The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (2 page)

The equation that produces charisma is actually fairly simple. All you have to do is give the impression that you possess both high power and high warmth, since charismatic behaviors project a combination of these two qualities. “Fight or flight?” is the power question. “Friend or foe?” is the warmth question.

A final dimension underlies both of these qualities: presence. When people describe their experience of seeing charisma in action, whether they met Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, or the Dalai Lama, they often mention the individual’s extraordinary “presence.”

Presence is the single most requested aspect of charisma when I’m coaching executives. They want to increase their
executive presence
or
boardroom presence
. And they’re right to focus on it: presence turns
out to be the real core component of charisma, the foundation upon which all else is built. When you’re with a charismatic master—take Bill Clinton, for example—you not only feel his power and a sense of warm engagement, you also feel that he’s completely here with you, in this moment. Present.

Practical Magic

Charisma has been turned into an applied science. What this book does is translate the science into practical, immediately applicable tools, with measurable results. You’ll learn charisma in a methodical, systematic way, with practical exercises immediately useful in the real world. And, unlike those of us who learned by trial and error, you won’t have to waste any time figuring out what works and what doesn’t.
You
can go straight to the tried-and-true tools that really do enhance charisma.

Becoming more charismatic does involve work—work that is sometimes hard, uncomfortable, and even daunting. But it’s also incredibly rewarding, both in terms of how you will relate to yourself and how others will relate to you. It involves managing your mental ecosystem, understanding and attending to your own needs, as well as knowing which behaviors inspire others to see you as charismatic and learning how to project them.

This book will guide you through that process. It will give you concrete tools for projecting the three crucial aspects of charisma: presence, power, and warmth. As you use them, you will experience an increased sense of personal magnetism—and if it was already strongly present, you’ll gain finer control over that charismatic power. You’ll learn how to harness it and how to skillfully wield it. You’ll also learn how to choose the right kind of charisma for your personality and your goals in any situation.

You’ll get an inside peek at what goes on in the minds—and bodies—of charismatic people. I’ll give you insights into what the CEOs I coach wrestle with behind closed doors.

What you’ll find here is practical magic: unique knowledge, drawn
from a variety of sciences, revealing what charisma really is and how it works. You’ll get both the insights and the techniques you need to apply this knowledge. The world will become your lab, and every time you meet someone, you’ll get an opportunity to experiment.

Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll be ready to learn how to be charismatic even in difficult situations, for instance when you’re having a career-changing conversation, dealing with a difficult person, or delivering a presentation. And once you know how to access charisma at will, you’ll get the insider secrets to living life as a charismatic person.

You’ll learn how to become more influential, more persuasive, and more inspiring. You’ll learn how to exude charisma—the ability to move through a room and have people go, “Wow, who’s
that
?”

IN THE TORRID
London summer of 1886, William Gladstone was up against Benjamin Disraeli for the post of prime minister of the United Kingdom. This was the Victorian era, so whoever won was going to rule half the world. In the very last week before the election, both men happened to take the same young woman out to dinner. Naturally, the press asked her what impressions the rivals had made. She said, “After dining with Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest person in England. But after dining with Mr. Disraeli, I thought
I
was the cleverest person in England.”

Guess who won the election? It was the man who made
others
feel intelligent, impressive, and fascinating: Benjamin Disraeli.

Consciously or not, charismatic individuals choose specific behaviors that make other people feel a certain way. These behaviors can be learned and perfected by anyone. In fact, in controlled laboratory experiments, researchers were able to raise and lower people’s levels of charisma as if they were turning a dial.
¹

Contrary to commonly held charisma myths, you don’t have to be
naturally outgoing, you don’t have to be physically attractive, and you won’t have to change your personality. No matter where you’re starting from, you can significantly increase your personal charisma and reap the rewards both in business and in daily life.

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. In Western society, we place such emphasis on the skills and abilities of extroverts that introverts can end up feeling defective and uncool. But introversion is not a terminal handicap. In fact, as we’ll see, it can be a strong advantage for certain forms of charisma.

It is also a myth that you have to be attractive to be charismatic. Countless charismatic figures were far from fitting classic standards of beauty. Churchill was not generally considered handsome and certainly not known for his sex appeal. And yet he was one of history’s most influential and powerful leaders.

Yes, good looks do confer some advantage. But it’s very possible to be charismatic without a striking face or figure. In fact, charisma itself will make you more attractive. When instructed to exhibit specific charismatic behaviors in controlled experiments, participants’ levels of attractiveness were rated significantly higher than before.
²

Last but not least, you won’t have to change your personality. In order to become more charismatic, you don’t have to force yourself into one particular personality style or do something that is against your nature.

Instead, you will learn some new skills.

Through charisma training you will learn how to adopt a charismatic posture, how to warm up your eye contact, and how to modulate your voice in ways that make people pay attention. 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.
  

As you can see, these are simple tweaks, not deep value changes. Your personality will stay the same as long as you want it to.

