The Charisma Myth

This book by Olivia Fox Cabane is about charisma (what it is and how you can develop it more), and inevitably also about some relevant mindfulness topics.

Charisma can be learned and is the result of specific non-verbal behaviours that can be turned on or off. You do not need to be an extravert to be charismatic, i.e., you can be a charismatic introvert.

Three quick tips to get an instant charisma boost in conversations:

Lower your voice at the end of sentences
Reduce how quickly and how often you nod
Pause for two full seconds before you speak

The Charismatic Behaviours

Charismatic behaviour can be broken down into three core elements: presence, power & warmth, and body language.

Presence

When we are not fully present in a conversation, people will see it. Our brain is wired to pay attention to novel stimuli, as they can be a form of danger. Similarly, our present society lives on throwing distractions at us.

Meditation is a very good exercise to help you stay present in conversations.

In the next conversation, keep track of your mind and see if it is going elsewhere (such as preparing an answer). If you feel you are wondering off, take a moment to focus on your breath or your toes, bring yourself back to the present. This doesn’t apply just to conversations. Even during work you should make a habit on focusing on the present when you feel you are wondering off.

This will not only help you to become more charismatic, your conversations will be more effective, you can enjoy good experiences better and you’re body language improves.

As an example, when giving someone a hug, we often wonder off to think about where we should put our arms, how tight and how long we should hold the person. Isn’t it better to just enjoy the act?

Power and warmth

Being powerful means being perceived as able to affect the world around us. This can be through authority over others and money, but also expertise, physical strength and intelligence.

Warmth is goodwill to others. It is almost entirely manifested through body language and behaviour, and therefore evaluated more directly than power.

When we meet someone for the first time we base our estimations of power and warmth on assumptions. Expensive clothes make us assume someone is powerful, a confident posture makes us assume the person has something to be confident about, and friendly body language makes us assume they are friendly.

In history, we often have people that are powerful or warm. They were the leader of the tribe or pact. That’s why us looking for these hints is embedded so deep.

Body language

The outcome of negotiations can be predicted with a 87% accuracy while only looking at body language. Evolutionary this makes sense; over our evolution, language is only a very recent development.

Virtually all that we radiate is in control of our subconscious. This means that whatever is in our head will show in our body language. Even if we know how to hold our arms and form our face, we will have split-second micro-expressions flying across our face, micro-expressions that can and will be observed. Consequently, charismatic behaviours must originate in your mind.

Your mind cannot tell fact from fiction. You can taste a lemon by thinking about it and cringe when imagining your fingers going over a chalkboard. If we can image a charismatic mental state, your body will manifest charismatic body language. The placebo effect can be a powerful tool but can also become your enemy.

Obstacles to presence, power and warmth

Physical discomfort that affects your visible, external state may affect how charismatic you are perceived to be. Assume that others perceive anything you do while interacting with someone. Physical discomfort can be countered by:

prevention
recognition
remedy or explain

Pick locations where you are comfortable, make sure you are well fed, wear clothes that are not too hot nor too cold, and who fit comfortably around your body.

When there’s no way to prevent discomfort, being aware of it is the next step to take. Is your face tense? Can you do something about it? If you can’t resolve your discomfort though awareness take action. Point out the discomfort’s origin (you’re hungry, there’s noise etc.) and discuss whether something can be done about it. Your tension will show, so make sure you do not let the other assume that they are the cause.

Mental discomfort can be a consequence of anxiety, dissatisfaction, self-criticism or self-doubt. Each type of discomfort has different causes and remedies.

Anxiety caused by uncertainty

A state of doubt or uncertainty is an uncomfortable place to be. Furthermore it can cause us to make premature decisions, revealing our hand to kill the silence and cause us to feel anxious. Yet, uncertainty will always be part of our lives. Again, evolutionarily we are comfortable with what is familiar, and because of that our mind is continuously running through possible outcomes.

Learning to deal with uncertainty will not only benefit your charisma, but also with life as a whole, filled with all its uncertainty. The most effective way to do this is through responsibility transfer. Whenever your worries run through your head, take a few deep breaths and imagine shifting this burden over to someone—something, like the benevolent universe—else. Visually imagine the weight lifted off your shoulders.

Visualisation is so effective because our brains are wired to first understand, then believe, and then disbelieve. Our physiology responds to visuals well before cognitive disbelief kicks in, so visualisation can create a believe, which—however short it may last—evokes emotional and physical reassurance. Placebo at work.

Anxiety caused by comparison

Humans are by nature driven to compare. Compare to past experiences, and ideal or other people. This very act of comparing and evaluating hinders our ability to be fully present, and thus impairs our charisma. Here too, when you feel like you are experiencing this, use the responsibility transfer technique to alleviate the discomfort.

Anxiety caused by self-criticism

Bringing up past experiences, failures, humiliations and inadequacy is a core source of anxiety. Psychological negativity can have real physical consequences. Again, since our brain does not distinguish between reality and imagination, this “internal attack” will be perceived as an actual attack and will evoke a threat response or flight-or-fight response.

Its effect is that our body responds as if we are in a life-or-death situation: stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) shoot up, causing elevated heart rate & breathing, muscle reaction, visual acuity etc. Moreover, non-urgent functions of the body (e.g. cognitive reasoning, analytic thinking, creative insight and problem solving) are temporarily disabled.

