I recently came across a study which indirectly confirmed the importance of height to public speakers.  An anthropologist studied children of a Mayan community from Guatemala, who moved to the US in the 1990s.  What he found was that the population grew an average of 11 cm in one generation after the migration.  The relatives back home didn’t have the same explosion in growth.

Now, you might be tempted to ascribe the growing height to increased living standards, as well as less of the environmental stressors back in the previous country, and that’s usually what the anthropologists do.

Except that the anthropologist also studied a secondary phenomenon related to height and new countries.  It turns out that when a group of colonial rulers, or military occupiers, take over a country, they grow in height to be taller than the people that they’re subjugating – and taller than their peers back home.

The example cited is that of the Dutch colonial rulers of Indonesia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who grew taller than the Indonesians, and also taller than their upper-class peers back in the Netherlands.

It would appear, then, that relative height has a social dominance component.  It helps, in short, to be taller than the people you’re trying to control, or lead, or have authority over.

Now, imagine for a moment how that plays out in a public speaking setting.  We attribute dominance to taller people – unconsciously.  So being taller than the audience is an unconscious, unfair way to be granted a little dominance before you even open your mouth.

Note I said “unfair.”  Please, let’s be clear:  I’m not saying that the advantage that height confers is in any way justified by automatically better speaking, cleverer speeches, or more thrilling connections with the audience.  Simply that height is yet another way that the human species in general unconsciously confers advantages and disadvantages on individual members of the species without regard to any particular skill or lack thereof.

If you’re a tall speaker, then you need to know that at least some of your success is attributable to your height alone.  That should help to keep you humble.  And if you’re a short speaker, your success means you’ve overcome some unconscious biases against you, making your success even more remarkable.  You’re entitled to feel good about that.

Don’t confuse the advantage that height conveys with charisma.  Charisma is two things:  authenticity and attitude — the passionate expression of emotion.

Most of us don’t radiate a lot of charisma 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 holding back – not committed to what we really feel.

We tend to put actors high on the charisma list because they’re so good at expressing emotion.  They work on making their emotions strong and focused, 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.  Second, increase your passion.  Focus in yourself on how you feel about the moment, the people you’re with, the situation you’re in, and then express that as powerfully as you can.

That has nothing to do with height and everything to do with the hard practice of getting clear about yourself, your values, and your story – and then expressing those things as simply and powerfully as you can.