Will these new skills and behaviors feel odd at first? They may. But, then, so did brushing your teeth when you first learned how, though now (I hope) it’s become a habit you perform each day without thinking. Like many new skills, charismatic behaviors might feel awkward at first, but with practice they will become second nature, like walking, talking, or driving. This book is your step-by-step guide to acquiring these behaviors and making them your own.

We understand that proficiency at chess, singing, or hitting a fastball requires conscious practice. Charisma is a skill that can also be developed through conscious practice, and because we’re interacting with people all the time, we get to use our charisma tools on a daily basis.

I know that a person’s charisma level can be changed through conscious practice because I’ve helped countless clients increase theirs in this way. Interviewing people close to my clients before and after our work together confirmed that they were able to change how people perceived them. I’ve also taught these charisma tools at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, after UC Berkeley’s business school asked me to create a complete curriculum for charisma and leadership.

If you follow the instructions in this book, you
will
increase your level of charisma. And once these practices become second nature, they keep operating in the background without your needing to give them any thought—and you’ll keep reaping their rewards from then onward.

How This Will Work for You

I’ve reverse-engineered the science of charisma by learning the behavioral and cognitive science behind it and striving to extract the most practical tools and techniques. This book helps you put the science into practice so that you can accelerate your learning curve.

I am offering you the tools that will give you the highest return on your investment and the best, most effective techniques from a broad range of disciplines—from behavioral, cognitive, and neuroscience to meditation; from peak-performance athletic conditioning to Hollywood Method acting.

I’ll give you the science when it’s relevant (or fun, or fascinating), and, more important, I’ll give you the practical tools. My goal with this book is to give you techniques you can immediately apply to gain both the skills and the self-confidence that lead to outstanding performance.

When I’m asked how soon my coaching produces results, I answer: In one session, you’ll feel the difference. In two sessions, others will see the difference. In three sessions, you’ll have a whole new presence.

However, just reading this book won’t yield its full benefits. You would be shortchanging yourself if you avoided any of the exercises, as odd or even uncomfortable as they may feel at times. To be successful, you have to be willing to put in the effort of applying what you read. When an exercise asks you to close your eyes and imagine a scene, really close your eyes and do it. When I ask you to write out a scenario, grab a piece of paper and a pen that writes.

This is the very challenge I bring into the office of every executive who’s ever hired me. There is no substitute for doing the exercises. Skimming through them with the earnest intention of completing them “another day” is not enough, nor is doing only the exercises that seem easy or interesting. If I ask you to do something, it’s for a good reason, and it will have a real impact on your level of charisma.

Some of the techniques you’ll learn here will give you results immediately, such as learning how to be charismatic when presenting to audiences small or large. Others will take weeks to fully unfold. Some might be surprising, like learning how your toes can help maximize your charisma potential.

When I asked one of my clients what advice he would give others about to start this work, he said: “Tell them that: even though it can seem intimidating at first, and you’ll be taken out of your comfort zone, it’s worth it.” Commit, and do your homework.

CHARISMATIC BEHAVIOR CAN
be broken down into three core elements: presence, power, and warmth. These elements depend both on our conscious behaviors and on factors we don’t consciously control. People pick up on messages we often don’t even realize we’re sending through small changes in our body language. In this chapter, we’ll explore how these signals can be influenced. In order to be charismatic, we need to choose mental states that make our body language, words, and behaviors flow together and express the three core elements of charisma. Since presence is the foundation for everything else, that’s where we’ll start.

Presence

Have you ever felt, in the middle of a conversation, as if only half of your mind were present while the other half was busy doing something else? Do you think the other person noticed?

If you’re not fully present in an interaction, there’s a good chance that your eyes will glaze over or that your facial reactions will be a split-second delayed. Since the human mind can read facial expressions in as little as seventeen milliseconds,
¹
the person you’re speaking with will likely notice even the tiniest delays in your reactions.

We may think that we can fake presence. We may think that we can fake listening. We believe that as long as we seem attentive, it’s okay to let our brains churn on other things. But we’re wrong. When we’re not fully present in an interaction, people will see it. Our body language sends a clear message that other people read and react to, at least on a subconscious level.

You’ve surely had the experience of talking to someone who wasn’t really listening. Maybe they seemed to be just “going through the motions” of listening to you so you wouldn’t be offended. Somehow, they didn’t seem to be paying full attention. How did you feel then? Brushed off? Annoyed? Just plain bad? As a student in one of my Harvard lectures told me: “It happened recently when I was talking to someone—I felt she wasn’t really present. I felt resentful, inferior to whatever was more important to her than our conversation.”

Not only can the lack of presence be visible, it can also be perceived as inauthentic, which has even worse emotional consequences. When you’re perceived as disingenuous, it’s virtually impossible to generate trust, rapport, or loyalty. And it’s impossible to be charismatic.

Presence is a learnable skill. Like any other ability (from painting to playing the piano), you can increase it with practice and patience. Being present means simply having a moment-to-moment awareness of what’s happening. It means paying attention to what’s going on rather than being caught up in your own thoughts.

Now that you know the cost of lacking presence, try the exercise on the next page to test yourself, see how present you can be, and learn three simple techniques to immediately boost your charisma in personal interactions.