Everything in this article is drawn from powerful, scientifically-based information.
Seriously, they are teaching this stuff at Harvard Business School, charging trial attorneys mad money for training on this stuff, and professional speakers like Tony Robbins make a living off this stuff.
After attending countless seminars, reading books and articles, and gaining first-hand experience with the application of charisma, I’ve compiled a comprehensive list of 6 key characteristics of charisma.
The principals are extremely applicable to nearly all aspects of our lives, including:
- Killing Job Interviews
- Success in Dating
- Making and Keeping High-Quality Friends
- Becoming a Leader
- Positioning Yourself to Become a Magnet for Success
Personally, I am always on a quest to enrich my life, and everything I learn, I love to give to others. So here is a taste of the charisma information most relevant and applicable to leadership:
There are three parts of our brain: the human brain, mammalian brain, and the reptilian brain.
We are going to focus on the most subconscious, instinctual part of the brain - the part right near the brain stem that controls fight or flight reactions, adrenaline, and tons of other unconscious processes.
An evolutionary principle that was key to survival back when we were hunters and gatherers was being in a tribe.
If you were alone, you died, so being part of a tribe was extremely important and is still important subconsciously to our modern brains.
Tribes had hierarchical social orders that required someone to take leadership. The sole purpose of the leader was to keep the tribe safe.
In a situation of danger, the most important thing humans look for is a leader; and when we don’t see one, we do nothing.
I’m dead serious.
If you are in a movie theatre and a fire breaks out, everyone will most like sit there until someone else stands up and starts running out. This is more commonly experienced in a classroom/seminar-style setting when the speaker asks the audience to raise their hands.
More often than not, people tend to wait until they see someone else raise their hand (a leader) before acting themselves.
The most comprehensive, all-encompassing quality of a leader is charisma.
It was, and continues to be, fundamental to our safety evolutionarily because without charisma leaders, there was no one to keep the tribe safe.
So what is charisma? There are a million different answers to this question, so here is the simple one:
CHARISMA IS COMMUNICATING WHO YOU ARE TO SOMEONE IN A WAY THAT MAKES THEM WANT TO GO OUT TO LUNCH OR HAVE A DRINK WITH YOU.
That’s it. Having charisma means you can connect with people and have them trust you.
Sounds easy enough, right?
Previously, it was believed people either had charisma or they didn’t, but recently in the past few years, scientists have discovered it is a learnable and teachable quality.
That’s why Harvard and the others are creating courses to teach it. And the beauty of this stuff is it’s powerful and visceral: we can’t explain or control our reaction to it. We are comfortable around people who exude charisma.
CHARACTERISTIC # 1: COMMUNICATING YOUR AWARENESS OF "DANGERS"
The strength of your charisma as a leader is directly proportional to your people’s awareness of your awareness of their worries. Deep down in the reptilian part of our brains, we are terrified of the following things:
- Abandonment
- Shame
- Isolation
- Rejection
- Betrayal
Now think about it: What happened back in the hunter/gatherer period to cause someone to experience those feelings? They were probably ostracized from society or their tribe, right?
Which meant they were alone and were probably going to die. This is why the things we fear the most - abandonment, shame, isolation, rejection, and betrayal - shake us to the core. It’s a survival mechanism.
As a charismatic leader, you must stay in tune with things humans fear and, most importantly, you need to communicate your awareness of those things.
People need to know because it’s how they will recognize you as their leader that will keep their tribe safe.
A modern day example is a coach for a sports team: the inherent “dangers” below the surface are shame and rejection from not winning.
When rallying a sports team, a coach needs to understand what is at stake, and the players need to know the coach knows what is at stake for them to feel comfortable to follow.
CHARACTERISTIC # 2: CARING ABOUT OTHERS
First impressions are crucial because it's the foundation people form about you that they continue to build on.
This is why it is extremely important to never demean, act superior to, or cause anyone to feel as if you don’t care about them.
Remember the first characteristic; it is important to be aware of dangers, and even more important for people to know your awareness of them; but if you do not act like you care about people, then why should they trust you with their tribe?
Caring about and having someone’s best interest at heart is paramount to becoming a charismatic leader.
Our brains are wired to place heavy value on what we see and it outweighs all of our other senses put together. The impressions you get and the impressions you give are important and you must be conscious of them at all times.
This includes the facial expressions you wear, how you deliver messages, and how you carry yourself.
