The Charisma Myth

Highlights

• One of the reasons charisma is mistakenly held to be innate is that, like many other social skills, charismatic behaviors are generally learned early in life. In fact, people usually don’t consciously realize they are learning them.
• The most common charisma myth is that you have to be naturally boisterous or outgoing to be charismatic. One of the most interesting research findings is that you can be a very charismatic introvert.
  • Tags: [[social-skills]]
• Three quick tips to gain an instant charisma boost in conversation: Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of your sentences. Reduce how quickly and how often you nod. Pause for two full seconds before you speak.
• CHARISMATIC BEHAVIOR CAN be broken down into three core elements: presence, power, and warmth.
• Being charismatic does not depend on how much time you have but on how fully present you are in each interaction. The ability to be fully present makes you stand out from the crowd; it makes you memorable.
• Projecting presence, power, and warmth through your body language is often all you need to be perceived as charismatic.
• Because what’s in your mind shows up in your body and because people will catch even the briefest microexpression, to be effective, charismatic behaviors must originate in your mind.
• In terms of achieving charisma, your internal state is critical. Get the internal state right, and the right charismatic behaviors and body language will pour forth automatically.
• Any physical discomfort that affects your visible, external state—your body language—even slightly may affect how charismatic you are perceived to be. When interacting with someone, assume that he or she will feel (at least on a subconscious level) that whatever you do relates to him or to her.
• When I realize that my anxiety level is rising, I often perform a quick visualization to transfer responsibility.
• Skillfully handling any difficult experience is a three-step process: destigmatize discomfort, neutralize negativity, and rewrite reality.
• Rather than seeing it as one big emotion felt by one person, see a community of people struggling with it—one difficult burden shared by many. Rather than being yours alone to bear, see the issue as the depression, the shame, the sadness that is being felt by a multitude of people right now.
• As with any discomfort or difficult feeling, it is helpful to remember that shame is a standard part of the human experience, and that everyone feels it from time to time.
• One of the main reasons we’re so affected by our negative thoughts is that we think our mind has an accurate grasp on reality, and that its conclusions are generally valid. This, however, is a fallacy. Our mind’s view of reality can be, and often is, completely distorted.
• Imagine seeing yourself from afar. Zoom out so far, you can see planet Earth hanging in space. Then zoom in to see your continent, then your country, your city, and finally the room you’re in. See your little self, electrical impulses whizzing across your brain. One little being having a particular experience at this particular moment.
• “I decide to interpret everything favorably toward myself. It’s not just that I’m optimistic, I’m actually conveniently deluded.”
• “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
• “the most effective thing you can do for your career is to get comfortable being uncomfortable.”
• Skillfully handle internal discomfort with a three-step process: destigmatize your discomfort, neutralize your negative thoughts, and rewrite your perception of reality.
• Visualization is indeed a powerful tool. Of all the charisma-boosting techniques, this is the one I recommend making a permanent part of your toolkit.
• in any interaction, imagine the person you’re speaking to, and all those around you, as having invisible angel wings.
• first comes empathy, the ability to understand what someone is feeling, to detect distress; second, sympathy, being emotionally moved by distress; and third, compassion, which arises with the desire to care for the well-being of the distressed person.
• Self-confidence is our belief in our ability to do or to learn how to do something. Self-esteem is how much we approve of or value ourselves. It’s often a comparison-based evaluation (whether measured against other people or against our own internal standards for approval). Self-compassion is how much warmth we can have for ourselves, especially when we’re going through a difficult experience.
• People who score high on self-compassion also have a lower tendency for denial. This makes sense: personal mistakes would generate less self-criticism, so people would be more willing to admit to them.
• Self-compassion is what helps us forgive ourselves when we’ve fallen short; it’s what prevents internal criticism from taking over and playing across our face, ruining our charisma potential.
• Because self-compassion dispels the inner critical voice that affects body language, it can actually give you a more expansive, confident posture.
• you really can gain actual self-confidence as well as the instant perception of greater self-confidence just by changing your body language.
• Plan a warm-up period that allows you to gradually ramp up to the level you want. When you want to ensure peak charismatic performance, don’t expect yourself to be on top of your game, going from zero to full charisma instantly and at will.
