Positive Leadership: How Best To Pitch Your Business Plan

Focus your business pitch on yourself, not on your plan!

Potential investors and partners are often more interested in an entrepreneur as a person than in the business plan. That document is important, but be sure to also show these three characteristics:

Passion and purpose. Investors want to know if you’re the right person for this idea. Make your personal connection to the business you’re launching clear.

Resilience. The road to building a business is full of speed bumps. Share some failure stories to show you can bounce back from challenges.

Resource magnetism. Can you attract money, people, and other resources? This is more important than charisma. Whether or not you have a thousand-watt smile, you need to be able to persuade people to join your cause.

Positive Leadership: How Best To Pitch Your Business Plan

Positive Leadership: Charisma

Venture capitalists have a rule of thumb - bet on the leader, not the idea. 

Some people seem naturally high in charisma, but there are ingredients that can be cultivated: A genuine interest in people. Listening to their needs and concerns, and showing that you will help them achieve their goals. Treating people as though each is special and deserves attention. Remembering details about them. 

In today's troubled world, entrepreneurship is sometimes treated as the new religion that will save the economy and build world peace. The analogy to religion is appropriate, because there's always an element of faith in innovation and entrepreneurship. 

Charisma can be a decisive factor.

Positive Leadership: Charisma

Positive Leadership: Gary Player, a Legend

Gary Player (born 1 November 1935) is a South African professional golfer. With his nine major championship victories, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of golf. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. Player has won 165 tournaments on six continents over six decades. here he talks about his life in golf and what makes him a champion.

 

Positive Leadership: Gary Player, a Legend

Positive Leadership: Character vs Charisma

Leadership expert, John Maxwell, author of The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader: Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow speaks about Character vs Charisma:

Positive Leadership: Character vs Charisma

Bono at 50: The Leader We Need

Earlier this week, Bono, the U2 singer, global activist and one of the most powerful leaders on the world stage, turned 50. At this important milestone, it is worth briefly taking stock of his journey thus far--a journey of purpose, impact, passion, and humour. It is a path with lessons for leaders from all walks of life.

So what has Bono been up to that accounts for his enormous influence--influence that extends from the 100,000-seat stadiums that U2 plays to the White House, Vatican, and Downing Street to debt forgiveness and medical aid to Africa? After all, he was not born with cash or connections.

Bono's leadership journey has its roots in U2, the Irish band that he and several schoolmates, including Larry Mullen, Jr., David Evans (who later became known as "The Edge"), and Adam Clayton, founded in 1976. The story of U2's success is one of commerce as much as art. At its centre is the creation and stewardship of a very powerful brand, a brand that, in the midst of an ongoing perfect storm of turbulence in the music distribution business, is still going strong around the world.

Leading this enterprise has meant keeping the key team members motivated, engaged and growing--as human beings as well as music makers--for almost 34 years. Growing the organization four gangly teenagers - who in 1979 had to sell one of their instruments in order to buy passage home after a short London tour--to one of the most successful rock bands in history has demanded abiding faith, a steady stream of courage, huge reserves of personal energy, and a disciplined openness to the world as he continues to meet it.

From this solid foundation, Bono has acquired great agency. Not only money for himself and sway with his customers--music fans of all ages, shapes and sizes--but also extraordinary access to other movers and shakers as well as influence on a wide range of issues outside rock music. One of the most compelling aspects of Bono's leadership is how he has chosen to use the authority that has accompanied business success. He has decided, over and over again, to put his artistic, political, strategic, and spiritual muscle to work to alleviate suffering in the world's poorest countries.

Amidst all this activity, Bono keeps turning his energy to making and distributing music. His work as a musician is as central to his humanitarian efforts as the money he helps raise or the politicians he wins over for debt relief. At the same time, his activism has become part of the U2 brand, animating the way that millions of people think about the group and their offerings.

Herein lie several lessons. First, all successful organisational leaders wield power, often in excess of that granted them by their office. How such individuals decide, explicitly or not, to use this control is a question of grave importance for the world today.

The most important problems confronting us now, including a precarious global financial system and an equally vulnerable environmental system, do not come in separate buckets labelled "business" and "public policy." These are challenges that are smashing through older boundaries and helping redefine organisational place and mission.

Second, as Bono seems to understand, these issues demand a new kind of leadership, one based not in aging hierarchies and status systems but in humility, an ardent desire to learn and a respect for the individuals that organisations serve.

Third, individual leaders have to keep getting right with themselves about their own path and impact.

Finally, effective leadership today demands a willingness to stay open, not only to one's own enterprise but also to the teeming global village around it.

