Review

Nerissa Payne, ATF Group

In October top trainer Nikki Owen got in touch with AccountingWeb about a seminar she was running that could boost your charisma in 48 hours. She offered up two slots for AccountingWeb volunteers, and a good portion of Accountants kindly offered to go. AccountingWeb picked two out of the hat, one of which was Nerissa Payne from ATF Group. Nerissa went to the first of Nikki’s seminars: here’s how she got on.

This was a very enjoyable and thought-provoking seminar, and I’m grateful to AccountingWeb and Nikki for the chance to go along.

As you might expect Nikki is an assured public speaker with a warm personality and an evident passion for her work. She believes in working holistically with the mind, body and spirit to help people become more successful and fulfilled. So she talks a lot about spirituality and personal development, which felt strange in the context of corporate training, but refreshing. The other delegates were the sort of blue-chip high-flyers I’d imagined would regard this kind of thing as impossibly fluffy, but in fact they turned out to be sympathetic to it, and very interesting and open. I was probably more surprised than they were when, alongside the NLP-inspired training methods and flipcharts, we had our energy fields photographed and were then given a hilarious and fascinating experience of dowsing. Nikki’s aim was to give us concrete evidence of how positive thinking can have a physical impact on ourselves and others. I wasn’t totally convinced by this, especially the quoting of scientific studies to back up the more spiritual ideas on offer, but the overall message was certainly inspiring.

I’ve always imagined charisma to be something you either have or you don’t, so it was interesting to analyse it and realise I can aim to improve my personal impact and attractiveness. In fact Nikki made us test each other at intervals so that we could measure how well the seminar was working. To start with it was nerve-wracking to introduce myself to my fellow delegates and then be graded by them on a special scoresheet in the key charismatic attributes of being Confident, Expressive, Passionate, Exciting and Authentic. I was self-conscious, made a hash of it, and was given a rather low charisma rating of 16 out of a possible 25.

We went on to examine how we could enhance each of these attributes, using group discussions and exercises to understand the underlying causes of charismatic presence. It was fun, stimulating stuff and I had to concentrate hard and fight my corner in the debates.

One exercise I found particularly useful was considering what qualities I look for in my career and how well my career is matching them. I was really taken aback to realise how low my expectations of my working life are. When it came to my career, security seemed to be my main motivator – maybe it’s not surprising that I went into accountancy. This contrasted rather sharply with the adventure, connection and wisdom which I realised I’m seeking in my life as a whole. I ended up going home slightly depressed at this goal incongruence, although Nikki reassured us that low spirits could be part of the process and that the second day would pull it all together and leave us on a high.

Sure enough the next day was very uplifting. One great exercise showed us how our body language and voice can be used to make us more compelling and attractive, even when talking about a ‘boring’ subject. Since I was teamed up with some non-accountants I took the opportunity to educate them on the different capital allowance rates, sadistically ignoring their fidgeting and pained looks (they actually confessed they’d stopped listening after a few seconds). Repeating the lecture with a high level of excitement and enthusiasm was a major improvement – not only was the audience leaning in eagerly to catch every detail but I felt more confident and interested too.

I did feel an increased attractiveness and confidence that was obviously transmitting to the others. In the final coffee break people kept coming up to me and telling me how radiant I was looking and how well I was coming over compared to the day before.

We did some more work on enhancing our self-esteem and then it was time for my final charisma rating. I was delighted to score a rather magnificent 23.5 out of 25 - and someone had given me 6 out of 5 for Authenticity. Splendid!