You Don’t Need This Trait to Lead (Episode 35)

Transcript

There’s a trait that many people think and say you need to have to be a great leader. And if you don’t have it, well, you’re just kind of out of luck.

But the truth is, that’s just false. You don’t have to have this specific trait to be a leader. In fact, this trait, while it’s cool to have and can be good, it won’t make you a good leader by itself. And if you’re not careful, this trait can actually hurt you in your leadership.

What is this trait? It’s charisma.

The motivation myth

Now I get why people think you need charisma to be a great leader. Because people think that when you have charisma, then you are more inspiring and you can motivate people because you have that charisma.

But that’s kind of a misnomer because you don’t need charisma and that special ability to motivate in order to motivate people. First of all, if you don’t have substance behind your charisma, that’s just going to hurt you.

But what’s more important and helpful to motivate and inspire your team is to build a great culture and to give purpose in the work that they do.

The unlearnable trait myth

One of the other misconceptions about charisma is that they see it as a trait that’s unlearnable. And that’s why many people think leaders are born and not made. It’s because they think you have to be born with charisma or born with some other trait. And if you’re not born with it, well, oh well.

But that’s not the case. As Alex Hormozi says in his presentation, which is also a video on YouTube, How to Win at Anything, he talks about traits. And he says how traits are really just a group of behaviors that we put together and label with the trait name.

So charisma is really just a bunch of behaviors that you can learn. And if you learn those behaviors, then you can become good at charisma. In fact, there’s books out there that you can get to learn how to be more charismatic.

The great leaders are charismatic myth

Now, going back to leadership and charisma, Jim Collins, when he was doing his research for Good to Great, and the companies that he found great, most of the leaders were not charismatic.

In fact, charisma, if not careful, can be a liability. There can be dangers with charisma that can hurt you as a leader. What are these dangers? Well, you’re about to find out. First, it’s important to note that with any of these issues or dangers, any leader can fall into these traps, but they can be more tempting and become more of an issue with charisma.

1^st Danger: It becomes about the leader

So the first main danger that can come with charisma and being a charismatic leader is that it becomes about the leader. You see, as a leader, as an organization, you should be about the mission and pursuing the mission and accomplishing the mission.

Sometimes with charismatic leaders, it becomes about the leader and them, what they want and their purpose. People focus on them and trying to please the leader and doing what the leader wants and focusing on the leader versus the mission.

On top of that, leaders then may make things happen through the force of their will, through their personality, through their charisma, and they push things along through that. And then when they leave, things fall apart.

You see, one of the most important things a leader should do is prepare for succession. And sometimes with charismatic leaders and others is they don’t do that. If everything revolves around that leader and that leader leaves and things fall apart, then that’s not a good thing.

Sometimes when leaders leave and things fall apart, they think it makes them look good that, “Oh, I did a great job.” But really it shows they didn’t because they didn’t prepare the organization and their people to do well without them.

2^nd Danger: Everything relies on the leader

And one reason that happens is because with charismatic leaders, sometimes they can be the ones who make all the decisions. People rely on them for decisions. People rely on them for solving problems. Everything again revolves around them and their force of will and their power, and then people don’t learn.

And the thing is when the leader is making all the decisions and solving all the problems, it doesn’t develop the problem-solving ability of your people. They don’t learn how to critically think. So when the leader leaves. it falls apart.

They may surround themselves with yes people who always just say yes to whatever they want. And then when they leave, people aren’t prepared, they didn’t make decisions, they just did whatever the leader wanted, and then they don’t know how to keep it going because everything depended on the leader.

3^rd Danger: People fear speaking up

People also may not speak up like they should because of a charismatic leader. Sometimes they seem so high and everybody just revolves and does what they want or sees them so well that people are afraid to speak up.

Now people often are afraid to speak up in general at times to leadership and upper management and so on. There’s sometimes that fear in general, but it can be even more so with charismatic leaders because everybody else is going along with it.

And then what happens because people aren’t speaking up, then bad decisions can be made, problems aren’t revealed that should be, and actions could be taken that hurt instead of help.

4^th Danger: It becomes about status and overconfidence

On top of that, that position, that charisma can make it about the leader in their mind. They become about their image and their status and they start to believe that. They become overconfident in what they do. And then even because of that, not only may people be afraid to speak up, the leaders themselves may not listen well because they believe that overconfidence.

And then when people bring up things, if they do, if people actually disagree with what they say, they may push it aside because obviously they’re the great charismatic leader who knows best, who drives things by the force of their will.

Note: Charisma in itself isn’t bad

Now, it’s not a bad thing to have charisma. Charisma can be helpful, but if you have charisma and practice it, you just have to be careful to watch out for these dangers.

You just want to be sure to encourage people to speak up and create systems so that you hear feedback, even when people might be a little timid and afraid to do so. You want to build a culture that revolves around the mission and not around you.

You want to train your people to make great decisions and to solve problems and to critically think and not just rely on you for that. You want a culture that motivates and the purpose that motivates and not have your people rely on you to motivate them.

Charisma in itself isn’t bad, it’s just a tool that you can use.

Even to other departments, if they were just involved even a little bit, you say, “Hey, and the marketing department helped us this much and all this stuff,” that builds goodwill when you pass the credit.ot lowering things to meet you. one of service.