Bono, like Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, has not let himself become isolated in an elite atmosphere. He has used his touring and travels as classrooms to help him understand the hopes, dreams and tribulations of his fellow citizens, whom he often calls his brothers and sisters. And he has used this knowledge to light his way, his music and his leadership.

Happy Birthday, Bono!

Bono at 50: The Leader We Need

Five signs that a CEO is too in love with himself

'How common is narcissism in chief executives? Are top bosses arrogant, pathological achievers who are desperate for admiration or are they just deservedly self-confident decision makers? Many politicians and bankers appear to be arrogant, self-important snobs. Did their narcissism, first manifest as self-confidence, actually help them to climb the greasy pole? Does the way we treat our chief executives turn their self-confidence into pathological narcissism? Could it be that we are the cause of the problem and not them?.......

So what is the bottom line? First, it’s not that difficult to spot narcissists at the top. Actually, it is very easy. Second, the line between healthy, self-aware self confidence and narcissism is a thin one. Third, perhaps we are to blame for accepting ever demanding narcissistic behaviour in our leaders just to have a quiet life. Fourth, buckle your belt when the narcissist is in charge. You may be lucky or not as you try to cling on to the roller-coaster.'

For the full article, see -  http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/career_and_jobs/senior_executive/article7052280.ece

Five signs that a CEO is too in love with himself

Presence v Charisma in a Leader

Where the charismatic leader attracts attention to himself or herself, the leader with presence stays focused on the moment, and on what needs to be done. Presence isn't about the person but about being present for the problem that needs to be solved.

The leader with presence is like the actor. His immersion in the urgency of what is brings others in; it compels them into sharing his agenda. There's none of the manipulation involved in charisma, for what matters is the situation and the leader's ability to become infused with it, to own it, to make it a matter of utmost concern. 

Where charisma ends in adulation, presence leads to action. The lesson is that when we become besotted with charismatic people, we should beware. Far better to look in a leader for those Mandela-like qualities of presence, to believe that the person you're beholding is there to get something done because it's more important than he is. 

Presence v Charisma in a Leader

The Power of Charisma in a Leader

Some people can to draw followers the way a lamp attracts moths. Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy had that magnetism. Barack Obama has shown it. It is far easier to identify than to explain. What is it?

The word comes from Greek, meaning divine favour, as true charisma can seem to be a gift of the gods. In the 1920s the German sociologist Max Weber defined it as "a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which one is 'set apart' from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities" that are "regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary." In our time, with brands and personalities exerting huge cultural influence, charisma is bigger than ever.


Corporations large and small recognise that success begins at a personal level, and they realise that charismatic leaders are valuable because they are the ones who can connect with others in a visceral, direct way, creating memorable, treasurable experiences. They also know that charisma plus operational ability can make for a very strong leader.

What does it take to be a charismatic leader?

According to Richard Wiseman, professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire you don't need divine powers to be charismatic. He estimates that charisma is half inborn and half acquired, which means you have to be blessed with certain qualities at birth but you also need to nurture and develop them. He says every charismatic leader shares three qualities: He or she feels emotions very strongly, excites them in others and is impervious to the influence of other charismatic people.

Here are some quick keys to being charismatic, or at least to drawing on the virtues of charisma even if you haven't really got it yourself. These are things people with real charisma consistently do:

Stretch the world: Charismatic leaders live as if heeding the old saying sometimes attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli, "Make no small plans, for they have no power to stir the soul." They realise that only an audacious view of the future will excite people and bind them together. They also make it a point not to restrict their bold outlook to one primary aim; they extend it to almost everything they get involved in. In every undertaking they push the boundaries beyond what is ordinarily thought possible.

Don't hide. Be seen: Charismatic leaders keep themselves always visible. They stand up to be counted in every crisis. They make unwavering efforts to motivate their people, whether by listening and responding to them or by working alongside them. Their constancy emboldens their people to go on, even in the darkest times.

Talk the talk: Charismatic leaders embrace every opportunity to convince others to adopt their vision. They make it a point always to speak in ways that convey personal integrity and engender trust.

Speak even when you are silent: Charismatic leaders send out the right signals through all their actions. They always appear enthusiastic and passionate and make others feel good and strong in their presence. They let people know that they matter, even if just by simple and subtle gestures such as upright posture, direct eye contact, genuine smiles and firm handshakes.

Charisma effectively deployed can have electrifying results.

For more, see - http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/25/charisma-speaking-communication-leadership-managing-inspiration.html

The Power of Charisma in a Leader