Anxiety caused by self-doubt

Self-doubt is he lack of confidence in your own ability to achieve something, and is experienced by some 70 percent of the population. A manifestation of self-doubt in the impostor syndrome makes competent people feel like they don’t know what they are doing, waiting to be exposed as fraud.

All these feelings are a consequence of our evolution, a feeling of discomfort moves us to take action. While in some cases this is necessary, in today’s world this is rarely the case, and these reactions actually work against us.

Overcoming the obstacles

Skilfully dealing with any type of difficult experience is a three-step process: (1) de-stigmatise discomfort, (2) neutralise negativity and (3) rewrite reality.

Step 1: destigmatise

De-stigmatisation of experiences means reducing its power by understanding its commonality and normality. Internal discomfort is felt by everyone and a natural part of life. It’s good to realise that this internal response is only natural, a by-product of our brain’s survival mechanisms.

We’re conditioned to think these feelings of internal discomfort are an indicator of there being something wrong with us. Consequently, we start feeling bad about feeling bad—we feel ashamed. Often the feeling of shame is more painful than the actual discomfort that caused it. When we start to perceive the initial discomfort as natural, a by-product of our brain’s survival mechanisms, the painful feeling of shame fades away.

To put this into practice, we may follow a three-step de-stigmatisation approach when an uncomfortable emotion is bothering us:

Remember that uncomfortable emotions and feelings are normal and natural. We all experience them from time to time.
De-dramatise: this is a common part of human experience that happens daily.
Think of others who (might) have gone through this before, especially people you admire.
See it as one burden shared by many.

Step 2: neutralise negativity

The best way to neutralise negative thoughts is to realise that often they aren’t accurate at all. Next time you think you see coldness or reservation on someone else’s face in conversation, remember that this could simply be a visible sign of their internal discomfort. It has likely nothing to do with you or what you have said.

We are often (unconsciously) looking for things that confirm our suspicions. When you look at a room looking for blue objects, and afterwards are asked to list all the red objects instead, you will likely remember little to none. Similarly if we expect the other to respond to us negatively, we look for queues that confirm this suspicion. We focus on the negatives unconsciously because these are the queues that are most relevant for our survival, or at least they were.

Some practical approaches to put this into practice are mentioned:

Don’t assume your thoughts are accurate. Assume you are missing a lot of elements, many of which could be possible.
See your thoughts as graffiti written on a wall: it is an ugly sight but it does not make you an ugly person.
Assign a label to your negative experience (self-criticism, anger, anxiety, etc.). Just naming what you are feeling can help neutralise it.
Depersonalise the experience: instead of feeling ashamed imagine that you are observing shame within you.
Similarly; imagine seeing yourself from afar. You are a spec on the scale of the earth let alone the universe, having this particular experience in this particular moment.
Imagine your mental chatter as coming from a radio; see if you can turn down the volume or turn it of completely.
Consider the worst-case outcome for your situation, realise that whatever it is, you will survive and the world will keep on turning.
Think of the other times you’ve felt like this, and made it through in the end.

Step 3: re-write reality

Sometimes things may happen that upset you or cause internal discomfort. Deciding to change your belief about what actually happened (cognitive reappraisal) effectively decreases the brain’s stress levels. In most cases, we don’t actually know what motivates a person’s actions, so it’s best to consider one that doesn’t impair our charisma.

What you need to do is ask yourself: Which mental state would be the most useful in this situation? And which version of reality would help me get there? You are asking in what reality your current experience would lead (or would have been) to a desirable outcome. When it’s in a situation where you have the time, write out this story to make it more real.

An exercise from the book:

Think of a person that has aggrieved you.
Write that person a letter saying all you wish you had ever told them.
When you’ve completed the letter put it aside.
Take a new sheet and write a response in just the way you wish they would respond. Do they take responsibility? Apologise?

Putting it all together

We can put the previous steps into practice when a feeling of discomfort emerges:

Take a deep breath and shake out any physical discomfort.
De-dramatise: recall that you’re experiencing physical sensations, and that as of now, nothing serious is actually happening. You only feel uncomfortable because that’s how your brain is wired.
De-stigmatise: what you are experiencing is normal and at some time, everyone goes through it, probably even now.
Neutralise: remind yourself that thoughts are not necessarily real, your imagination is working with the hints it’s getting, but this is far from the whole picture.
Consider some alternative situations that could also be congruent with the prior hints, and try to visualise them clearly.
Visualise a transfer of responsibility, how the weight is literally lifted from your shoulders.

Getting comfortable with discomfort

The next technique to acquire is a real ace-up-your-sleeve, but rather counter-intuitive to put into practice. When a feeling of discomfort arises, the first step (when the prior strategies don’t really apply) is to focus on the sensations you are desperately trying to push away.

The technique, delving into sensation, is to focus on your physical discomfort when it’s there. This helps you to (1) let your mind focus on something rather than “that the overall situation is undesirable” and (2) puts you into full presence. By analysing your discomfort as a scientist studies during an experiment, making it super objective, you ‘disconnect’ from the uncomfortable feeling.