CHARACTERISTIC # 3: CREATING CONNECTIONS
Creating strong connections with people, especially when you’re on stage, is a cornerstone of charisma. Remembering a person’s name and using their name creates a strong connection.
Names are magic in that our brains react intensely when people say your name.
Another simple way to create connections is through the effective use of rhetorical questions. When speaking to a group of people, ask rhetorical questions followed by powerful pauses.
When you ask a question, even a rhetorical one, and give someone a moment to think of an answer, their brain can’t distinguish the difference between a real conversation and an internal one; therefore, the person feels they are engaging in conversation with you, which creates a connection in their brain.
Active listening is vital to creating connections because it lets people know you care about them.
Waiters and waitresses that repeat orders back to customers, a form of active listening, tend to get more tips. Active listening is a science that connects brains together and executing it requires strong eye contact, nodding and acknowledging things as a person speaks, and responding to them thoughtfully.
A good tip to practice is to make people brag about themselves and when they start talking, listen as if you are trying to learn what they are saying. People love to talk about themselves and love it even more when someone else is actively listening to what they are saying.
CHARACTERISTIC # 4: LEADING WITH ENTHUSIASM
Develop an enthusiasm in whatever you do. Humans are perceptive and can easily catch wind of attitude or true feelings.
If you are trying to hide how you feel about something, it will come off as fake and destroy your trust factor.
Remember, having charisma means you can connect with people and have them trust you. If there is a part of your academic, professional, or personal leadership setting that you do not particularly fancy, you need to find a way to become enthusiastic about it internally so you can communicate it externally.
Purity of motive is essential to establishing charisma as a leader.
This goes hand-in-hand with caring and enthusiasm because people who believe you care about them is one thing, but coupled with enthusiasm exponentially deepens the relationship.
Enthusiasm executed correctly gives way to power. Power has a lot to do with how you look visually and how you occupy a space. When speaking move your arms, walk around, and look strong by owning your space while practicing enthusiasm.
This is a compelling technique that every charisma leader needs to perform.
CHARACTERISTIC # 5: ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY
Being a credible source of information is one of the most important factors of gaining people’s attention.
Our brain is naturally skeptical of new, unfamiliar people for survival purposes.
It’s so prevalent, even at an unconscious level, that your mind becomes more open and susceptible to the information in a book after you read or learn about the author first.
For example, you would not bat an eye at a book about start-up computer companies written by Bill Gates; however if the same book were written by someone you’ve never heard of or know nothing about, you will have a hard time accepting the information as fact.
An easy way to establish credibility at the reptilian level is through your voice.
Strength of a voice indicates strength of an individual: this is what our brains believe. Having a strong voice makes people think you are stronger.
To increase the richness of your voice, you need to broaden its range. You can do so by practicing voice exercises that consist of speaking in your highest pitch possible and in your lowest pitch possible.
Use your shower time or a car ride to sing songs in high and low pitches and over-enunciate words for a few minutes every day. This will greatly increase the strength and richness of your voice overtime.
The best way to relay important information to people is through storytelling.
Not only are stories great because our brain is hard-wired for them - stories are effective at making you a credible leader. This is because stories are narratives of real, concrete things.
Sure, sometimes stories are fiction, but even so, our brains cannot distinguish the difference. Once we enter story-listening mode, we become entranced, waiting to know what happens next.
During the hunter/gatherer age, humans learned about potential dangers through exchanging narratives. It was crucial to survival because everything was not easy to figure out on your own.
How could a human possibly dream up something like an avalanche if they’ve never experienced one before? How could someone be wary of bears if they’ve never seen or heard of them?
The humans who survived told stories about their encounters and the humans who listened avoided perils and passed on their genes. Not listening to a story could result in death, hence our brains are hard-wired to pay attention to them.
CHARACTERISTIC # 6: INSPIRE AND INSTILL PEOPLE WITH POWER
To be a charismatic leader, you must have the power to succeed.
For example, a sports coach with a track record of success (proof you have the power to succeed) and who can show the team what they need to do to achieve success, is in a powerful position.
It takes power to instill others with power, and when people are empowered, inspiration and purpose follows suit.
Make people feel strong by teaching them what to focus on. Charisma leaders give their herd a road map to success by teaching and guiding them.
A good strategy is to make people feel like all the unessential things have been taken out of the recipe. When people believe that everything they need to succeed is laid out in front of them, all they need to do is listen, they will follow you.