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August 17 - August 22, 2017
When you meet a charismatic person, you get the impression that they have a lot of power and they like you a lot.
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.
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.
CHARISMATIC BEHAVIOR CAN be broken down into three core elements: presence, power, and warmth.
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.
The very next time you’re in a conversation, try to regularly check whether your mind is fully engaged or whether it is wandering elsewhere (including preparing your next sentence). Aim to bring yourself back to the present moment as often as you can by focusing on your breath or your toes for just a second, and then get back to focusing on the other person.
Being charismatic does not depend on how much time you have but on how fully present you are in each interaction.
Increasing your ability to be present not only improves your body language, listening skills, and mental focus, it could even enhance your ability to enjoy life.
We look for clues of power in someone’s appearance, in others’ reaction to this person, and, most of all, in the person’s body language.
Warmth, simply put, is goodwill toward others.
Warmth is assessed almost entirely through body language and behavior; it’s evaluated more directly than power.
Just by increasing your projection of power or your projection of warmth, you increase your level of charisma.
Both power and warmth are necessary conditions for charisma. Someone who is powerful but not warm can be impressive, but isn’t necessarily perceived as charismatic and can come across as arrogant, cold, or standoffish.
For charisma, your body language matters far more than your words do.
Projecting presence, power, and warmth through your body language is often all you need to be perceived as charismatic.
Because what’s in your mind shows up in your body and because people will catch even the briefest microexpression, to be effective, charismatic behaviors must originate in your mind.
Charismatic internal skills, which help you manage your internal state, form the necessary foundation upon which to build your charismatic external skills.
Individuals with strong internal skills are aware of what exactly is happening inside them and know how to handle it. They can recognize when their self-confidence has taken a hit and have the tools to get back to a confident state so that their body language remains charismatic.
The internal skills necessary for charisma include both the awareness of your internal state and the tools to effectively manage it.
Whatever your mind believes, your body will manifest. Just by getting into a charismatic mental state, your body
will manifest a charismatic body language.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Charisma has three essential components: presence, power, and warmth. Being present—paying attention to what’s going on rather than being caught up in your thoughts—can yield immense
rewards. When you exhibit presence, those around you feel listened to, respected, and valued. Because your body language telegraphs your internal state to those around you, in order to be charismatic—to exhibit presence, power, and warmth—you must display charismatic body language. Because your mind can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality, by creating a charismatic internal state your body language will authentically display charisma. In terms of achieving charisma, your internal state is critical. Get the internal state right, and the right charismatic behaviors and body
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Any physical discomfort that affects your visible, external state—your body language—even slightly may affect how charismatic you are perceived to be.
When interacting with someone, assume that he or she will feel (at least on a subconscious level) that whatever you do relates to him or to her.
Counteracting charisma-impairing physical discomfort is simple: Prevent
Recognize Remedy or explain
Our inability to tolerate uncertainty carries multiple costs. It can cause us to make premature decisions. It can handicap us in negotiations, leading us to reveal more than we should as we scramble to fill the silence, unable to bear the uncertainty of not knowing what the other person is thinking. And most important, it can lead us to feel anxious. Anxiety is a serious drawback to charisma.
First, it impacts our internal state: quite obviously, it’s hard to be fully present while you’re feeling anxious. Anxiety can also lower our confidence. Anxiety, low presence, and low confidence can show up directly in our body language, as well as reduce our ability to emanate warmth.
Our natural discomfort with uncertainty is yet another legacy of our survival instincts. We tend to be more comfortable with what is familiar, which obviously hasn’t killed us yet, than with what is unknown or uncertain, which could turn out to be dangerous.
The next time you feel yourself considering alternative outcomes to a situation, pay close attention. If your brain is going around in circles, obsessing about possible outcomes, try a responsibility transfer to alleviate some of the anxiety.
When I realize that my anxiety level is rising, I often perform a quick visualization to transfer responsibility. It’s amazing to feel the instant sense of relief and the warmth, calm, and serenity rising. I feel my whole body relax, and it’s as if my whole being starts to glow.
The very act of comparing and evaluating hinders our ability to be fully present.
Few things impact people’s performance more than how they feel about themselves.
When our internal voice starts criticizing us, lashing out, it can feel like we’re under attack. Because our brain doesn’t distinguish between imagination and reality, these internal attacks are perceived by our mind just as a real, physical attack would be, and they can generate an automatic physical reaction known as the threat response or fight-or-flight response.
Self-criticism is one of the most common obstacles to great performance in any field.
In one of the manifestations of
self-doubt, known as the impostor syndrome, competent people feel they don’t really know what they’re doing and are just waiting for someone to expose them as a fraud.
Interestingly, the impostor syndrome is worst among high performers. When I speak about
it at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT, the room goes so silent you could hear a pin drop. And I see the students breathe a sigh of relief as they realize this feeling has a name and they are not alone in experiencing it.
We’ve seen the effects of anxiety, dissatisfaction, self-criticism, and self-doubt. Where does all this negativity come from? The difficult feelings we experience are a natural by-product of one of our most useful survival mechanisms. Negativity exists to spur you to action, to either resolve the problem or get out of the situation. Feelings like fear or anxiety are designed to get you to do something. They’re uncomfortable because they’re “designed” to be uncomfortable.
spurring us to action. For instance, the impostor syndrome can be a great motivating tool, getting us to work harder than anyone else. But at what cost? Considering that this kind of internal negativity impairs our body language, and thus our interactions, not to mention our ability to actually enjoy life, might it not be better to learn how to handle the impostor syndrome and be motivated instead by confidence in our abilities and the joy of accomplishment?
Any internal discomfort—either physical or mental—can impair how you feel, how you perform, and how others perceive you.
Physical tension caused by something as simple as the sun in your eyes produces the same changes in body language as a more serious discomfort, like anxiety or irritation. Prevention is optimal: plan ahead to ensure comfort in clothing, location, and timing. Aim to stay aware of any physical sensation of discomfort. If physical discomfort arises during an interaction, act promptly to alleviate or explain it. Use techniques such as the responsibility transfer to reduce the feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction that play out in your body language and inhibit your charisma.
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Skillfully handling any difficult experience is a three-step process: destigmatize discomfort, neutralize negativity, and rewrite reality.
Step One: Destigmatize Discomfort
Another way to destigmatize discomfort is to remind yourself that you’re not alone in this experience. With about 7 billion people on the planet, I can absolutely guarantee you that not
just one but scores of people are going through the same thing at this very moment. Rather than seeing it as one big emotion felt by one person, see a community of people struggling with it—one difficult burden shared by many. Rather than being yours alone to bear, see the issue as the depression, the shame, the sadness that is being felt by a multitude of people right now.
The next time an uncomfortable emotion is bothering you, try this step-by-step guide to destigmatizing: Remember that uncomfortable emotions are normal, natural, and simply a legacy of our survival instincts. We all experience them from time to time. Dedramatize: this is a common part of human experience that happens every day. Think of others who’ve gone through this before, especially people you admire. See it as one burden shared by many. You are part of a community of human beings experiencing this one feeling at
