when facing challenges that have never faced before.
Authentic managers live by a strong moral code, and ensure they “do the right thing”, even when this may not be the most economically sensible thing to do. Doing the right thing now will help to ensure loyal customers and supportive stakeholders in the future.
To be able to exhibit authentic behaviours, you need to learn how to:

• deliver honesty and integrity, consistently, so people believe you will do the right thing.
• have and live a personal set of values, that make it clear who you really are to people, and how your values guide your decision-making.
• be visibly committed, so people can see from your behaviours what is important, not just rely on your words.
• be self-aware, so you can feel how people react to you and what you say.
• have humility, so you can recognise and learn from mistakes quickly.

2. Personal Power

Managers with the right personal power can infuse their teams with positivity and confidence and are oriented to action. They are problem-solvers able to call on the diverse skills and viewpoints of their team members to create the best solutions, at speed.
To work on your personal power, you need to pay attention to the following behaviours:

• displaying a leadership mindset, always going to the sound of gunfire to take responsibility, accountability and action.
• being positive and optimistic, to infuse others with the same positivity and hopefulness;
• being energetic and passionate, to create a willingness to act.
• being assertive, but always respectful.
• looking and sounding the part.

3. Warmth

Those with an affective presence – with warmth and an engaging personality – can create a sense of worth and belonging at a time of huge uncertainty. Most importantly, they also make employees feel safe at a time of enormous disruption.
Having a sense of worth is one of the most important needs of employees and drives high levels of discretionary effort.
To develop warmth and have an affective presence, leaders need to be:

• more charming and engaging, showing they care about others.
• better, more attentive and empathetic listeners.
• more respectful.
• more appreciative, praising and encouraging people to super perform.
• more inclusive, to ensure everybody is involved and engaged.

4. Drive

Managers who convey their cause in a compelling way, can connect their teams to it and keep their employees relentlessly focused on customers are thereby focused on rapid and continuous change.
To align people to a cause, leaders need to learn how to:

• develop and articulate a compelling cause or purpose, and constantly drive the effort required to achieve it.
• bring customer orientation into every team meeting and decision, so that those decisions benefit customers.
• align everyone’s goals to a common vision.
• deliver autonomy by liberating people to act within a framework.
• develop a deep-rooted culture of continuous improvement.

5. Persuasiveness

Managers with the charismatic skill of persuasiveness can not only connect people to the cause, but their communication skills enable the conversations that drive new ideas and keep essential relationships in good order. Agility and adaptability – absolute prerequisites for these times – will follow.
To be more persuasive, leaders need to learn how to:

• understand their audiences better, especially how they are feeling, and what most concerns them.
• facilitate conversations and encourage debate on difficult issues.
• take a stand with a powerful point of view that passionately explains your position.
• tell good stories that ram home important messages.
• be a good speaker on stage or on camera.

The time has come for all managers to understand that these soft skills of charisma will determine their ability to deal with these current challenges, and, ultimately, success in business, more so than the technical skills that probably got them into a leadership position in the first place. (Research conducted with Fortune 500 CEOs by the Stanford Research Institute International and the Carnegie Melon Foundation found that 75 per cent of long-term job success depends on people skills, while only 25 per cent on technical knowledge.)
In an era of unprecedented disruption and change, we’ve never needed charismatic leaders more.
(This article was originally written for my publisher, Kogan Page, and appears on their website too.)
 
 

