Get Yourself Some Executive Charisma

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You look confident and comfortable in your own skin, which causes people to want to listen to what you have to say and offer.

Use aware actions:

• Deal with others as human being to human being, not role to role.

• Use good-natured humoring to break down barriers erected by titles, power, and position.

• Slow down your talk, walk, and movement to relax yourself and calm those around you.

• Shut up and listen. Focus on what others are saying, instead of thinking about what you're going to say next. Be a good listener even if you don't like what you hear.

• Ask questions as your main communication tool. You avoid being a know-it-all, and you let others be in the spotlight.

• Reach out and touch both literally and physically. Instead of a handshake, try a hand sandwich.

Like the Golden Rule

Have considerate civility. People will want to be around you only if you make them feel good about themselves when they are. You have to make them feel better, do better, look better by how you interact with them. It's basic golden-rule stuff: Do unto them as you'd like done unto you. The defining difference between the charismatic and the noncharismatic is that the charismatic person keeps at it even when he or she doesn't get it.

Get useful things done. Be competent in producing needed results. Be exceptionally skilled. Bring a lot to the table. Just don't expect that to be sufficient. A lot of people are full of substance. Few have substance and an effective style.

Be consistent. If you put on the show only for people who count, you're fake. You have to think, act, and relate with a charismatic comportment with everyone and everywhere for it to be genuine. If you conclude "this is an act," you're right. But you're "acting" in a good way, with awareness and considerable civility to get useful things accomplished.

And expect to work on your executive charisma until the day you retire. If you're at the same level of executive charisma that you were last year, you'll get run over, because your competition is working to get better right now.

Debra Benton, founder and president of Benton Management Resources in Ft. Collins, Colo., has 20 years of experience as a coach to CEOs and other executives. Her client companies have included Campbell's Soup, Dell Computer, McDonald's, and Time Warner. She is a speaker, blogger, and author of eight books, including Executive Charisma and How to Think Like a CEO. Her most recent offering is CEO Material: How to Be a Leader in Any Organization (McGraw-Hill, 2009).

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