Personal addition; depending on the situation, also try to evaluate what share of the discomfort is completely out of your power. This helps you to better ‘accept’ the situation as is.

The key is to get comfortable with the uncomfortable—stretch your comfort zone. Of course, in this context, practice is invaluable. Try for example the following:

Hold eye contact longer than comfortable, in conversation or with people passing by.
Experiment with personal space: move closer to people than you usually would while e.g. in an elevator.
Also in an elevator; get in last, but stand with your back to the door.
Strike up a conversation with a total stranger. It’s easier to do this when you are waiting in line for something; you can talk or ask something about the thing you are waiting for.

Approach these things as if you are doing important personal work. Like the scientist studying an experiment, you put some distance between you and the feelings you’re getting. The more often you grab these experiences, the faster you’ll learn.

You can also practice to be comfortable with other ‘discomforts,’ e.g. when you’re cold, hot, impatient, annoyed or scared.

In the past chapter we looked at charisma obstacles, now we will look at ways to create the right mental states.

Visualisation

Visualisation makes us activate the same parts of our brain as we would use in the situation we’re visualising. Also, our brain is rewiring itself according to the neuronal connections we most commonly use. These two combined make for a powerful tool of charisma improvement. Here’s an exercise for visualisation (to the benefit of confidence):

Close your eyes and relax
Remember a past experience where you felt absolutely confident
Hear the sounds from the environment, the voice of the people that were there
See people’s facial expressions of warmth and admiration
feel how you felt, where you are standing, how the air was, etc.
experience what you experienced; confidence in all its splendours

Try to experience the situation as vividly as possible, adding details where and whenever you can. Ultimately, you would physically relive the situation; moving and talking just like you did then. If this helps, you can add music to the experience as well.

Personal note: you can also try to visualise experiences where you’d like to have been more confident or situations that are yet to come. Naturally, following the same strategy and goals as before.

Particular situation where imagined visualisation is invaluable:

Before a presentation
Before a (business) meeting
Whenever you feel anxious

In any case, it’s important to imagine the situation wherein you want to be confident as clearly as possible, using the actual environment if you’re able to do so.

Gratitude goodwill and compassion

Warmth is one of the key components of charismatic behaviour: (1) gratitude and appreciation, (2) goodwill and compassion, and (3) self-compassion.

Step 1: gratitude and appreciation

Gratitude is a great antidote to negative feelings—resentment, neediness, and desperation—because it comes from thinking of things you do have. However, human beings are wired for hedonic adaptation: a tendency to take our blessings for granted. One helpful method is to focus on physical and perceivably trivial things: that the elevator is working, that it’s not raining, and that you actually have a pretty nice view from your office. Also thinking about your life from a third-person perspective, as in a narrative, helps you point out the things you rarely notice but are definitely things you can’t take for granted: a steady source of income, a nice apartment and a family that cares about you. Actually writing this down makes the the perspective more real, and the exercise more effective. Below are some more elaborate exercises:

Focus on the present: When you find yourself annoyed at a minor thing, remember that focusing on this annoyance impairs your body language. Instead:

Sweep through your body from head to toe and find three (or more) things you approve of
Scan your environment, and find yourself three (or more) pleasant sights, no matter how small

Get used to this exercise and try it whenever you think of it, not just when a need arises. In fact, try it now!

Use a third-person lens: as said, this is best performed as writing exercise:

Start to describe your life as if you were and outside observer, and focus on all the positive aspects you can think of.
Write about your work or study, your personal relationships and good things people say or have said to you. Mention a few positive things that happened today and the tasks you have accomplished.

Imagine your own funeral: Imagining your own funeral can make you feel more grateful for life. For this exercise may be emotionally demanding, make sure you are in a comfortable environment where you won’t be disturbed.

Sit or lie down, close your eyes, and set the scene. Where would your funeral take place? What would the weather be like? Who’s coming? What do they look like? What does the ceremonial room look like? Are there flowers? Try to imagine as many details as possible.
Imagine the start of the ceremony. Your friends, family and colleagues come forward to give their eulogy. What are they saying? What would you like them to have said? What regrets do they have for you?
Imagine the slow march to the cemetery, what would be written on your tombstone?

Personal note: this exercise is also done in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” though there the aim is to get your priorities straight: what you want people to say about you at your funeral is a good estimate for the person you want to be.

Step 2: goodwill and compassion

Goodwill—genuinely caring about someone’s well-being, wishing others well—infuses your body language with warmth, kindness, care and compassion. It improves how you feel as it floods your system with oxytocin and serotonin. Goodwill forces us to focus on the other person, taking off the pressure from the interaction that we’re having. Luckily, goodwill is something that can be learned.

A simple yet effective way is to find three things you like about a person you’d want to feel goodwill toward (these can be very trivial). When you actively search for positive elements (as opposed to signs of threat or judgement), your mental state and body language change accordingly.

In a similar sense, through visualisation, you can imagine the people around you having invisible angel wings. If auditory hints work better for you, you can think to yourself I like you, whenever you’re into conversation.

Sometimes however, it’s hard to project this positivity onto others. Perhaps because you’ve just experienced them in a negative way, or because they feel too remote from you. in such cases you should try to move beyond goodwill (wishing someone the best unconditionally) toward empathy (understanding what they feel) and compassion (understanding how someone feels, and wishing them the best).