 WHY YOU NEED TO PRACTICE INTEGRITY

As a manager, you are honest and you have integrity. Of that, I have no doubt. That, however, is not the issue. The challenge you have to deal with is how to manage the inconsistencies that make you appear to be dishonest.
If you manage people, then, every day, you have to display – consistently – a searing honesty and a deep level of integrity. This is something you have consciously to try to do, and you have to practise doing it to become good at displaying it. 
In my new book, “Charismatic Leadership”, I look at how authenticity is a key trait of truly charismatic people. 
Leaders have to focus on building trust, because trust is possibly the single most important element of building effective teams. However, you cannot build trust if people don’t trust you. To do that, people need to know who you are. They need to know that you know what you’re talking about. And they need to believe that you have their best interests – and an honourable cause – at heart. They trust you for your character, your competence and your integrity – and these must be authentic. 
A chain reaction of mistrust.
They don’t trust you when you remain aloof, hard to read and mysterious. In this case, they will always wonder what your agenda really is and whether you’re being completely truthful. More than anything else, this will undermine their willingness to give maximum effort, and they will be inclined always to keep one eye on you and one eye on their work, thus dissolving their focus and effectiveness. Worse still, that wariness will translate itself into a lack of willingness to trust colleagues. Once you start a chain reaction of mistrust, you also trigger a lack of respect. A lack of respect translates into a lack of respect for teammates, and for customers. And all of that inevitably leads to disastrous results. When you build trust, you build strong relationships, which lead to better business. The business benefits of trust are enormous. 
Without integrity, leaders will soon fail. If, for example, you keep choosing what’s convenient over what’s right, your team will quickly lose faith. As leaders, we always have to make decisions that, in some ways, define who we are. Without a strong set of values to help guide us, our decision-making will soon become inconsistent at best, and potentially confusing and damaging at worst. 
Under close scrutiny, your integrity can be found wanting.
As leaders we are being scrutinised every single moment, and everything we say, everything we do and every decision we make will be picked over by our teams, who will be quick to interpret those actions through their own set of filters. To avoid being thought of as potentially dishonest, or lacking in principles, it becomes necessary to be radically transparent with people – absolutely straight with them about what decisions you’re making and why. It is then especially important to ensure there is no gap between your words and actions. This is an area, from my experience, that most leaders are simply unable to see as a weakness. Followers often pay more heed to what you do than what you say.
If you say bullying is unacceptable but do nothing about the super- salesman who is domineering and a bully, the signal you are sending is very different to your words. Followers will take their cue from how you behave, not your words, and the damage is done.
 This gap between your actions and your words is potentially one of the most toxic to your leadership effectiveness. Your followers will be watching for consistency – both in your language and in your behaviour. If you even slightly change your story, or treat one member of the team differently to the others, this will send danger signals that you are not to be trusted. You have to be acutely aware of being consistent or explain fully why not when you behave in an inconsistent manner. 
I have no doubt that you are honest, sincere and principled. To convince your followers, you need to practise the behaviours that demonstrate your honesty and integrity every day. Without fail.

PUBLISHED! The skills you can learn to motivate high performance in others.

Kogan Page, my publisher, today sent me this photo of my new book, which they will use for posters and promotions. Why? Because the book has officially gone on sale today, February 3, and is finally available online.
It will be available in key bookstores in early March.
It marks the culmination of years of thinking and research, and I couldn’t be more delighted.
Ann Francke, CEO, Chartered Management Institute, said this about it: “Charisma is oft regarded as a ‘you’ve either got it or you don’t’ kind of thing. Kevin’s new book shows how everyone can master the skills of charisma to boost their effectiveness, impact and enjoyment at work.”
Said Fields Wicker-Miurin, co-founder and partner, Leaders’ Quest: “Charismatic Leadership is a treasure trove of tips, written in a punchy, easy to absorb style, that allows the reader to take stock, reflect and experiment with the insights Kevin shares. A book to enjoy!”
Here’s why I think it might help managers everywhere.

1. This book examines all aspects of charismatic leadership and makes it easy for managers to learn the skills that will power up their own charisma and make them more motivating and effective.
2. In it, I argue that charismatic leaders have five key traits that individually or collectively make them charismatic. Each trait has a skill set that can be learned.
3. The book looks at how every person has a different “shape” of charisma, based on their behaviours. It shows that a balanced shape is more effective than unbalanced, or “warped” charisma.
4. It provides tools to enable people to look at their own charisma quotient, and understand what skills they have to learn or improve to be more effective.
5. The book examines the neurochemistry of charisma, and shows how leaders have a powerful “chemical” effect on their followers, which has a far greater impact on their behaviours than managers realise.
6. It is packed with tips and anecdotes that bring the skills of charisma to life, and makes it easy for managers to learn how to behave in ways that are seen as more charismatic by those they lead.

More details here: https://www.koganpage.com/product/charismatic-leadership-9781789660975
Or here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charismatic-Leadership-skills-motivate-performance/dp/1789660971/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=kevin+murray&qid=1580750780&sr=8-6