Faking Charisma?

As we talk about transformational leadership one subset that sticks out is charismatic leadership. Charismatic leadership in my eyes goes in conjunction with authentic leadership. Personalities who show charismatic leadership possess dominate and confident traits along with an uncanny desire to influence, but are those all authentic? On the top many will argue yes, but a startling article has showed me this is not true. In the attached link below, the article describes professionals who are actually trained to teach their clients on how to fake charisma. What has the world come to? The women who wrote the article is an actual leadership coach! There is not an inch in my body that agrees with this practice. Illinois, our home state, is full of corruption. Do you think our governors were victims to leadership coaches? I think the correlation can be significant enough.

It is mind boggling that the people who we look up to are actually faker than plastic surgery! She states that it helps clients develop their own brand of charisma, but how can charisma be your own if it is fake! If this is the case, we might as well toss all of the people who have been inspirational to us through our lives and find new role models. The first “I” of transformational leadership is idealized influence charisma, which is described as acting as strong role models, having high standards of moral and ethical conduct, and making others want to follow the leader's vision. How in the world can you call yourself a leader when everything is a lie. We might as well call Kennith Lay a leader! He was pretty good at faking who he actually was. Give me some opinions on this! I was shocked to hear that professions like these exist.

http://blogs.forbes.com/carolkinseygoman/2011/04/08/how-to-fake-charisma/

-Nick Kulavic