Like most skills in this book, compassion is learned by doing. Try the following exercise to get started. Think of a person you know, then:

Imagine their past and how that must have been for them, and how that might have shaped them in the process.
Imagine their present. Put yourself in their shoes, how would it feel to be like that person today? Try to feel the emotions.
Look at them and ask; what if this were their last day alive? What if you’re already at this person’s funeral? What would you have liked to say to him or her?

Step 3: self-compassion

To be charismatic, it’s important to realise that people can like you. Instead of radiating goodwill outward, we’d benefit from being warm toward ourselves as well; self-compassion. To understand and practice self-compassion, we should understand the difference between confidence, esteem and compassion:

Self-confidence is the belief in our ability to do or learn how to do something.
Self-esteem is how much we approve of or value ourselves.
Self-compassion is how much warmth we can have for ourselves, particularly in difficult times.

There are arguments to focus more on self-compassion than self-esteem, since the former is based on self-acceptance and the other on self-evaluation and social comparison. The first is does not require some above-average-performance, and is more stable over the long-term. Still, high self-compassion correlates with greater self-esteem as well. Benefits of self-compassion include decreased anxiety, depression and self-criticism; improved relationships and greater feelings of social connectedness and satisfaction with life; increased ability to handle negative events and even improved immune system functioning.

Self-compassion can be regarded as a three-step process:

Realise that we are experiencing difficulties
Responding with kindness and understanding when we are suffering or feel inadequate (as opposed to being harshly self-critical)
Realising that whatever we go through is experienced by others, and that they too go through the experience

Self-compassion too is a trainable skill. To start, write down five ways in which you already take care of yourself when you are having a hard time, and highlight the ones you find particularly useful or effective.

Metta (a Buddhist practice) is the most powerful tool you can use to counter the inner critic’s attacks. But beware, it can be uncomfortable when you first try it.

Sit comfortably, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. As you inhale, imagine drawing in masses of clean air toward the top of your head, then let it whoosh through you from head to toe as you exhale, washing all concerns away.
Think of any occasion in your life when you performed a good deed, however great or small. Focus on that memory for a moment.
Now think of one being, mythical or actual who could have great affection for you.
Picture this being in your mind, imagine their warmth, kindness and compassion. See in in their eyes and face, feel their warmth radiating toward you.
See yourself through their eyes with warmth, kindness and compassion. Feel them giving you complete forgiveness for everything your inner critic says is wrong.
Feel them giving you wholehearted acceptance. You are accepted as you are, in the phase you are in, right now.

Self-compassion is the counteract to self-harm, something our inner critic more than often attacks us with.

Another exercise is to jot down whatever (you or) anyone (thinks or) says something positive about you.

Using the body to affect the mind

While our mind affects our body language, the same is also true the other way ‘round. The realisation of these two is important: utilising both will initiate a reinforcing cycle.

Getting in the charismatic state

It’s hard if not impossible to get into a charismatic state at once. Being charismatic requires willpower, and we only have a limited amount of it each day. So, before an important interaction where you’d want to be at peak charismatic performance, make sure you eliminate willpower-heavy activities and plan something at which you are competent (a sport perhaps) before. You can even put on a playlist if that works to improve your mood!

See the event as if you are preparing for a marathon. You spend a lot of effort getting yourself into the right mental state.

A good method is to write down whenever something or someone makes you feel good. Equally, write down what things often require a lot of your willpower and make you feel irritated or dull. As warm-up, see which things of the first category you can utilise and which of the second category you can avoid.

Charisma styles

Like personalities, there are different styles of charisma as well, namely:

Focus charisma
Visionary charisma
Kindness charisma
Authority charisma

Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, and some may be more useful in specific situations. You need not have only one charisma type, and may deploy others at other times.

Focus charisma: presence and confidence

Focus charisma is primarily based on a perception of presence; it gives others the feeling you are fully present with them, it makes them feel heard, listened to and understood. This type of charisma requires you to be in the moment, so consult the exercises and focus points from the previous chapters.

Two traps of this type of charisma are:

You display too little power, coming across as too eager, low-status or even subservient.
You radiate too little warmth, become laser-eye intense.

The style is most useful in business settings, and particularly when you are trying to learn something from the other person. It can be counterproductive during emergencies or other situations where authority is required.

Visionary charisma: belief and confidence

Visionary charisma is useful because it completely bypasses the discomfort we get from uncertainty. It requires the ability to project complete conviction and confidence in a cause. You’re selling a vision and not yourself.

The message is important, it requires bold messages and excellent delivery. It requires you to enter a state of complete conviction, leaving no room for (self)-doubt. This charisma type is the perfect breeding ground for creativity and leadership.

Kindness charisma: warmth and confidence

Kindness charisma is primarily based on warmth. It connects with people’s hearts, and makes them feel welcomed, cherished, embraced, and, most of all, completely accepted. Kindness charisma comes almost completely from body language, specifically the face and even more specifically the eyes.

Here, the exercises or gratitude, goodwill, compassion and self-compassion become particularly relevant, and preparation and visualisation vital tools. Since body language is the key facilitator, any tension, criticism or coldness is to be avoided at all costs.

