The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (6 page)

Very few business schools specifically teach students how to handle uncertainty. On the other hand, psychologists have been helping people increase their skills in this arena for decades, creating and refining tools for just this purpose. When Berman asked me to create a program to help business executives better navigate and embrace uncertainty, he suggested we examine the tools psychologists had devised and see which ones might be applicable within a business context. I’ve since tailored this toolkit for many companies in a wide variety of industries, and its effectiveness holds.

The single most effective technique I’ve found to alleviate the discomfort of uncertainty is the responsibility transfer.
²
In uncertain situations, what we really want to know is that things are somehow going to work out fine. If we could be certain that things will work out—that everything will be taken care of—the uncertainty would produce much less anxiety. Take a moment to try the exercise in the box below. If you’d rather have my voice guide you from start to finish, go to the Charisma Myth Web site:
http://www.CharismaMyth.com/transfer
.

So how did that work for you? Did you feel a physical reaction? After doing the responsibility transfer, many clients report feeling lighter, or their chests opening up and expanding. If you didn’t feel any physical reaction or mental relief, it may simply mean that uncertainty was not creating anxiety for you. If you did feel something happen, fantastic: you’ve just performed a responsibility transfer.

Over time, many of my clients have found themselves returning to this technique so often, it becomes instinctive. With each practice, it becomes easier to visualize, to transfer their everyday worries and cares, and to enjoy the physiological effects of the transfer.

The reason this technique works is that when presented with a scenario, our brain’s first reaction is to consider it as possible.

William Bosl, research scientist at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program, explains the implications of a recent functional MRI study on belief, disbelief, and uncertainty as follows:
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“Our brains are wired first to understand, then to believe, and last to disbelieve. Since disbelief requires additional cognitive effort, we get the physiological effects first. And, though this belief may last
only a brief moment, it’s enough to produce an emotional and physical reassurance, which can change our thought patterns as well as help alleviate the uncomfortable feelings.”
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Our physiology responds to visuals well before cognitive disbelief kicks in. In addition, visuals short-circuit our cognitive circuits and go straight to our brain’s emotional levels.

The responsibility transfer does not actually dispel uncertainty (the outcome remains uncertain). Instead, it makes the uncertainty less uncomfortable. This distinction matters. People will go to great lengths to get rid of the anxiety produced by uncertainty, from making premature decisions to forcing bad outcomes to numbing their anxiety with mind-altering substances of various kinds. However, the responsibility transfer works without trying to negate uncertainty. Instead, it helps you to be less affected by it, drawing you out of the negative mental and physical states that often accompany a position of not knowing. The outcome of your situation may still be uncertain, but you’re no longer so anxious about it.

By presenting your mind with the possibility that responsibility has been transferred, you’re putting to good use the wonderful placebo effect—the brain’s inability to distinguish between imagination and reality. As we’ll see in later chapters, the placebo effect works even when we know we’re self-deceiving, perhaps thanks to this natural cognitive delay in disbelief.
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One of my clients used this technique just before stepping on stage to give a key presentation. It had the potential to be a turning point in his career, and he’d been feeling tense for a week. In the hour leading up to his big moment, his anxiety rose and his stomach started churning. When the CEO turned to him and said, “All right, Patrick, you’re up next,” he felt his stress level skyrocket. He could feel the tension in his shoulders, in his face, in his eyes.

He knew how damaging stressed-out body language could be to his presentation. So he stepped out of the room, found a quiet corner, closed his eyes, and for just three minutes imagined transferring responsibility for both his performance and how the presentation was received onto the shoulders of a benevolent entity. He told me that
he felt an instant relief sweep through his body from head to toe. And his presentation was a major triumph.

Personally, I’ve chosen to believe in a benevolent Universe, which has a grand master plan for me (and for everything else). I’ve found this belief to suit me best; it helps me see anything that’s happening as part of this plan. When I realize that my anxiety level is rising, I often perform a quick visualization to transfer responsibility. It’s amazing to feel the instant sense of relief and the warmth, calm, and serenity rising. I feel my whole body relax, and it’s as if my whole being starts to glow.

Dissatisfaction Caused by Comparison

Imagine that it’s Friday night, and you’re at a large dinner party with people sitting at multiple tables. The conversation at your table is rather dull, in sore contrast to the last party you attended, which was great fun. To make matters worse, the table next to you erupts with laughter. Wouldn’t it be natural to think,
I wish I were at that other table. They’re having a much better time…
?

Human beings are by nature driven to compare. Whenever we have an experience, we tend to compare it to our past experiences, to others’ experiences, or to our ideal image of what the experience should be. This tendency becomes even more acute when we’re presented with several options and want to make the best possible choice, seeking to optimize the outcome.

Each stage of this cycle impairs our charisma. The very act of comparing and evaluating hinders our ability to be fully present. Trying to optimize both impairs our presence and creates anxiety due to the pressure of finding the best possible choice. And a negative evaluation can easily put us in a negative mental state, such as dissatisfaction, envy, or resentment.

Because this tendency to compare is wired very deeply in our brains, trying to fight it can take a lot of effort. Instead, notice when you’re making comparisons and use the responsibility transfer technique to alleviate any internal discomfort it may have caused.

