Charisma Is Not Enough. Great Leaders Execute

Unlike charisma, which is in your genes and dictated by your personality, you can learn strong execution skills. Here’s what I mean.

Over the years, whenever and wherever I’ve asked a group of students, executives, or academics to list the five most important attributes of leadership, charisma always makes the list.

The 19th-century sociologist Max Weber greatly emphasized the importance of charisma. For him, charisma was a deeply rooted personality trait that enabled individuals to attract others by the sheer power of their dramatic presence. When you are in a crowd listening to a charismatic leader, what do you tell yourself? In your semi-deification of the charismatic leader, you may engage in self-exclusion. The message you tell yourself is, “It ain’t me,” and by the cultural glorification of charisma, society tells most people, “It ain’t you.”

Implicitly or explicitly, many leadership experts maintain that your dramatic presence and the power of your personality are essential to your success as a leader. But I ask you to look around. The fact that some charismatic people are leaders doesn’t mean that charisma is the litmus test of leadership. As Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as many others show, leaders are defined by their actions and ability to execute, not only on their charismatic personality.

For all the debates and discussion, reflection and counter-reflection about leadership, it’s pretty straightforward. Leaders aren’t remembered because of their dreams, aspirations, or intentions. They are remembered because of their accomplishments. They are remembered because they took ideas and made them concrete.

As an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a person with drive and ambition, what you care about is moving from potential to execution and that means moving an agenda. Charisma and vision may get you in the door, they may even get you elected, but in the final analysis, leadership is about execution.

Continue reading this article at INC.com after the break!