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April 13 - April 21, 2013
The message matters for visionary charisma. This means knowing how to craft a bold vision and knowing how to deliver the message charismatically
Like visionary and focus charisma, kindness charisma comes entirely from body language—specifically your face, and even more specifically your eyes.
Authority charisma is primarily based on a perception of power: the belief that this person has the power to affect our world.
body language trumps all other signs of charisma. Even if all the other signals are present, a body language of insecurity will undermine any possibility of authority charisma.
“We have long known that people jump to conclusions about others on the basis of very little information,” said one of the researchers, “but what’s striking about these findings is how many of the impressions have a kernel of truth to them, even on the basis of a single photograph.”3
Clothing, essentially, is modern-day tribal wear.
One Danish manager told me: “I’ve found that the more formal my clothing is, the more respect my opinions get!”
management experts at the University of Iowa analyzing interactions in job interviews declared handshakes “more important than agreeableness, conscientiousness, or emotional stability.”7
An easy way to start interactions in a way that both communicates warmth and sends the conversation down the right path is to offer a compliment about something the person is wearing.
“What’s the story behind it?”
focus on questions that will likely elicit positive emotions.
“Talk to a man about himself, and he will listen for hours,”
It’s not the words but the conversation’s emotional imprint that remains.
By being a great listener you can make people feel completely heard and understood without saying a word.
Good listeners know never, ever to interrupt—not even if the impulse to do so comes from excitement about something the other person just said.
Great listeners know to let others interrupt them.
Master listeners know one extra trick, one simple but extraordinarily effective habit that will make people feel truly listened to and understood: they pause before they answer.
When someone has spoken, see if you can let your facial expression react first, showing that you’re absorbing what they’ve just said and giving their brilliant statement the consideration it deserves. Only then, after about two seconds, do you answer.
We associate feelings with sights, sounds, tastes, smells, places, and, of course, people, which is why others will associate you with the way you make them feel.
To be charismatic, you need to create strong positive associations and avoid creating negative ones.
As Dale Carnegie said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming truly interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”5
Voice fluctuation is the foundation for both vocal warmth and power.
Studies have consistently shown that audience ratings of a lecture are more strongly influenced by delivery style than by content.8 Your voice is key to communicating both warmth and power, but there isn’t just one charismatic voice. You can choose to play up different aspects of your voice depending on what you want to convey and with whom you’re communicating.
The degree to which your voice fluctuates affects your persuasiveness and your charisma.
Power, presence, and warmth are important for both charismatic speaking and charismatic listening. Great listening skills are key to communicating charismatic presence. Never interrupt people, and occasionally pause a second or two before you answer. People associate you with the feelings you produce in them. Avoid creating negative associations: don’t make them feel bad or wrong. Make people feel good, especially about themselves. Don’t try to impress them—let them impress you, and they will love you for it. Get graphic: use pictures, metaphors, and sensory-rich language to convey a
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Words are grasped first by people’s cognitive minds, their logical side, which gets to work on understanding their meaning. Body language, in contrast, affects us on a visceral, emotional level.
“Logic makes people think. Emotion makes them act.”
emotional contagion. Behavioral scientists define this as “the process by which the emotions expressed by one individual are ‘caught’ by another.” Charismatic people are known to be more “contagious”; they have a strong ability to transmit their emotions to others.
When we detect someone else’s emotions through their behaviors or facial expressions, our mirror neurons reproduce these emotions. This is what makes empathy possible.
Emotional contagion “triggers arousal in others, in a sort of chain reaction.”2
leaders’ emotions always propagate fastest because people are strongly affected by those in a position of power
This tendency to mimic the body language of others is technically called limbic resonance,
our physiology affects our psychology.
This link between physiology and psychology is also the reason it’s so important to get someone who is in an angry, stubborn, or defensive posture to change their body language before you attempt to change their mind.
As long as their body is in a certain emotional mode, it will be nearly impossible to get their mind...
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Being charismatic means making others feel comfortable, at ease, and good about themselves when they are around us.
not respecting people’s personal-space preferences can create high levels of discomfort, and those emotions could become associated with you.
When people are sitting across from each other with a table dividing them, they tend to speak in shorter sentences, are more likely to argue, and can recall less of what was said.8
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 is one of the main ways charismatic masters make you feel that you are the most important person in the room.
One good way to avoid creating this anxiety is to keep eye contact for three full seconds at the end of your interaction with someone. This may sound short, but it’ll actually feel endless! If you can get into the habit of doing this, you’ll find it well worth the effort. With just a few seconds’ investment, people will feel you have truly paid attention to them.
Few things impair charisma more than bad eye contact and few things gain you charisma points more than improving your eye contact.
Any increase in the amount of confidence your body language projects will bring you major charisma rewards.
Because body language is wired so deeply within us, signs of confidence (or lack thereof) in someone’s body language have veto power over all other signs of power.
“Powerful people sit sideways on chairs, drape their arms over the back, or appropriate two chairs by placing an arm across the back of an adjacent chair. They put their feet on the desk. They sit on the desk.” All of these behaviors, she says, are ways of claiming space.
Composed people exhibit a level of stillness, which is sometimes described as poise.
When verbal and nonverbal messages contradict, we tend to trust what we see in the other person’s body language more than what we hear them say.
It’s far more difficult to have charisma when you’re dealing with a group because you must handle all the individual contexts on top of the group dynamic.
ask them for something they can give without incurring any cost: their opinion.
The more appreciation you express and the more you show them the impact they’ve had on you, the more they will like you and feel invested in your success.
