Character vs. Charisma

Charisma is a word that is often confused with character, but charisma is really quite different. Charisma is derived from a Greek work meaning “an ability to elicit favor in other people.” It’s a magnetic quality of personality that people respond to as if it were magic. Charisma is almost like a magic wand that confers power over others.

Character has a very different origin. Character comes from a Greek word meaning “chisel,” or “the mark left by a chisel.” Of course, a chisel is a sharp steel tool used for making a sculpture out of a hard or difficult material, like granite or marble.

So in its origins, the word character isn’t related to charisma, which is described as a kind of magic wand. Character isn’t a magic wand; character comes from chisel, and I (Jim Rohn) hope you’ll remember that. You’ve got to chisel your character out of the raw material of yourself just like a sculptor has to create a statue. The raw material is always there, and everything that happens to you, good or bad, is an opportunity for building your character.

Let me point out another important distinction between character and charisma. In both its definition and its derivation, character doesn’t refer to other people. It doesn’t refer to having power over other people, getting other people to follow you, or gaining favor with other people. Character is something that you have and something that you are. You could be marooned on a desert island and your character would still be important–in fact, it would likely be very important in that situation–but charisma wouldn’t do you any good at all. Charisma requires the presence of others, while character is all about you. Character is the person you are after you’ve chiseled and chiseled and have gotten past all the unnecessary material to what’s underneath.

But since we’re usually surrounded by other people, let me be a little more specific about how the differences between a charismatic person and a person with character can play out in the real world, particularly in leadership situations. Here are four sets of circumstances that can easily occur:

First, a really charismatic person can make people believe there’s pie in the sky or that the sky is going to fall tomorrow… one just as easily as the other. By creating these expectations, charismatic individuals can indeed energize and inspire others–or terrify and demotivate them–until the overblown scenarios are proven false, and the charisma runs out. But a person of character doesn’t need to be anyone’s Pied Piper and isn’t comfortable in that role. Instead, he or she looks within for the true source of inspiration and energy.

Second, a charismatic person can inspire devoted or even fanatical loyalty, but this can all too easily turn into an unconscious sense of dependency. That can make matters difficult when the leader is no longer available. A charismatic coach is effective during the glory years, but when he leaves the organization, there’s a sense of abandonment, and the team may never achieve anything like its prior success. Powerful personalities often resist delegating authority, but it’s an attribute of character for a leader to refrain from making himself or herself the indispensable heart and soul of an organization.

Here’s a third difference between character and charisma that’s particularly important in a leadership situation. Charismatic people have to keep pulling rabbits out of the hat. The magic of their presence has got to keep expressing itself, or people might start wondering where it went. Worse yet, they might start getting bored. During the Second World War, Dwight Eisenhower was picked to command the Allied Forces in Europe not because he was an exciting leader with a sense of high drama, but precisely because he wasn’t. There were plenty of charismatic individuals around, such as Churchill, Montgomery, DeGaulle, and Patton. What was needed was somebody with toughness, stamina, and the ability to manage people. Just before the Normandy Invasion in 1994, Eisenhower met with a group of officers who would be going into battle. He stretched out a piece of string on a table and pulled it a few inches with his finger. “An army is like this piece of string,” he said. “If you try to push it from behind, it just tangles and doubles back on itself. Soldiers have to be led from the front, not pushed from behind.”

Eisenhower may not have been colorful, but he could definitely get his point across in a way anyone could understand. he had character in the true sense.

One of the biggest pitfalls for a charismatic leader comes from his or her ability to inspire love and devotion, and this is the last point I want to make. To bask in the warm glow of a leader’s approval, people may become reluctant to voice disagreements. There are people who become isolated because subordinates are afraid of them, but the same isolation can occur as a result of misplaced affection. People of character are usually well-loved by everyone around them, but they make it clear that their own first love is for the truth, even if it hurts. And that’s not a bad reputation to have.

* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn