How To Be Attractive

We all want to be attractive.  To get to the next level in our lives, we are trying to “attract” people: investors, employees, voters, customers, suppliers, friends, a mate, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc.  Of course, we need to turn up the attraction far beyond physical beauty and style to reach our goals in today’s hypercompetitive world.

The most successful business leaders use six key strategies to boost attractiveness. You can harness the same approach to drive meaningful results in your company, career, and community:

1) Lead with passion — When you are passionate about your ideas and connected to the purpose behind your mission, your attractiveness goes through the roof.  In the words of military theorist Ferdinand Foch, “The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”  Amen.

2) Don’t fake it — Nowadays, we all have highly developed “BS detectors.” Keep it real. Authenticity trumps fancy talk any day. Trust must be earned and can be shattered in an instant. Stop being apologetic for who you are not, and celebrate who you are.

3) Be interested instead of interesting — Dale Carnegie had it right — you attract others when you are genuinely interested in them. Listen more, talk less. Ask questions and seek to understand. You’ll be amazed how everyone suddenly wants to be your friend.

4) Don’t waiver — If you are second-guessing yourself or your ideas, so will others. Confidence is the most attractive attribute in any act of persuasion, personal or business. Stand firm to your beliefs, and in turn, others will gravitate to you.

5) Be remarkable — The world doesn’t need another me-too anything. Whether you’re selling your product, yourself, or your vision, make sure they are unique and compelling. Dream your own dreams, not a slight variation of someone else’s.

6) Make a difference — If your idea is a scheme to make piles of cash at the expense of the world, you’ll have an easier time pushing boulders up a mountain. If you are solving a real human problem and truly working to make the world a better place, it will show and you will shine.

The toll booth to your next level of greatness is likely an upcoming act of persuasion. Seize these laws of attraction, and you’ll have more pull than a high-powered magnet. Focus on who you are, and the money, friends, team members, lovers, and supporters will materialize as if they were ordered from Amazon.com. Overnight delivery.

Read More

New Thinking for the New Era of Business

Albert Einstein famously noted, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them.” In our post-COVID world of ...

When an Astronaut Needs a Pen

Ever get stuck on a problem, only to realize you're solving for the wrong thing? That's exactly what happened when the rocket scientists at NASA ...

How Shake Shack Drives Innovation

Do you prefer the crispy mozzarella, tempura watercress, and black garlic mayonnaise cheeseburger or the pumpkin mustard, bacon, cranberries, and sage hot dog? For something ...

Lady Gaga’s Secret to Creativity

Just before she won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, I watched Lady Gaga dazzle the live audience with a pitch perfect performance of ...

Creativity: Does Size Matter?

For some reason, we’ve been taught that for creativity and innovation to count they need to have a magnitude the size of the 1989 San ...

The Lexicon of Creativity

There’s more confusion around the meaning of the word innovation than the chaos at the airline ticket counter after a cancelled flight. Is there a difference between ...

The Brain Science of Becoming More Creative

When we hear stories about iconic leaders like Salesforce.com’s founder Marc Benioff, or widely celebrated virtuosos like Lin-Manuel Miranda for that matter, we immediately think ...

Correct the Overcorrect

When the misguided leaders at Enron, Tyco and Worldcom committed fraud and marred their shareholders with huge losses, the Securities and Exchange Commission rightfully swooped ...

Learning to Color

Fact: Creativity has become the most needed skill in business. It’s gone from a nice-to-have to becoming mission-critical. Fact: Creativity is a learnable skill. All humans have ...