Self-Criticism

Imagine that you’re on your way to an important job interview. As the hour of the interview approaches, your internal critical voice attacks you with self-doubt, bringing up memories of past failures, past humiliations, and inadequacies. Anxiety rises, and if you don’t know how to skillfully handle the physical effects of your internal critic’s attack, your performance will suffer. (Don’t worry, you’ll gain all the tools you need to handle episodes like this in
chapter 4
.)

Few things impact people’s performance more than how they feel about themselves. Athletes will tell you that a bad mental state will affect their performance no matter how well prepared they are physically. Psychological negativity can have real physical consequences.

When our internal voice starts criticizing us, lashing out, it can feel like we’re under attack. Because our brain doesn’t distinguish between imagination and reality, these internal attacks are perceived by our mind just as a real, physical attack would be, and they can generate an automatic physical reaction known as the
threat response
or
fight-or-flight response
.

The effects of this activation are well-known. Just as a zebra reacts to the stress of being chased by a lion, the human body shoots adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones) through its veins, and directs all its resources toward crucial functions: elevated heart and breathing rates, muscle reaction, vision acuity, and so forth. The body is no longer concerned with living ten more years, but with surviving ten more minutes. It shuts down nonurgent functions such as muscle repair, digestion, and the immune system,
⁶
as well as “superfluous” functions such as cognitive reasoning. In other words, because it’s not critical to survival, intelligent thinking gets shut down.

David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, explains that “the threat response impairs analytic thinking, creative insight, and problem solving.”
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This kind of negativity doesn’t just affect our actual performance, it also affects how others perceive us.

Let’s say you’re in a conversation. You say something, and immediately think,
Oh, that was a stupid thing to say.
What’s going to happen to your face? You may wince at the thought and your expression may
tense. As we’ve discussed, because we can’t control our body language, any negativity in our mind will eventually show up on our face.

No matter how brief that negative expression, the person facing you is going to spot it. And all they know is that while you were looking at them and listening to them, a negative expression crossed your face. Naturally they’ll assume that expression was a reaction to them—what they said or did, or what you thought about them. This is how internal negativity affects your body language, and thus your charisma, in addition to your performance.

Self-criticism is one of the most common obstacles to great performance in any field. It’s often called the
silent killer
of business, because so many executives suffer from it, yet so few dare to speak out about it. I’ve heard a variety of people, from junior associates to the most senior executives, privately admit that much of their workday was consumed by negativity, their inner critics constantly pointing out their failings, or predicting disappointing outcomes for their projects and initiatives. In some cases, they (and I) were amazed that they got anything done at all, considering that, as one executive reported, “Eighty percent of my day is spent fighting my inner critic.”

Self-Doubt

Self-doubt, simply put, is lack of confidence in our own ability to achieve something: we doubt our capacity to do it or our capacity to learn how to do it. Worse, it is the fear that there is something essential that we lack, something necessary but unattainable, and that
we are just not good enough
. In one of the manifestations of self-doubt, known as the
impostor syndrome,
competent people feel they don’t really know what they’re doing and are just waiting for someone to expose them as a fraud. Since the impostor syndrome was first identified by Georgia State University professors in 1978, we’ve learned that more than 70 percent of the population has experienced this feeling at one time or another.
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Today, we finally have effective tools to handle it (see
chapter 4
). But already, just knowing the universality of such feelings can help us neutralize their effect and reduce their power.

Interestingly, the impostor syndrome is worst among high performers. When I speak about it at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT, the room goes so silent you could hear a pin drop. And I see the students breathe a sigh of relief as they realize this feeling has a name and they are not alone in experiencing it.

Every year, the incoming class at Stanford Business School is asked: “How many of you in here feel that you are the one mistake that the admissions committee made?” Every year, two-thirds of the class immediately raises their hands. When I mention this in speeches, people express astonishment. How could Stanford students, some of the best and brightest in the country, who’ve succeeded through an exhaustive admissions process and have a long track record of solid accomplishments behind them, feel that somehow they don’t belong?

And yet this feeling is one you’ll hear echoed at every stage of success. Michael Uslan, producer of every modern
Batman
movie, still gets that feeling occasionally when he’s in the studio. “I still have this background feeling that one of the security guards might come in and throw me out,” he told me.

For some, it has been a direct corollary of career progression—with greater responsibility comes greater internal doubt as the cost of failure gets higher and higher. Bob Lurie, managing partner for the Monitor Group, told me that he, too, knows what this feels like. “For the first six or seven years of my career, I was the poster child for the impostor syndrome. I was convinced that if I got into a room with senior executives, they would immediately figure out I was a fraud.”

We’ve seen the effects of anxiety, dissatisfaction, self-criticism, and self-doubt. Where does all this negativity come from? The difficult feelings we experience are a natural by-product of one of our most useful survival mechanisms. Negativity exists to spur you to action, to either resolve the problem or get out of the situation. Feelings like fear or anxiety are designed to get you to do something. They’re uncomfortable because they’re “designed” to be uncomfortable.