Appearing overeager to please is the most common trap of kindness charisma. Another downside of kindness charisma is that it can lead to adulation and, potentially, over-attachment of others.

Kindness charisma is perfect anytime you want to create an emotional bond or make people feel safe and comfortable.

Authority charisma: status and confidence

Probably the most powerful form of charisma. It exploits the belief that others think that a person has the power to affect their world. We evaluate someone’s authority charisma through four indicators: body language, appearance, title, and the reactions of others (and in that order!).

To gain authority charisma you must project power by displaying signs of status and confidence. The two most important dimensions (body language and appearance), fortunately, are in our direct control. To project power and confidence in your body language, you’ll need to learn how to “take up space” with your posture, reduce non-verbal reassurances (such as excessive nodding), and avoid fidgeting. You may need to speak less, to speak more slowly, to know how and when to pause your sentences, or how to modulate your intonation. This will all be covered later.

While it has its benefits, authority charisma can inhibit critical thinking in others, doesn’t invite feedback, doesn’t necessarily make people like you and can make you look arrogant. Warmth is a powerful antidote for these things.

Finding your charisma type

Different kinds of charisma will be appropriate in different circumstances. And different kinds of charisma will be a better or poorer fit for you. For your fit, indicators are:

Your personality; it’s often counterproductive trying to be someone you are not. When choosing a charisma style, remember to check in with your mental and emotional state. If you’re feeling insecure, don’t try to pull off authority charisma until you’ve regained your confidence. Instead, choose a charisma style that demands less confidence, such as focus or kindness, and then gradually move to authority if you so desire.
Your goals; see what type of charisma matches your goals (and the values that made you set these goals).
The situation; the appropriate and effective type of charisma is largely determined by the people around you, and what they are in need of. Keep into consideration social contexts, and specifically cultural differences as well.

Charismatic first impressions

Within a glance people have judged your social, economic, intellectual and success status. Though they happen in an instant, first impressions can stay for years. Perceptions are so hard to change because we are hard-wired just to get confirmations about what we think we know. Getting it right is therefore invaluable.

The first thing to consider is (again) your appearance, and particularly clothing. What your best bet is depends on the situation and goal. If you want others to be comfortable, dress in the same style as them.

Handshakes too, contribute significantly to a first impression. The physical contact requires that the personal space barrier be suspended, hence requiring trust. If the trust is validated with a proper handshake, the first step towards a productive relationship is made. There’s actually quite a few points you’d pay attention to when a handshake might be imminent:

Make sure your right hand is free well in advance, you don’t want to fumble at the last moment.
Avoid carrying drinks in your right hand, as it can make the hand feel cold or clammy.
Make sure you are standing, and that your hands are visible (not in your pockets).
Make plenty of eye contact and smile warmly and briefly; too much smiling will make you appear overeager.
Keep your head straight (not tilted), facing the person fully.
Keep your hand perpendicular (thumb to the ceiling)
Open wide the space between thumb and index finger.
Ensure contact between the palms of your hands by keeping yours flat.
Warp your fingers around your partner’s hand.
After making full contact, lock you thumb and squeeze firmly, about as much as your partner does.
Shake from the elbow (as opposed to the wrist).
Linger for a moment if you want to convey particular warmth.

Breaking the ice

A good way to break the ice is to start the conversation by giving a compliment about something the person is wearing (and follow-up question: “what is the story behind it?”) has done or achieved, or asking the person where he or she is from.

During conversation

During the conversation, focus on positive subjects because people will associate you with the feelings you’ve evoked. Ask open-ended questions and keep the spotlight on them for as much as possible. A neat trick to see how you’re doing now is counting the number of times you’ve said I and you when in conversation.

Eventually, you want to completely exclude the word I from conversation. You can discuss a subject by I thought this or that or by asking what did you think about this or that? or alternatively Oh in that case you might also enjoy reading this or that. You want to focus on them so by starting to say something might be interesting to them, they’re more likely to listen.

In addition, make yourself relatable. Adjust your choice of words, your breadth and depth of vocabulary, and choice of expressions; focus on their fields of interest and choose metaphors from their domain.

Ending the conversation

Ironically, becoming a charismatic person means you will have a harder time escaping your new-found ‘fans.’ So knowing how to end a conversation will be worthwhile. In any case, it’s essential that you do not wait too long to end the conversation as both you and your partner will begin to feel the strain.

Have an official reason for ending the conversation
Offer something of value
1. Information (article, book or webpage)
2. A connection (someone else they should meet)
3. Visibility; an organisation where you can give them a podium
4. Recognition; an award you think they should be nominated for

When ‘leaving someone behind’ breaking up a multi-person conversation, focus attention and warmth particularly to the ‘left behind person,’ making sure he or she is not left with a feeling of exclusion.

Don’t worry too much about your phrasing, just make sure you radiate a positive feeling to the person you’re breaking up conversation with. If you recall conversations from last week, you don’t remember the exact words used, but you do remember how you experienced the conversation.

Speaking—and listening—with charisma

This chapter covers specific verbal and vocal techniques to successfully broadcast your charismatic mental state.

Charismatic listening

Great listening skills start with the right mindset: both the willingness and the mental ability to be present, pay attention, and focus on what the other person is saying.

