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Career Charisma
Text
What makes a superstar able
to rise so rapidly to the top? Many times it isn’t
talent,
training
or
track
record
—it’s
certain
attitude,
enthusiasm,
confidence.
Call it …
.
The real winners in business (and in
life,
for that matter
), the
women and
men who are tapped for golden
career opportunities, often have something extra.
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Some observers call it
“charisma,” others say “vision.” But whatever one
calls it,
understanding what fuels
these early successes is important for everyone
who has
high goals for her future.
The
people
with
charmed
careers
have
a
way
of
looking
at
the
world
that
makes top management feel they can do
almost anything superbly, that
imbues
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everybody with whom they work with a
kind of enthusiastic, winning spirit. Their
success
is
as
much
a
matter
of
attitude
as
of
hard
work
and
talent.
They
are
optimists. That optimism
is astonishingly powerful, and it can be
cultivated.
Although
Norman
Vincent
Peale
has
championed
the
virtues
of
“positive
thinking” for more
than 35
years, only recently have
serious researchers started to
explore
the ways optimism affects not only one?s health
and longevity but career
15
success as well.
A number of
studies confirm what Peale
intuitively
knew was
correct: The
optimist almost invariably
has an edge over
her less
enthusiastic colleagues. And
for good
reason: It is the secret of her charismatic effect
on others.
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What research shows
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In
one
of
the
most
important
studies
to
date,
Martin
Seligman,
Ph.D,
professor
of
psychology
at
the
University
of
Pennsylvania,
surveyed
25
representatives
of
a
major
life-insurance
company
and
found
that
outlook
dramatically
affected
performance.
Among
the
long-
term
reps,
those
who
confidently expected a
good outcome sold 37 percent more insurance than
those
with
negative
attitudes.
Attitude
also
had
a
powerful
effect
on
new
hires:
the
optimists among them
sold 20 percent more.
Impressed
by
Seligman?s
study,
the
insurance
company
hired
100
people
who had failed the standard industry
entrance test but scored high on optimism.
The
move
paid
off
:
These
people
sold
10
percent
more
insurance
than
the
average rep.
Seligman
links
a
person?s
tendency
toward
optimism—
or
pessimism
—
to
what he terms “explanatory style.” When
things go wrong, the pessimist tends to
blame
herself
,
saying,
for
example,
“
No
wonder
this
product
flopped
—I?m
terrible
at
marketing.”
The
optimist,
says
Seligman,
explains
her
setbacks
in
terms
of
outside
forces.
“Of
course
we
weren?t
able
to
sell
that
product,”
she?s
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likely
to tell herself. “The stores di
d a
lousy
job
promoting it! Now I know we?ve
got to
put more effort into motivating the stores to push
the product.”
A similar
dynamic shows up when things go well, Seligman
explains. The
pessimist explains her
success in terms of chance: “It was nothing. Just
luck.” The
optimist
accepts
the
kudos
and
tells
herself.
“I
knew
my
hard
work
would
pay
off.”
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This
doesn?t
mean
that
optimists
are
unrealistic
about
themselves
or
their
situation.
Industrial
psychologist
Howard
P.
Stevens
defines
true
optimism
as
“the
middle ground between two other attitudes. On one
end, you have
naivete
,
or
viewing
the
world
through
rose-
colored
glasses,”
he
says.
“At
the
opposite
pole is pessimism
or
fatalism
.”
“Naivete and pessimism are actually
coming from the same place,” e
xplains
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Stevens. “A belief that
some outside force is totally in control of your
life, that
something or someone will
guide or
thwart
you, be it
city hall, your boss, your
company. The
optimist believes power or control comes from
within herself, that
she?
s
ultimately responsible for her own success. And
she knows how to keep the
power
going.”
Understanding
how
these
forces
operate
can
help
you
harness
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your feelings to make
your career take off.
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Becoming an optimist
How do
charismatic optimists get that
way
—
and is it catching?
“Sally Frame is one of the most
energetic, ?up? people I?ve seen in my entire
retail
career,”
says
a
former
colleague.
Frame
-Kasaks
(she
married
last
year)
credits her parents
for
instilling
her with a “can do”
attitude.
“My
mother
wa
s
gregarious
,
effervescent
.
Dad
was
contemplative
and
more
reserved
,
but
he
gave
me
the
feeling
that
I
could
do
anything,”
she
remembers. “One night when I was 12 or
13, we were walking our dog and Dad
was
explaining the
constellations
to
me.”
“ ?I want to be the
first woman on Venus,? I announced. He looked at
me,
then began to seriously construct a
game plan
. First, he said,
I?d have to study
physics and
astronomy. The next thing I knew, he had me
mentally enrolled
in
engineering
school.
He
never
laughed
at
my
?dream
of
the
moment.?
He
just
seemed to
assume
—
and made me
assume
—
I could accomplish
anything I
set my
mind
to
.”
Experiences
like this help create the confidence and optimism
that is key to
personal
magnetism
.
Researchers
believe
that
where
a
person
lands
on
the
optimism/pessimism
scale
is
shaped
during
childhood
by
influential
adults,
especially parents
and teachers. Seligman feels that a person?s
“explanatory style”
remains relatively
stable over a lifetime. Other experts, including
Freudenberger,
disagree
—
fortunately for those not
blessed with
parents like
the Frames.
“A
person?s
optimism
level
changes
over
the
years—depending
on
what?s
happening in their
life (both personal and professional), the type of
people they
work
and
socialize
with
and
how
determined
they
are
to
motivate
themselves,”
Freudenberger
says.
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