Seth Godin shared an excerpt from his upcoming book, Tribes. Excuse the typos…it’s the way it was posted. Enjoy.

Here are two excerpts from the book…

The Elements of Leadership
Leaders challenge the status quo.
Leaders communicate their vision of the future.
Leaders commit to a vision and decisions based on that commitment.
Leaders create a culture around their goal and involve others in that culture.
Leaders have an extraordinary amount of curiosity about the world they’re trying to change.
Leaders use charisma (in a variety of forms) to attract and motivate followers.
Leaders connect their followers to each other.

Sorry for the alliteration, but that’s the it worked out.

If you consider the leaders in your organization or community, you’ll see that many of them uses some combination of these seven elements. You don’t have to be in charge or powerful or pretty or connected to be a leader. You do have to be committed.

Understanding Charisma
Think about the charismatic leaders you’ve encountered. They might be young or old, rich or poor, black or white, male or female, extroverted or shy. In fact, the only thing they seem to have in common is that they are leaders.

I think most people have it upside down. Being charismatic doesn’t you a leader. Being a leader you charismatic.

There are leaders with speech impediments and a fear of public speaking. Leaders down the corporate ladder and leaders with no my or obvious trappings of power. There are ugly leaders, too, so charisma certainly isn’t about being attractive.

It’s easy to give in to your fear and tell yourself that you don’t have what it takes to lead. Mostly, people give up when they to the charisma part of the checklist. “I wasn’t born charismatic, not those other guys, so I guess I’ll settle for following.”

The flaw in this reasoning is that those other guys weren’t born charismatic, either. It’s a choice, not a gift.

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