• Focus charisma is primarily based on a perception of presence. It gives people the feeling that you are fully present with them, listening to them and absorbing what they say.
• We assess focus charisma entirely through demeanor. Presence is key: because we can perceive any distracted, inattentive body language, such signals would quickly undermine focus charisma.
• Why is visionary charisma so effective and powerful? Because of our natural discomfort with uncertainty. In a constantly changing world, we crave something solid to cling to.
• Though kindness charisma is based primarily on warmth, without power you risk coming off as overeager to please. This is where the ability to convey a modicum of power becomes important.
• We evaluate someone’s authority charisma through four indicators: body language, appearance, title, and the reactions of others.
• To project power and confidence in your body language, you’ll need to learn how to “take up space” with your posture, reduce nonverbal reassurances (such as excessive nodding), and avoid fidgeting.
• Trying to force yourself into a charisma style that really isn’t right for you can be as unpleasant as it is counterproductive.
• Let goodwill be your safety net. Coming from a place of genuine goodwill gives you the best chance of getting your charisma right.
• So how can you make a fantastic first impression? Our default setting here is actually quite simple: people like people who are like them.
• If you want to impress others, look at the range of choices within that environment and choose the upper end.
• “Talk to a man about himself, and he will listen for hours,” said Benjamin Disraeli. In fact, even when you’re speaking, the one word that should pop up most often in your conversation is not I but you.
• One of the most common mistakes my clients make is equating listening with “letting people talk until it’s my turn.”
  • Tags: [[social-skills]] [[sales]]
• Master listeners know one extra trick, one simple but extraordinarily effective habit that will make people feel truly listened to and understood: they pause before they answer.
• First, think about how you would behave if you were indeed speaking to the most important person in the room. You would probably want to hear everything they had to say. You’d be truly interested, maybe even impressed, and that attitude is exactly what will make people feel great about themselves and associate all those feelings with you.
• “You can make more friends in two months by becoming truly interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
• Don’t try to impress people. Let them impress you, and they will love you for it. Believe it or not, you don’t need to sound smart. You just need to make them feel smart.
• Increasing voice fluctuation means making your voice vary in any of the following ways: pitch (high or low), volume (loud or quiet), tone (resonant or hollow), tempo (fast or slow), or rhythm (fluid or staccato).
• Pitch and tone: The lower, more resonant, and more baritone your voice, the more impact it will have.
• One classic exercise to hone your projection skills is to imagine that your words are arrows.
• Tempo: A slow, measured tempo with frequent pauses conveys confidence.
• Speak slowly. Visualize the contrast between a nervous, squeaky teenager speaking at high speed and the slow, emphatic tone of a judge delivering a verdict.
• People who broadcast confidence often pause while speaking. They will pause for a second or two between sentences or even in the middle of a sentence. This conveys the feeling that they’re so confident in their power, they trust that people won’t interrupt.
• Lowering the intonation of your voice at the end of a sentence broadcasts power. When you want to sound superconfident, you can even lower your intonation midsentence.
• Never interrupt people, and occasionally pause a second or two before you answer.
• Make people feel good, especially about themselves. Don’t try to impress them—let them impress you, and they will love you for it.
• When our verbal and nonverbal signals are in congruence (when they “agree” with each other), the nonverbal amplifies the verbal. When they conflict, we tend to trust the nonverbal over the verbal.
• In high-stakes situations we react more strongly to body language than to words because our fight-or-flight response activates and a more primal part of the brain takes over. This part of the brain does not directly comprehend words or ideas. Instead, it’s immediately impacted by body language.
• Imitating someone’s body language is an easy way to establish trust and rapport. This technique, which is often called mirroring or mimicking, is the conscious application of something that many charismatic people do instinctively.
• “Powerful people sit sideways on chairs, drape their arms over the back, or appropriate two chairs by placing an arm across the back of an adjacent chair. They put their feet on the desk. They sit on the desk.”
• When you want to increase your poise, there are three major issues to look out for. The first is excessive or rapid nodding. Nodding once for emphasis or to express agreement is fine and can be an effective communication method, but nodding three or four times in rapid succession is not. This is what one of my clients has come to call “the bobble head.”
