Charisma!?

I just gave someone blogging advice that applies to anyone wanting to get attention and more business - offer tips.

Case in point: one of the many email newsletters I keep finding myself on the list for is from Lynda Goldman (http://www.impressforsuccess.com/). The first I've seen arrived recently with a tip for being more charismatic.

The tip: Stand and walk tall. There's a lot of truth in this. You'll project confidence, speak more strongly, seem a bit larger than life and generally send the message that you know what you want, what you're doing and that you can't be dissuaded. Confidence is attractive and, to some degree, catching, so people feel better aournd you.

Is this really charisma? Well, probably if you practice it enough to make it your usual style of presenting yourself, it could be. It won't be if you do it only occasionally or drop the manner suddenly in the middle of something. Then it will appear false, as a facade, a feeble attempt to be something you're not. Whether you "are" or "aren't" really depends more on whether this becomes habit. If it does, you've raised your charisma level permanently.

Only you can decide if this is something you want. There are trade-offs. Particularly if you begin to believe your own press (very appropriate word here since Goldman is a communications expert) you may become insufferable. But you don't have to. You can find a balance. You can develop skills to use in appropriate situations and not in others. It takes time either way. Adding a new capability always gives you more options.

Can it ever become "as good as the best natural" charismatics? That depends on how much you puruse the initial stage you reach. You can always go further, add other behaviors that typify charismatic people. Over time you can pretty much go as far as you want. Can you ever catch up with someone who started in their early teens or get ahead of them. That, too, depends - on how hard, how often and how insightfully you practice.

So the tip makes sense. Whether you choose to pursue it depends on your sense of whether you need it, whether it adds something you want to your skill set and how much time you are willing to devote to it in lieu of devoting time to other things. It rarely takes as long as you might think.

Given that we have such choices, the next challenge becomes sorting out which to pursue. It makes little sense to waste a lot of time on something you're not going to follow up fully.

Now all I need to figure out is why I can't accept a perfectly good tip without analyzing it to death. The short anwswer is that it doesn't make as much sense to me if I don't.