Wednesday, 1 April 2009

How to Develop Obama like Personal Charisma

In his no-nonsense straightforward article “The Marketing of a President” John Quelch Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School detailed eight areas that that Barack Obama excelled in to win the US Presidential Race.

The first was Obama’s personal charisma “his listening and public speaking skills, his consistently positive and unruffled demeanour, and his compelling biography attracted the attention and empathy of voters”.

So how do you score on the Obama Charisma Stakes?

1. How good a listener are you? Or are you just waiting to speak…I know that I fall into that trap. Want to improve your listening skills start giving constructive feedback to others, tell them what they do well and only lightly where they need to improve.

2. Public Speaking Skills. I believe that this is the number one skill to improve your public charisma. Maybe you’ll never be as good as Obama but you can’t start to soon in this. Join Toastmaster International; take an acting or improv class. Start today. We can all get better at this and we all need help.

3. Positive and Unruffled Demeanour. Do you know what your goals, purpose and objectives are? Do you have a plan? It is written down? Do you keep a journal? Don’t worry about critics as long as you believe you’re on course.

4. Compelling Biography. Have you written down and published you story? It doesn’t have to be 20,000 words, it might only be 500. Is it at least on you web site?

The stuff is NOT difficult, just take your time and tick them off as you do them.

Can we all seriously be charismatic?

Yes, we can!