A plain and simple rule is to never interrupt anyone, and to let anyone interrupt you. Once you’ve got that covered you can start by taking a brief pause before speaking yourself. During this pause, try to respond by facial expression first.

Charismatic speaking

We’re constantly creating associations in people’s minds, so to be charismatic, we need to create as many positive associations and the least possible negative ones. Make sure you balance your good news with bad. This works for feedback but also, your general outlook on life.

A concrete case is in receiving a compliment. By telling the person giving you the compliment that “it was nothing,” you make them feel like they are wrong, and they might start to associate ‘feeling wrong’ with you. Next time when you receive a compliment, stop, absorb the compliment, let that moment of absorption show on your face, and thank the transmitter.

To make people create positive associations with you is to make them feel like they are the most important person in the room. You can do this by imagining they actually are; asking questions, being impressed, and admiring.

When we speak with words, the brain relates these words to concepts, and these concepts to images, which is what’s actually understood. Talk in visual metaphors as much as you can, and your message will be far more memorable. When you craft your images and metaphors, try to make them sensory-rich: involve as many of the five senses as possible.

Be weary of the associations others may have with the words or images you use. Saying “something will be fixed” is a better choice that saying “something isn’t a problem,” simply because the word ‘problem’ is present in the latter phrase.

When someone is listening to you, they are fundamentally investing their time and attention to yield returns such as information, entertainment or good feelings. Make sure that when you are interacting, they get the highest value possible in the shortest amount of time invested.

Tuning your voice

The degree to which your voice fluctuates affects your persuasiveness and your charisma. 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).

It could be a good exercise to try and read something our loud, varying pitch, volume, tone, tempo and rhythm according to whatever is told.

These are four general guidelines:

Speak slowly
Pause (shows that you are confident in that you know people won’t take this opportunity to interrupt)
Drop intonation at the end of a sentence (just like you raise it at the end when you ask a question)
Check your breathing: make sure you’re breathing deeply into your belly and inhale and exhale through your nose rather than your mouth.

There’s only one thing you need to do in order to project more warmth in your voice: smile, or think about smiling. Even when people cannot see you, your voice will radiate warmth.

Charismatic body language

Non-verbal modes of communication are hardwired into our brains much deeper than the more recent language-processing abilities. When our verbal and non-verbal signals are in congruence, the non-verbal amplifies the verbal. When they conflict, the non-verbal is leading.

Our tendency to react to how something is said more than to what is said is particularly strong in high-stakes situations, because in these situations the more primal part of the brain takes over.

Emotional contagion is the biological process by which the emotions expressed by one individual are mimicked by another. Charismatic people are often more contagious, and can use this to evoke a certain emotion in their audience. When positive, emotional contagion can be a wonderful thing. When stressed or nervous, not so much.

Conscious mirroring

Imitating someone’s body language is an easy way to establish trust and rapport. It’s the conscious application of something that many charismatic people do instinctively.

Because people focus primarily on themselves while interacting, they usually won’t notice that you’re mirroring unless you are exceedingly obvious about it. However, here are some ways to increase subtlety:

Be selective: do only what feels natural to you. For instance, some gestures are gender-specific.
Use variations in amplitude: if they make a big gesture, you could make a smaller one.
Use lag time: let a few seconds elapse before you move into a mirrored position.

If someone’s posture is closed, you can hand them something (to hold), which will help them open up.

Personal space

Being charismatic means making others feel comfortable, to which respecting others’ personal space is a precondition. People stepping away or leaning backward is an indication that you’re too close.

The next time you want to establish warm rapport with someone, avoid a confrontational seating arrangement and instead sit either next to, or at a straight angle from them. These are the positions in which we feel most comfortable.

If you want someone to feel comfortable, avoid seating them with their back to an open space, particularly if others are moving behind them.

Eye contact

Profound eye contact can have a powerful impact on people; it can communicate empathy and give an impression of thoughtfulness, wisdom, and intelligence.

Our brains are hardwired to experience separation distress whenever someone with whom we have significant eye contact turns away. One good way to avoid creating this anxiety in others is to keep eye contact for three full seconds at the end of your interaction with someone.

To be charismatic, you also need to know how to use the right kind of eye contact. The degree and the precise kind of tension that shows around our eyes dramatically impact how we are perceived. If we’re in narrow, focused, evaluative attention our eyes are brought into sharp focus, increasing our stress responses, and tensing in our eyes and face. Charismatic eye contact means switching to a softer focus. This immediately relaxes our eyes and face, and quiets down our stress system.

Posture

By claiming space you radiate confidence, so learn how to take up space and get comfortable doing so. To achieve this, you need clothing that allows you to do so freely. Make sure you are, in any situation, taking long deep breaths.

When walking around, inflate your chest, radiate confidence and don’t step aside for people.

Composed people exhibit a level of stillness, which is sometimes described as poise. They avoid extraneous, superfluous gestures such as fidgeting with their clothes, their hair, or their faces, incessantly nodding their heads, or saying “um” before sentences.

These gestures are often signs used by someone wanting to convey reassurance to the person they’re interacting with. Either to ensure that the other person feels heard (empathy), or to please or appease the person (insecurity).

