“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

This extract from Mitch Albom’s book The Five People You Meet in Heaven sums up my beliefs about the impact of our parents on our physical and emotional well-being that often endures throughout our life. I regard myself as a woman who is at peace with herself, balanced and mostly rational. Yet despite this, a visit to my parents can release an emotional Tsunami within me and I will suddenly feel as if I’m 10 years old again. I had a wry smile on my face this weekend as I read a provocative article by Lucy Baxter in You Magazine titled ‘I Divorced My Own Father ‘ sharing the story of why she decided to cut her father completely out of her life. Experts acknowledge that the first six years of our life will create a lasting impact throughout the rest of our life because our brains are not fully formed. It is as if we are in a deep trance-like state absorbing everything like a porous sponge, including the values and beliefs of our parents. Little wonder that this parent-offspring relationship affects so many aspects of our personality including our charisma and personal presence.

My own research into understanding charisma enabled me to create my own definition that “Charisma is an authentic power that captivates the hearts and minds of others.” I discovered that you cannot teach charisma by training external behaviours because if these behaviours are not in alignment with your true authentic self you will be perceived as fake and superficial. My 25 year study into authentic charisma helped me to realise that everyone has this innate ability to shine. Interestingly however, my studies also helped me to understand why some people appear to shine more brightly than others. Every time we experience hurt, fear, anger, grief or guilt and we fail to acknowledge, accept and release these negative emotions, they become buried inside us, building up into mountainous stores of suppressed negativity that can erupt, like a volcano, at any time. This suppressed negativity, locked away in our unconscious minds, blocks our energy and tarnishes our natural shine. Over time we learn to suppress more and more of our natural emotional responses, until we operate like automatons in a grey twilight world filled with stress, pressure, barriers and deadlines. Jacintha Saldanha, the British nurse who tragically committed suicide after taking that prank call from an Australian radio show, demonstrates that left unchecked, stored negative emotions can eventually erupt, triggering reactions which would seem to be entirely inappropriate to a situation or event , often with devastating consequences.

In business stored negativity will cause disengagement on a breathtaking scale that infects and erodes energy so that employees find themselves being swept away under a tidal wave of stress and anxiety. Teaching disengaged staff to ‘think positive’, and helping them to remove the barriers that they have unwittingly erected around themselves, will create rapid transformation within the culture of that organisation.

One such barrier can be an individual’s limiting beliefs and values inherited from their parents that may be sabotaging their productivity. Parental relationships can fuel intense emotional outbursts and are are frequently ‘blamed’ for the mess or predicament we find ourselves in. If we view our parents as teachers, we can potentially learn from them in two ways. Firstly, if they were role models of excellence and exuded positivity then the child within will unconsciously seek to emulate them throughout their life. Alternatively, if our parents created trauma for us during our childhood then we can learn what we ‘don’t want to be’ and this has the potential to provide a catalyst for positive growth.

This parental relationship is often replayed within an organisational context, when we may perceive colleagues, line managers or leaders as manifestations of our father or mother because something about their behaviour, the way they look or how the speak triggers us back to our past. The study of Neuroscience has identified that the amygdala, located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain is responsible for triggering fear. If an organisation unwittingly triggers a negative ‘parental relationship’ emotion, the individual they will be plunged into anxiety, stress and survival model. The quickest and most effective way to combat this unhelpful reaction is explained very well in Rob Schneider’s article The Power of Positive Thinking. He provides compelling evidence that positive thinking and happiness increases our resilience, enables us to gain the gifts from our parents and significantly reduces stress and anxiety.

In term of organisational culture the point is that happier employees are healthier, work harder and create a collaborative and supportive environment that inspires engagement and flushes out disengagement. Happier employees possess huge amounts of energy and shine with impact and radiate presence….. sounds a bit like charisma, don’t you think?

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