There are generally three types of authority. The authority of anteriority, based on respect for seniority. Authority based on the power of hierarchical superiority. And the purely charismatic authority linked to the influence of a personality. And it is this that the expensive and stereotypical leadership training courses have claimed to address for years. “Strengthen your self-confidence, gain efficiency, become impactful, know how to speak in public, adopt a managerial posture” are some of the promises that these training courses offer to newly promoted managers. However, unlike fairy tales which transform the toad into prince charming, there are few methods which succeed in transforming a pusillanimous person into an unparalleled charismatic. The techniques turn out to be mostly superficial and illusory because they seem to ignore that authority cannot be taught. And this for two basic reasons.
The first is due to the very nature of authority, which simply prevents learning. We teach things that are stable, founded, established. However, authority is characterized precisely by its contingency, its volatility, its uncertainty, since it has no other legitimacy than that of a personal power conferred by others. Even if I learn all the tips and tricks to become charismatic, if others decide and judge that I have no authority, I will never have any. In other words, authority depends on an external opinion that no amount of learning can ever guarantee.
The second is due to the singularity of authority, which these training courses deny by wanting to standardize it through instructions for use, behavioral kits, which are aimed at each participant as well as hundreds of others. By what miracle could authority become the subject of a common recipe? How could charisma be reduced to an accepted code of conduct? For the most part, these training courses can only lead to a formatting, to the adoption of a posture, which, like any posture, reifies, objects, homogenizes, and ultimately turns out to be nothing more than an imposture.
If authority cannot be learned, where does this charm that is charisma come from?charys in Greek means charm)? Of the singularity, of the power of the individual, says Nietzsche. The one who seduces and impacts draws their strength from a “will to power”. This will to power is not a will to power which seeks to diminish others in order to better enhance oneself. A will to power wants itself, desires nothing other than its growth, its own intensification, its permanent pulsation. There is no tool, no method, no recipe here, simply the energy and courage of one’s own will. Desiring what you want, wanting to say what you are saying, is much more effective than adopting the “posture” invoked as an instrument of communication and influence on others. Moving from power over others to the power of the self, in other words moving from formatted techniques to assumed authenticity, turns out to be much more attractive and effective than any behavioral catechism. As proof, I find that each great leader has his or her own particular style: there are the shy ones, like Darwin Smith, with a clumsy style, who avoided the spotlight while showing an iron will, the authoritarian ones like Steve Jobs , the energetic like Nicolas Sarkozy, the inflexible like Margaret Thatcher, the go-getters like Bernard Tapie, the discreet like Tim Cook…
All this shows one thing, which is that charisma is a matter of style, singularity, personality, and cannot be the subject of any postural formatting. But in a world where the rise of personal development ends up depersonalizing and erasing singularities by standardizing the recipes it sells, where individuality always seems more subordinate to behavioral techniques, this may seem comforting for managers alone faced with it is up to them to cling to the branches of the guided pipes. This forgets the essential: charm comes above all from the courage to be yourself.