What is charisma? Sooner or later almost everyone I coach asks me that question. And it immediately leads to the next inevitable query: How can I increase my own?
Charisma, as it is generally understood, is something you know when you see but you have a hard time putting your finger on or defining. Some celebrities, speakers, politicians, and ordinary people just have it, apparently. They light up a room when they walk in. They steal the scene in a movie or take up everyone’s attention while they’re on stage. Everyone’s interest focuses on them. People cluster around them. The rest of us lean into their conversations in order to catch every word. It’s magic.
I once saw an actor playing Hamlet who completely and shamelessly stole all the audience’s attention just in the way that he came on stage. There was a long and dramatic pause. Then we saw one hand snaking around the edge of the set. Then a second hand. The actor already had us entranced and only his two hands were visible. By the time he finally entered, we were completely enrolled in whatever he was doing.
What’s going on? Most people think that charisma is something magical that people like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have and the rest of us don’t. But it’s actually much simpler than that – and something you can control.
Charisma is two things: authenticity and attitude.
You need both in order to radiate some magical charisma. Most of us don’t manage either very often, because we’re either not authentically present, right there, in the moment, or because we’re not expressing much in the way of emotion. We either are split in focus – nervous, thinking about something else, distracted – or we’re bottled up – afraid to show what we really feel.
If you can focus, you can be charismatic.
In fact, you were charismatic, without any conscious effort, when you were a child. If you came home from school one day, thrilled with something that had happened, and your parent took one look at you and said, “Jane, what’s up?” then you were charismatic. You were focused in the moment, full of a single emotion, and completely present telling your parent about your day. Nothing else mattered in that moment.
That’s charisma. We tend to put actors high on the charisma list because they’re so good at expressing emotion in a focused way. They work on making the emotions very true, even though the circumstances are usually made up.
So how do you increase your own charisma? First, increase your authenticity. And that means being absolutely aligned in what you say and how you say it – content and body language. You can’t be authentic if those two modes of expression are not aligned.
I agree, charisma is an elusive term. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that it’s about being “present.”
It’s for this reason I tend to prefer the term Presence when talking around this topic, as it’s the only term which includes both the diagnosis of the quality (i.e. what Presence looks like to an audience) and the solution to developing the quality (i.e. the more Present you are, the more Presence you allow yourself to have).
The issue I find with most speakers trying to improve their Presence/charisma/authenticity is that we tend to treat the whole thing very intellectually. People try to “DO charisma”, which is exactly the opposite way to approach it. The more that we try to DO, the more we think, the more we isolate ourselves from the audience by falling back into our own minds, and the less Presence the audience sees in us.
In my opinion, Presence (and probably charisma) is about DOING less but BEING more. The better prepared we are, the more we give ourselves space to Be Present with the audience, which is the prime contributor to charisma.
Cheers,
Alex
Thanks, Alex — presence is the word of the decade, I think….I love your point about treating the idea of presence intellectually and how that drives you further and further from….presence. That’s the trick, especially for smart, Type A people who want to master the universe intellectually.
I agree, Alex and Nick. Charisma is heart and soul… with a genuine in-the-moment blend of caring and listening… I recently reviewed some self-made videos as I practiced messages. Again and again I saw intellect and academic content being delivered. I recognize I need to lighten up and let my heart shine through!