• Catch yourself when you find yourself nodding or verbally reassuring, and try to replace it with stillness and silence. Aim to get comfortable with silence, inserting pauses between your sentences or even midsentence.
• When people are defensive, break their body language lock by handing them something to look at or something they will have to lean forward to take.
• But in general, when you have a group of difficult people to convince, you’ll have much greater chances of success if you work on each of them individually.
• If someone feels like they’ve done you harm, they will seek to rationalize their actions and will convince themselves that what they did was justified. They don’t want to feel like a bad person, therefore you must have done something wrong in order for them to act this way toward you.
• You can use rationalization not just for yourself but for the idea you’re supporting. By showing someone the impact they’ve had on a project or an idea, they will feel a degree of ownership of it, and then instinctively will feel driven to support it.
• To counteract the stress hormones that could flood your system, impair your mental functioning, and generate negative body language, flood your system with oxytocin instead. To do this when dealing with a difficult person, get into empathy and stay there.
  • Tags: [[social-skills]] [[consulting]]
• It might also help to consider that this person may well be in a state of utter self-loathing. The internal world of difficult people can be pretty nasty—that’s the very reason they’re difficult.
• Hostility is often nothing but the external manifestation of internal turmoil.
• Though it may sound counterintuitive, having warmth toward yourself—even though you may be at fault—is necessary to prevent making the situation worse through negative body language.
• Just coming into a conversation with the mindset of “Help me understand how you see things” can change the outcome completely. The simple fact of being in an open mental stance affects your voice, your facial expressions, the words you use, and your body posture, and it dramatically changes the emotional tenor of the interaction.
• To communicate presence, Michael Feuer, the founder of OfficeMax, says that he often closes his eyes when listening. I was struck by how good a listener he was: even on the phone, I could feel the intensity of his listening, how well he absorbed everything I was saying.
• Stories have a particularly strong impact on people. In fact, audiences will often remember first the story, and only second the point the story was making. Since the dawn of time, people have been telling stories as a way to transmit information to one another.
• It’s hard enough to feel fully comfortable on stage while facing an audience alone, without having to deal with physical discomfort on top of it all! This means wearing clothing you can breathe in and shoes that are stable.
• Just as a duck appears to be sailing smoothly on the surface of a lake while powerfully paddling below the waterline, it takes a whole lot of effort for a presentation to appear effortless.
• First, when you stand, be sure to have a wide stance, well balanced on both feet. Not only will you feel more confident, you’ll also look more confident, more stable, than if you were standing on one foot.
• Think of the stereotype of a boring presentation: a lecturer who stands immobile at his lectern, reading from his notes in a monotone voice. Moving comfortably around the stage will make you appear much more confident, powerful, and charismatic.
• For the next five years, every speech outline I prepared was emblazoned with one bold word scrawled across the top of every page: BREATHE! Today, when learning a new speech, I’ll often still include notes to myself every few pages: Pause. Breathe. Slow Down.
• It’s really worth paying attention to your tempo because the slower you speak, the more thoughtful and deliberate you will sound, and the more attention people will give to what you say.
• But, just as in conversations, pausing regularly during your presentations is an important skill to acquire. It’s one of the hallmarks of effective speakers and really is one of the key tools for great speaking.
• Throughout your speech, pause frequently, deliberately. Have the confidence to make your listeners wait for your words. It’s called a dramatic pause for a reason: it adds drama.
• Your presentation should have one main, simple, crystal-clear message, supported by three to five key points.
• First, retain at least a certain measure of equanimity. Most charismatic leaders are known for their ability to remain (or appear) calm even in the midst of turbulent circumstances.
• Think of the people you want your charisma to impact. What standard would you like them to live up to or exceed? Express this expectation as if you have full confidence that they can live up to it. Better yet, act like you assume they already are meeting these standards.
• Stretch the boundaries of your comfort zone in low-stakes situations. On the other hand, when you’re in high-stakes situations, don’t take the risk of coming across as uncomfortable or inauthentic. While you’re learning, in difficult or important situations, stick with the charismatic behaviors and styles that are easiest for you.