The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (20 page)

In this case, focus all your attention, with particularly warm eye contact (see
chapter 9
for this), not on the person you’re taking with you but on the person who is being left behind. This minimizes the chances of their feeling excluded and is particularly important for conveying either kindness charisma or focus charisma.

A good way to phrase things is: “I’m
so
sorry, but Christopher is needed to [fill in the blank]. Would you allow me to bring him over there?” This also gives them at least a nominal feeling of having a choice in the matter.

Once a conversation is over, don’t waste time worrying about what you said, what you wish you hadn’t said, or what you’ll say next time. As the MIT Media Lab studies showed, what impacts people isn’t the words or content used. Rather, they remember how it
felt
to be speaking with you.

You might not remember the exact content of conversations you had a week ago, but you probably do remember how they felt. It’s not the words but the conversation’s emotional imprint that remains. And if you use all the tools we’ve just covered, the emotional imprint will be simply splendid.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

First impressions happen within seconds and can affect not only the rest of the interaction but also the rest of your relationship with that person.

People feel most comfortable with those who are similar to them in some way, including appearance and behavior. Do your homework and decide how much you want to adapt your dress and word choice to your environment.

A good handshake can go a long way. Likewise, a bad one can leave an unfavorable and lasting first impression. It’s worth spending some time perfecting the right way to greet someone.

Great conversationalists keep the spotlight on the other person and make them feel good about themselves.

Know how to gracefully exit a conversation, leaving others with positive feelings.

AS WE’VE SEEN
, body language and other nonverbal signals can emit a variety of messages and can be used to project charisma even before a single word is spoken. Managing a charismatic mental state is the first step, but this chapter will reveal specific verbal and vocal techniques to successfully broadcast your charismatic mental state. You’ll learn how to communicate presence when listening, and power and warmth when speaking.

Charismatic Listening

When I ask my clients to name the first skill they would improve upon in their people if they could wave a magic wand, most of the CEOs say, “Better listening skills.” They may not sound complex or glamorous, but listening skills are an absolute requirement for charisma, and most charisma masters possess them in abundance. By being a great listener you can make people feel completely heard and
understood without saying a word. In fact, it’s remarkably easy to impress people just by listening attentively.

We’re about to cover three keys to communicating presence: attentive listening, refraining from interrupting, and deliberate pausing. Listening comes first and foremost, because listening lays the groundwork for the presence that is fundamental to charisma.

John F. Kennedy was known as a “superb listener” who made others feel like he was “with them completely.” Great listening skills helped him pay extremely close attention to the feelings of whomever he was interacting with, enabling him to establish rapport on a very deep, emotional level.
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I’m sure you know that listening is important. But did you know that just a few tweaks can bring your listening skills from good to truly extraordinary? Great listening skills start with the right mindset: both the willingness and the mental ability to be present, pay attention, and focus on what the other person is saying. As you can imagine, this is absolutely key for conveying focus charisma, though it can boost any of the other charisma styles, too.

One of the most common mistakes my clients make is equating listening with “letting people talk until it’s my turn.” Sorry, but that’s not sufficient. Even if the other person is doing all the talking, you can’t let your mind wander while waiting for your turn to speak. Even if what you’re thinking about is what you want to say next, your lack of presence will be written all over your face. The other person will see that you’re not fully present and are just waiting for them to finish so you can jump in.

Presence is a cornerstone of effective listening. You already have all the tools you need to avoid mind-wandering while someone else is talking:

• If zoning out is the issue, bring yourself back to the moment by focusing on physical sensations, like the feeling in your toes or your breath flowing in and out of your body.
  
• If impatience is the issue, handle it by
  delving into
  the minute physical sensations you’re feeling. Then get back to the person.
  

Once you have the right mindset, how do you ensure the right behaviors? Effective listening means behaving in a way that makes whomever you’re speaking with feel truly understood.

Good
listeners know never, ever to interrupt—not even if the impulse to do so comes from excitement about something the other person just said. No matter how congratulatory and warm your input, it will always result in their feeling at least a twinge of resentment or frustration at not having been allowed to complete their sentence. One of my clients told me: “This one practice alone is worth its weight gold. To stop interrupting others could be the single most important skill I’ve learned from working with you.”

Great
listeners know to let others interrupt them. When someone interrupts you, let them! Were they right to interrupt you? Of course not. But even if they were wrong, it’s not worth making them feel wrong; your job instead is to make them feel right. In fact, if you notice the other person repeatedly agitating to speak, keep your sentences short and leave frequent pauses for them to jump in.

People really do love to hear themselves talk. The more you let them speak, the more they will like you. One young executive told me: “In job interviews, I’ve gotten offers simply by going in for an interview and letting the interviewer talk for ninety percent of the time. I walk out and they absolutely love me since we talked about what mattered most to them.”

Master
listeners know one extra trick, one simple but extraordinarily effective habit that will make people feel truly listened to and understood: they pause before they answer. The pianist Artur Schnabel once said, “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides.”
²

Knowing how and when to pause is also an art in business conversations, and something that most charismatic conversationalists do naturally. Considered a key tool in negotiation, pausing can also play a wonderful role in making people feel good about themselves when they’re around you—it’s an easy way to make people feel intelligent, interesting, and even impressive.

When someone has spoken, see if you can let your facial expression react first, showing that you’re absorbing what they’ve just said and
giving their brilliant statement the consideration it deserves. Only then, after about two seconds, do you answer. The sequence goes like this:

• They finish their sentence
  
• Your face absorbs
  
• Your face reacts
  
• Then, and only then, you answer
  

Now, I’m not saying this is easy. It takes confidence to bear silence, both because of the awkwardness you may feel and because of the uncertainty of not knowing what they’re thinking during those two seconds. But it’s worth it. Several of my clients told me that this one simple technique had a major impact for them. The people they interacted with seemed to feel more relaxed and better understood, and they were willing to share more and open up—a high return for just two seconds of patience.

Great listening skills will give you presence—the foundation of charisma—and boost any charisma style. Now that you’ve laid a solid foundation for communicating presence, let’s move on to communicating charismatic warmth and power.

Charismatic Speaking

Imagine yourself one morning in a hurry to get to work. You scramble through your routine, rush out the door, and at the very first street corner, while waiting for the red light to turn green, you witness a deadly traffic collision. From now on, what are you going to think of whenever you pass that corner? The accident, of course. It would be nearly impossible to pass that specific street corner without thinking of it. You might remember the feelings of horror and dread or the way your blood seemed to turn to ice in your veins.

Our minds link the sensations we’re experiencing to the places, people, and physical sensations we notice while we’re experiencing them. This is why car manufacturers often include highly attractive female models in the ads promoting their cars. (It works: in a study,
men asked to evaluate cars whose ads featured attractive female models rated
the cars
as faster, cooler, and more desirable.)
³

The same association happens with negative feelings, which is why TV weather forecasters often receive hate mail from viewers who so strongly associate the meteorologists with the weather they report that they believe these folks actually cause the weather. It’s not unusual during nasty seasons for a forecaster to receive at least one death threat.
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