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Charisma is not just a charm, it is a cube of charm. With a person who is endowed with it, I want to go even on reconnaissance, even on a campaign, join his party, entrust credit cards and keys to the apartment and name the first-born in his honor. While we were hiding the keys and credit cards away, Elena Korovushkina found out everything she could about charismatics.
The list of qualities that a charismatic person possesses is endless, like the Great Wall of China, but Olivia Fox Cabain, author of the book “Charisma. How to influence, persuade and inspire”, reduced them to three fundamental features: Strength, Warmth, Presence. On our own, we would add one more point - Inner Light. Let's find out what is behind these concepts.
Force
People who have power, money, knowledge, fame, automatically seem to us more charismatic. But you don’t have to be a Nobel laureate, turn over billions and star in blockbusters for people to follow you. It is enough to give the impression of a confident person, able to cope with any tasks that life throws up every day. Even body language works for this image: a relaxed posture, straight shoulders, wide gestures. You can't imagine a born leader fidgeting in his chair, shifting from foot to foot and hiding his eyes, right?
The charismatic knows a little about everything, and is considered an expert in his field. He is the king of small talk (light, easy communication), while he is not afraid of pauses in a conversation and is in no hurry to fill them with nervous chatter. He does not chatter at the speed of a machine-gun burst, he prefers to say less, but better. He is eloquent, has a good sense of humor, and his speech is rich in metaphors.
Researchers have calculated and found that in the inaugural speeches of American charismatic presidents (Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan) there are twice as many metaphors as in the speeches of their more "boring" colleagues.
Charismatics are great at storytelling. Take Steve Jobs's famous speech to Stanford alumni, for example. He built it around three stories from his life: how he dropped out of university, how he got fired from Apple, and how he was diagnosed with cancer. Against the background of these emotional stories, the banal, in general, idea that you need to do what you love sounded like a revelation.
Heat
To be understood, accepted, and cared for are basic human needs. Next to the charismatic, it seems to us that they are completely satisfied. This person has a high level of empathy, knows how to read the emotions of others and show that he is experiencing exactly the same. It seems that he understands you better than his own mother. Warmth is the hardest thing to fake, intuitively we always feel when a person does not care about us, he just needs to sell this wonderful machine for removing pellets. A charismatic person firmly believes that this machine will make your life better and brighter.
He is positive, rarely criticizes and to the point. A charismatic person will not spend half the night on the Internet, breaking virtual spears on the theme "there are only fools in the government, only scoundrels surround me, and Jennifer Lawrence has too chubby cheeks." He always treats people as his equals - he does not flatter his superiors and does not humiliate his subordinates.
Presence
According to a Michigan Institute study dating back to the late 1970s, student empathy has dropped 40% over the past thirty years. Scientists attribute this to the fact that we are increasingly making a choice in favor of virtual communication. Such a fate does not threaten the charismatic, because he prefers personal meetings to emails and phone calls.
At the same time, it seems that he catches your every word, and does not while away the time, staring at the screen of his mobile phone. He really listens to the interlocutor, and does not wait for his turn to speak and give counter-arguments.
And the interlocutor himself begins to seem more interesting, significant and important. Real charisma is not only about how cool you are, but also about how cool you see people around you.
A charismatic person is rarely bored. An empty, absent look is not about him. Such a person knows how to evoke inspiration within himself, knows how to demonstrate it and infects others with it. He gets visible pleasure from what he is doing, and it seems to others that it is worth joining, as it will become just as easy and fun for them. Remember how Tom Sawyer painted the fence?
Psychologist Eva Finkelstein is confident: "Charismatic people are distinguished by the presence of a goal that transcends the personality itself." The scale can be completely different: the arrangement of the yard or the world revolution. The main thing is that a charismatic person cares not only about his own interests, he passionately believes in his dreams and boldly tries to make them come true.
Inner Light
To be a true charismatic, Strength, Warmth and Presence must be in harmony. A lot of Warmth and little Strength - at best they will call you a "sweet girl". If you can draw Strength with buckets, and Heat splashes in a glass on the bottom, then you should be "heartless selfish." At the same time, as psychologist-consultant Elena Mzhelskaya reminds us, the inner content and the outer shell must also live in peace and harmony: “If you give preference to the inner, ignoring the outer, then you risk becoming a philosopher or an unrecognized genius. If you rely only on the external, then you will become a dummy in a beautiful wrapper. Charisma is born from the union of inner passion and outer zest."
Researchers from Lausanne Business School set up this experiment: they decomposed charisma, as we are now, into its components and conducted a three-month course of training for middle managers. And it worked! At the end of the course, the participants began to be perceived by colleagues and superiors as more friendly, competent, trustworthy and worthy of emulation employees. It seems that charisma is not a gift of God, but quite a scrambled eggs. You can cultivate confidence in yourself, learn to be eloquent, work on emotionality, find a purpose in life. But as transactional analyst Margarita Kuznetsova warns us, it's easy to fall into the trap of perfectionism here. “I must always be successful in everything,” “my ideas must evoke admiration,” “everyone must love me,” and instead of the ease of communication typical of charismatics, tension appears, and the burden of high expectations bends you to the ground.
Heat is the hardest thing to counterfeit. Intuitively, we always feel when a person does not care about us.
Existential psychologist Irina Shelyshey compared charisma to the light of a lantern inside a person. This light attracts to itself, and it is inside everyone, you just need to know how to handle it correctly. You can train a charming smile, a confident look, a heartfelt speech in front of the mirror as much as you like - and everything will be in vain. But very often it turns out that a person does not even think about training charisma, but he simply finds the work of his life, gives himself entirely to him, thereby fulfilling the necessary rules and conditions under which his inner light flares up more and more brighter - and people fly to this light …
Who seeks will always find
Consultant psychologist Elena Mzhelskaya proposes the following algorithm.
- Find a business that truly captures you. It doesn't matter what it will be - learning a foreign language or helping stray animals, it is important to fully invest in it.
- Find a source of energy - if you don't have enough of it, then the inner light does not shine, but blinks. The easiest way to boost energy is through regular exercise.
- Finding a balance between internal and external - in your appearance, in the manner of behaving. It is necessary to remove everything that interferes with the inner light. Learn to speak beautifully and hold yourself confidently.
- Ignite others with your spark. This is the moment of truth: share your passion with people and see if they follow you.
Dimming brightness
Charismatic people almost always get what they want. But does this coincide with your plans? You need to be able to see through someone else's charisma. Otherwise, it happens like this: I talked to a nice person, and then woke up - and it turned out that you invested all your money in the JSC "Dreams and Hopes" and so far the profits are seen only in dreams and hopes. The best medicine is distance. By hook or by crook, refuse to make a decision immediately on the spot, take a break for reflection. Margarita Kuznetsova advises to remember the general principle of protection against manipulation: to think about your own needs and answer the question: "Am I doing this because it is in my interests or because I am afraid to upset such a good person?" And if your interests are not on the way, then say a firm "no" to the charismatic.