Charismatic people are usually more contained; they don’t feel the urge to give so much reassurance because they’re not as worried about what their counterpart is thinking. The three main issues are:

Excessive or rapid nodding
Excessive verbal reassurances
Restlessness or fidgeting

To overcome these issues, you must first become aware of them happening. 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 mid-sentence.

Of course, all is context-specific. When talking to someone shy, a bit more nodding and verbal re-assurances may help them open up more.

Difficult situations

Dealing with difficult people

When dealing with multiple people at once, try to engage with each of them separately to avoid the multiple-context handicap.

Ask for small favours so that you may thank them for it. Just asking for someone to help you out, or voice their opinion and sincerely thanking them for it helps to get the ‘ball of favours’ rolling.

Express appreciation. The most effective and credible compliments are those that are both personal and specific. Don’t tell someone they did a good job, but tell them how or why they did such a good job. 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.

Go in well-prepared. Know what kind of person you are going to interact with, why they are difficult, what traps they might lure you into, and what to do about it.

Delivering bad news

You cannot always set the place and time to deliver difficult news. When you do, however, make sure they are in the right environment and mental state—have they just ben through a busy or stressful time?

When we are feeling uncomfortable we are fidgeting around to distract ourselves from the discomfort. You can play into this by giving the other person something to fidget with.

Get into the right body language: warmth, care, understanding and empathy.

Make sure that throughout your interaction you express your care and concern both non-verbally and verbally. Really emphasize with their situation and try to understand how they may feel.

Delivering criticism

Think about timing and location. Try to be as empathetic as possible in your choice of both. With criticism or feedback, try to provide it as soon as possible after the behaviour you want to change

Get into a mindset of compassion and empathy. Have their best interest in mind, explain why you want for them to improve.

Decide (beforehand) exactly which points you want to make, be specific! If your criticism is too general, they might imagine the worst possible interpretation of your message.

As much as possible, communicate that what you’re critiquing is the behaviour, not the person. Be very wary of assuming you’ve accurately guessed a person’s motives. Instead, focus on observed behaviours and verified facts.

Start and end with pointing out the positives, this is what colours the whole interaction and one’s remembrance of it.

Apologising in-person

Get into the right mental state. Accept that you’ve made a mistake, and sincerely forgive yourself for it.

Apologise in-person. This gives you the greatest number of tools at your disposal; body language, facial expression and voice tone.

When the other wants to speak, give them the floor completely, and listen attentively—don’t think about the response you are about to give. Ask them questions so you are 100% sure you understand them.

If an apology is in due, keep it simple: “I’m sorry…” often suffices.

Show that you understand the consequences and severity of your mistakes, such that they can be sure it won’t reoccur.

Apologising via phone or email

Make sure you call or mail at the right moment. Via phone, it’s good to start the conversation by asking if this is the right time.

Be super focused on the conversation. You have fewer clues, so the ones you get you cannot afford to miss. Clear away all your distractions. Sometimes it can be even helpful to close your eyes completely.

Listen carefully to what is happening at the other side of the line. If you hear someone else speaking to the person you’re speaking to, ask them if they need a moment and that it’s okay.

Do not answer the phone in a warm or friendly manner. Instead, answer crisply and professionally. Then, only after you hear who is calling, let warmth or even enthusiasm pour forth in your voice. This simple technique is an easy and effective way to make people feel special.

When writing an email, carefully pay attention to the number of times you use I. We are hard-wired to think of ourselves first, but in conversation with another this is what you wish to avoid.

When we are feeling uncomfortable we are fidgeting around to distract ourselves from the discomfort. Candles and firelight have the same positive distracting effect. This is why they’re so prized in romantic situations, when comfort and ease are key. Background music serves partly the same purpose.

Presenting with charisma

Constructing a charismatic message

Start by realising that your audience only has reserved a fraction of their attention to you, the person engaging with your content likely has 5 more things on his mind, three of which he/she finds more important than your presentation or written piece.

Digesting your message should be easy. So start by identifying your core message and make it embarrassingly simple.

Define three to five supporting points, each of which starts with entertaining anecdotes, fascinating facts, compelling statistics, great metaphors, examples, or analogies. Weave these points together in a compelling story, using characters tailored to your audience.

When you’re delivering a presentation, you’re in the entertainment business, make the story dramatic.

Using metaphors and analogies can be a highly effective way of capturing your audience’s imagination.

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.

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.

Creating a charismatic appearance

The colour of the clothes you are wearing is relevant for the message you want to convey:

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 colour 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.

Make sure your clothes are comfortable and your shoes are stable.

Practice important presentations until you can literally give them with your eyes closed. Giving a presentation becomes much more comfortable when you know you have the muscle memory to fall back on.

Videotape yourself giving the presentation, and specifically look for gestures, sounds or facial expressions that don’t add to the presentation.

Practice your presentation with a live audience, preferably one that is similar to the people that you are going to give the presentation to.

Projecting power

Charismatic speakers own the stage, three tips to help you do so as well:

Stand wide: on both legs, feet open.
Practice walking around, or at least not standing behind a ‘shield’ object.
Check if the volume is OK, especially when using a microphone.

Project warmth

To project warmth, you want to talk to your audience as if you ware in a campfire setting. You can tell your story as if you are telling a secret.

