The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (30 page)

IT WAS THE
make-or-break moment of David’s career. He had joined the company six months before, and although he’d worked day and night to prove his value, his coworkers hadn’t yet accepted him. The CEO, who had pushed for David’s hiring and really believed in his potential, decided to give him one big chance to shine. He gave David the leadership role in a project that would define the company’s future. David would be presenting his proposed strategy before the entire management committee. He knew that he would be given only one shot. “Which charisma style should I use?” he asked me. “I’ve got to get this perfect.”

Charismatic public speaking engages several charisma styles. In this section, you’ll learn how to:

• Construct an inspiring and motivational presentation using visionary charisma
  
• Command your audience’s attention and respect using authority charisma
  
• Connect to your audience using kindness charisma
  

The following recommendations are valid whether you’re presenting to a very small group or a very large one. In fact, these guidelines can even be highly relevant when you’re aiming to inspire, influence, or persuade an audience of one. So whether you’re delivering a keynote at a conference or pitching a new idea to your boss, the following techniques will guide you through crafting your message, choosing your words, and perfecting your delivery until your presentations are simply irresistible.

Constructing a Charismatic Message

For most of us, presentations are about convincing people of something—an idea, an initiative, a course of action. Though we’ll cover a complete set of techniques for charismatic messaging, it all starts with knowing whom exactly we’re aiming to persuade.

The
New York Times
—one of the best and most respected newspapers in the United States—is purportedly written so simply that a tenth grader can understand it.
¹
The paper’s readership includes highly educated business executives, successful entrepreneurs, and CEOs. But the editors know that their readers are often thinking about six things at once, juggling far too many balls in the air.

You, too, will often be communicating with attention-starved audiences who will devote only part of their attention to what you are saying. If you can keep this one fact firmly in mind while you craft your presentation, and design your speech accordingly, you’ll be more effective than 80 percent of the speakers out there.

Let’s say you’re giving a presentation at four
P.M.
on a Wednesday afternoon. Your audience has been thinking, acting, interacting, and dealing with issues since they woke up that morning. Whatever has been occupying their minds since then doesn’t magically vanish when they enter the room to attend your presentation. It all stays in their heads, and you may have to compete with it for their attention.

Select the single most important idea you want to convey and make it as crystal clear and easy to understand as you possibly can. Ideally, you should be able to articulate your message in one sentence.

Within this one main message, have three to five key supporting points. The human brain thinks in triads (from Olympic medals to fairy tales, it’s three medals, three princes, three bears), and it cannot immediately comprehend numbers greater than four.
^*
Each one of your supporting points should open with entertaining anecdotes, fascinating facts, compelling statistics, great metaphors, examples, and analogies.

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.

For your stories to be most effective, choose characters that are similar to the people in your audience to make them more relatable and make them as entertaining (and short!) as a Hollywood sneak preview. When you’re delivering a presentation, you’re in the entertainment business, whether you know it or not. So make the story dramatic. You’re calling on visionary charisma here; and as with all forms of charisma, you’re tapping into people’s emotional side.

Using
metaphors
and
analogies
can be a highly effective way of capturing your audience’s imagination. For maximum impact, choose images and analogies that would appeal to a young audience. The speeches that give us a feeling of awe and wonder are those that appeal to our childhood roots. If you’re mentioning the fact that there is untapped potential in your customer base, liken yourselves to “bounty hunters” or “treasure hunters” searching for “hidden gold.”

Make even
numbers and statistics
personal, meaningful, and relatable for your audience. Steve Jobs did this masterfully when he gave his audience two ways of measuring iPhone sales: “Apple sold four million iPhones so far,” he said. “That amounts to selling
twenty thousand iPhones every single day
.” He did even better with memory
cards: “This memory card has twelve gigabytes of memory. That means it holds enough music for you to travel to the moon and back.”

Whether you use a story, example, number, or statistic, make sure that you close with either a clear point or a transition to the action step you want your audience to take. Remember to make this so simple that even a multitasking, partially listening audience member would get it.

When you craft the closing of your presentation, keep in mind that we remember primarily beginnings and endings. Just as you want to start on a high note, you also want to end on a high note, so avoid ending with Q&A. It’s hard to have a question-and-answer period as compelling and energetic as your main speech. Almost inevitably, the Q&A period lowers the energy.

Personally, I avoid formal Q&A entirely. Instead, my introducer warns the audience that there will be no Q&A session at the end, so their one and only chance to ask questions is during the speech. This has the added advantage of increasing the audience’s involvement, participation, and general energy level.

Once you’ve created your structure, you can start crafting your sentences. The pointers given in
Chapter 8
will also help you choose your words here:

• It’s all about them. Use the word
  you
  as often as possible. Use their words, their stories, their metaphors:
  hole in one
  for golfers,
  shipwreck
  for sailors. Try also to match your verbs to your audience:
  lead
  or
  initiate
  for businessmen,
  build
  for engineers,
  craft
  for artists.
  
• Get graphic. The brain thinks in pictures, so choose language that is vivid and sensory-rich.
  
• Beware of negotiations: avoid the “no problem” trap.
  
• Keep it short. With each sentence, ask yourself: What value is this sentence delivering? Even when crafting stories, give only details that convey comprehension or enjoyment. Think sneak preview, not full-length movie.
  

Creating a Charismatic Appearance

You’re going to be in the spotlight, so think carefully about the message you want to convey through your clothing. Is it authority? Power? Warmth? Keep in mind what social psychologists’ research reveals about chromatic effects:
²

• Red conveys energy, passion. Wear red to wake up an audience.
  
• Black shows you’re serious and that you won’t take no for an answer.
  
• White exudes honesty and innocence, which is why defendants often choose it in the courtroom.
  
• Blue emits trust. The darker the shade, the deeper the level of trust it elicits.
  
• Gray is a good neutral, the quintessential color of business.
  
• Orange and yellow are not recommended. Because they are the first to attract the human eye, they are also the first to tire it.
  

Based on these guidelines, one of my clients adopted a go-to combination whenever she had a difficult message to convey: navy suit, white shirt, white pearl stud earrings (perhaps because pearls seem conservative, they have been shown to further enhance credibility).

In order to project confidence and move with ease on stage, you also need to
feel
physically confident. Make sure nothing is hindering your movements, impairing your balance, or in any other way diminishing your comfort. 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. Your brain’s first job is to monitor your safety, whether it’s your ability to escape predators or your ability to stay upright. If it has to spend any of its attention worrying about your breathing or your balance, that means that at least one part of your attention can’t be devoted to your speaking success. Why waste any of your focus?

Rehearsing for Charisma

When celebrity comedian Jerry Seinfeld finally got his first chance at the big time—a six-minute spot on
The Tonight Show—
he practiced those six minutes for six
months
. As he recalls, “By the end of those six months, you could have slapped me, shaken me, or held me under water, I would have still given you those six minutes with pitch-perfect timing.”

Charisma takes practice. Steve Jobs, who appeared so masterful on stage, was known to rehearse important presentations relentlessly. 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. When a speech is important I practice until every breath is perfect, because knowing I’ve got the speech so well mastered allows me to be spontaneous. I know that I have muscle memory to fall back on.

When you know that a particular presentation will have a significant impact on your career, it’s worth rehearsing until you feel that it’s part of your very bones. One interesting technique used by magicians is to run through the entire presentation once with their eyes closed.

Another good practice is to have your speech audiotaped or, better yet, videotaped, and to count what professional speakers call
irritants.
These are any sounds or movements that do not add to your message. Because the audience is watching your every move, every sound and facial expression you make is a form of communication that demands a portion of their attention. Be strategic: make sure you’re getting value out of each nonverbal gesture you make, and limit superfluous gestures to avoid wasting any bit of your audience’s attention.

If you’ve been videotaped, ask three people to point out any unnecessary gestures—any tics or distractions. If you’ve been audiotaped, have the speech transcribed and ask them to note every “um” and “ah.” Don’t do it yourself—it’s much harder to hear our own irritants, and transcription services are inexpensive.

If you can, perform the entire speech at least once in front of a live audience as a trial run. No matter how well you’ve practiced your
presentation on your own, the dynamics change dramatically when you present the same information to living, breathing people.

Professional stand-up comedians organize trial runs for themselves, performing at smaller clubs where they can test out new material in a lower-stakes environment. Jerry Seinfeld still does this, occasionally making unscheduled appearances in New York City comedy clubs to work on his act.

Like comedians who perform at small clubs to perfect their acts, you, too, need a place where you can break in your sales pitch, your script, or your interview lines in front of real live people. Ideally, you would find an audience somewhat similar to the one you’re going to address (whether in age or profession or level of experience), but in a pinch, friends and family will do.

Projecting Power

Charismatic speakers know how to give the impression that they’re as comfortable walking across the stage as they would be walking across their living room. This is called
owning the stage,
and there are three tricks to making it happen.

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. Wide, stable stances also help you to project confidence. Be the gorilla!

Second, practice without a podium or a lectern. Speaking behind one can give the impression that you’re fearful to venture out, and prefer staying behind the safety of a shield. It also makes the presentation much more static. 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.

Third, find the right volume to project confidence. This is tricky, as so much can depend on the microphone you’re given that day or how the sound system is set up. Your best bet is, just before the speech, to ask a few people sitting in the back of the room to be your
sound experts and give you a prearranged signal to raise or lower your volume if need be.

Projecting Warmth

Franklin Delano Roosevelt changed everything. At least, as far as presidential speeches go.

Up until then, presidential addresses were formal affairs given in solemn tones. And then came FDR and his “fireside chats.” Suddenly the experience of listening to the president of the United States became a warm, intimate conversation. Today, great public speakers emulate the fireside chat atmosphere: no matter how many people are in the audience, you feel as if they’re speaking directly to you.

A fireside chat is a comfortable conversation that creates a sense of intimacy. Imagine sitting by a fire telling stories to your favorite friends or having a comfortable conversation with just one person. To make your audience feel particularly special, speak as if you were sharing a secret.

Another way to make people feel special as you roam about the stage is to give one to two seconds of eye contact per person. Though this may sound like a short amount of time, I promise that in the midst of a speech it feels like an eternity. But it’s worth it. This is how charismatic speakers give you the feeling that they are speaking directly to you—giving each person in the audience the feeling that they shared a real connection. You can make this easier by making eye contact first with the people who seem the most animated—those who are smiling, showing interest, or nodding.