Another trick is to hold eye contact for at least 2 seconds with individuals from the audience. Your best bet is to start with those that seem most animated or interested.

You can fluctuate to enhance persuasiveness, smile to generate a warm voice and drop intonation to convey confidence or authority.

Pause, breathe and slow down

The most common mistake when giving a presentation is forgetting to breathe. If you have notes, it helps to occasionally write down breath! Similarly, remind yourself to slow down. Throughout your speech, pause frequently, deliberately. Have the confidence to make your listeners wait for your words. After delivering a key point or an impactful story, pause for a few seconds to let your audience take it in. If you’ve just used humour, have the courage to wait for the laughter to swell and subside before you move on. Lastly, after delivering your final words, pause, then, and only than say “Thank you.”

If you have notes on hand, you can colour code your notes for pauses, or indicate when a smile is needed to radiate warmth.

Try to get as much practice as you can in low-stakes situations. We’ve already seen how taking pauses increases your charisma during conversations, so this is a good place to get it in your system.

When you make a mistake during a presentation, your number one objective is to prevent the flight-or-fight response from kicking in. You can do this by realising that making a mistake is actually a good thing, since it makes you more relatable to your audience. Some of the most successful presenters even make mistakes on purpose!

If it’s too late to avoid the response from kicking in, follow the following procedure:

Check your body and make sure that posture is not worsening your internal state.
Take a deep breath and relax.
Remember that it happens to everyone; de-dramatise.
If negative thoughts remain, remember that they are just thoughts.
Find little things to be grateful for.

Practice this process with little crises as often as possible, so that when a big crisis hits, it’s second nature.

Speech day

The single most important guideline for a successful speech is simple: make it about them, not about you. Don’t do this for your audience alone, also for yourself; by thinking too much about yourself you open the door to negative thoughts and self-criticism.

Here’s a checklist:

Arrive early if you can
Go to a quiet room and use internal tools such as visualisation to get into a state of confidence and warmth
Pause before you start talking
During the presentation, expect things to go wrong
Use the mid-course correction tools presented before
Remember to pause, breathe, and slow down
Pause after your last words

Charisma in a crisis

Being in a crisis is an opportunity to gain charisma.

Retain at least a certain measure of calm. In times of crisis people are much more likely to pick up the body language of their leader. If the latter stays calm, so will they, if he panics, they will panic too. To keep cool:
1. Check your physiology often, both for your own sake (it affects your psychology) and for that of others (it will spread).
2. Skilfully handle internal negativity: de-stigmatize, de-dramatize, and neutralize the negative perceptions that may be crowding your mind.
3. Rewrite reality to whatever degree is helpful. To get out of a pessimistic state, find a few different ways of viewing the situation positively.
4. Use visualizations to keep yourself in the right state. For instance, a responsibility transfer could be useful for reducing anxiety.
Express high expectations. Sometimes, simply assigning to people the labels you want them to live up to is enough, of course, you will have to assign these labels in a way that radiates the confidence that you think they can handle the task.
Articulate a vision. To be charismatic, your vision must vividly illustrate the difference between the way things are now and the way they could be.
Be bold and decisive. Studies consistently show that in times of crisis, people instinctively turn to individuals who are bold, confident, and decisive.

The charismatic life

Even charisma comes at a cost, here are some adversities and how to handle them.

You become a magnet for praise and envy

Receiving praise puts you on the podium. This gives rise to resentment and jealousy in others. You can reduce this by reflecting praise (point out others’ contributions). Giving people a sense of ownership for your success is a great way to prevent resentment and engender good feelings, such as pride and loyalty, instead.

People can reveal too much

Talking to charismatic people puts others in a sort of safety field in which they may share than they should. Keep the following in mind:

Pay attention; is the person saying something they may regret tomorrow?
As soon as you hear them start to say something you think they may regret, interject a “me, too” story. This is the one case where interruption is warranted.
If it’s too late and they’ve already gone too far, show them that you are placing their revelations in the whole-scope context of all you know about them—that whatever they are revealing is just one piece of a much bigger picture that contains many elements they can be proud of.
Aim to make them feel admired for having shared and revealed so much. Remember, what you’re trying to counteract is shame.

You’re in the spotlight and held to higher standards

High charisma people are always on display. The answer? Allow yourself to be human. This means both accepting humanity and showing your humanity. You’ll want to be selective in choosing with whom, how, and in which context to show your humanity. Choose your setting well, and don’t attempt vulnerability for the first time in a high-stakes moment. Instead, practice when the stakes are low.

If you want to refine your practice of vulnerability, pay attention to the following: it’s not just what you say and what you share but also how you feel while you’re sharing. Some people manage to disclose highly personal, intimate, vulnerable information but don’t feel a thing while doing so. It’s as if they keep themselves at a distance from the vulnerability. They lay out the facts as they would a math problem and they keep their hearts well shielded behind a wall.

It’s lonely at the top

When rising to the top, people will find it increasingly difficult to relate to you.

Sometimes it works when it shouldn’t

Sometimes your charisma can convince yourself of your own arguments, when other views might be valid as well. Charisma is powerful because it increases one’s ability to influence others. Any training that heightens this ability has the potential of being used in both helpful and harmful ways.

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Willem Klok