The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (25 page)

Nervously making her way across campus, peering through thick glasses, Ella is a fragile-looking history major, her arms full of books, on her way to her very first class of Kickboxing 101.

As she enters the locker room, Ella has no idea what to expect. She changes into shorts and a T-shirt, suddenly feeling very breakable.
Maybe we’ll start with push-ups,
she tells herself.
Or maybe punching sandbags? Oh, I hope we’re not asked to fight right away in front of everyone. I’ve never thrown a punch in my life.

To her relief, the class begins with neither punches nor push-ups. Instead, the coach announces a far more surprising assignment: “Go back out and find a busy, crowded space on campus right now. For the next hour, as you walk around, try to get other people to move aside for you.” The only rule is that Ella isn’t allowed to step aside to make way for others. If it means a mild collision, so be it.

So here’s Ella, bracing herself to move through the crowded main quad. All she knows is that she somehow must make others move out of the way for her. What would you have done? Imagine being there with that mission—how would you get others to move aside for you?

When we think of boxing matches and what helps an opponent win or lose in the ring, most of us think of strength, speed, and agility. And these are all true. But as many professional boxers will tell you, a lot happens before the opponents even set foot in the arena, well before the first punch is thrown. The way the fighters carry themselves—how impressive and intimidating they seem—can play a decisive role in the fight.

Though you may not realize it, your subconscious mind is constantly scanning your surroundings as you move through your environment to glean the information you need to keep moving forward. Your eyes scan and assess potential obstacles, including other people
in your way. To determine whether you need to modify your route to avoid them, you read their body language without even realizing it.

If they’re broadcasting a body language that says, “You better move aside, baby,” you will most likely pick up on it and make way for them. Conversely, if you feel that you’re the bigger gorilla, you’ll stay your course and expect them to deviate.

Right now, close your eyes and imagine a very large gorilla. A rival has just breached his territory, and the gorilla is furious. He goes charging through the jungle, reaches the top branch of the top tree, and from there wants to broadcast his presence all around and intimidate the rival off his territory. What would he do? He’d likely inflate his chest and pound it with his fists—both of these actions have the effect of making him look bigger. The pounding also makes him loud and scary. That’s how a gorilla charging through the jungle wants to look: big, loud, and scary. In human terms, we read confidence the same way: how much space people are willing to take up.

Deborah Gruenfeld, organizational behavior professor at Stanford’s business school, says that “Powerful people sit sideways on chairs, drape their arms over the back, or appropriate two chairs by placing an arm across the back of an adjacent chair. They put their feet on the desk. They sit on the desk.” All of these behaviors, she says, are ways of claiming space.

The next time you’re out in a crowded environment, practice getting people to move aside for you. You could even do this on your way to work. First, visualize what a big gorilla would look like charging down the street. Then adopt the corresponding body language: imagine you’re a big gorilla about to go charging down the street and let your body express that. Take up as much space as you can. Inflate your chest and charge through the crowd. You might even swing your arms as you go, taking up yet more space.

When you first start trying out this confident body language, it can feel a little scary. But it’s well worth it. What’s the worst that can happen? You bump into someone. Use that as an opportunity to practice switching into kindness charisma with a quick visualization to increase your warmth. Imagine the person you’ve just bumped into is a good friend or see them with angel wings.

Your job is to learn how to take up space and get comfortable doing so. Keep in mind that you’ll need the freedom of motion to inflate your chest, so avoid constrictive clothing that doesn’t allow you to breathe. You can’t be imposing without oxygen.

One of the first things I question my clients about when we work on projecting charismatic body language is: “What’s your breathing like right now?” Anytime your breathing is shallow, you activate the stress response. It’s hard to feel calm, relaxed, and confident when you’re not getting enough oxygen and your body thinks it’s in fight-or-flight mode.

Regal Posture

Can you imagine James Bond fidgeting? How about tugging at his clothing, bobbing his head, or twitching his shoulders? How about hemming and hawing before he speaks? Of course not. Bond is the quintessential cool, calm, and collected character. He epitomizes confidence.

This kind of high-status, high-confidence body language is characterized by how
few
movements are made. Composed people exhibit a level of stillness, which is sometimes described as
poise
. They avoid extraneous, superfluous gestures such as fidgeting with their clothes, their hair, or their faces, incessantly nodding their heads, or saying “um” before sentences.

These gestures, which behavior experts identify as low-status, are often signs used by someone wanting to convey reassurance to the person they’re interacting with. The desire to convey reassurance can stem from two different sources:

• Empathy: wanting to ensure that the other person feels heard and understood and knows you’re paying attention
  
• Insecurity: wanting to please or appease the person you’re interacting with
  

In contrast, people who come across as powerful, confident, or high-status are usually more contained; they don’t feel the urge to give so much reassurance because they’re not as worried about what their counterpart is thinking.

Imagine yourself in a royal court. Picture a nervous servant anxiously bobbing and curtseying. Now imagine the opposite: the king or queen. Poised and powerful, they don’t need to make a move.

When you want to increase your poise, there are three major issues to look out for. The first is excessive or rapid nodding. Nodding once for emphasis or to express agreement is fine and can be an effective communication method, but nodding three or four times in rapid succession is not. This is what one of my clients has come to call “the bobble head.”

The second hindrance is excessive verbal reassurance: making a sound, such as “uh-huh,” or a half-sentence, such as “Oh, I agree.” Done once, and consciously, this is fine; multiple times per sentence is not.

The third issue is restlessness or fidgeting (tapping your pencil or foot, or rearranging items on the table). Fidgeting decreases presence, thus charisma. Even when you have warmth, confidence, and are mentally present, if you are physically restless, you can’t be charismatic. Your body language is sending distracting signals. I know one particular young entrepreneur who is both confident and warm, yet his restless tics and incessant fidgeting make him seem odd and eccentric. He comes across as a child who can’t keep still and has a hard time being taken seriously.

How to break these habits? The first step is awareness—you need to see how you appear to others. One of the most valuable things you can do is to videotape yourself during a meeting or even a casual conversation. When you sit down to watch it, fast-forward ten minutes; you’ll probably have forgotten about the camera enough to display uninhibited body language. Turn the sound off at first and just compare your body language (nodding, gesturing, etc.) to whomever is the most senior person in the room. Then watch again with the sound on and compare your verbal reassurance level with others’. Though the experience can be painful, it’s often invaluable: realize
that everything you see on that tape is what others are seeing. You might as well be aware of it, too.

With this newfound awareness, you may catch yourself throughout the day displaying high amounts of verbal and nonverbal reassurance and feel dismayed by how often it occurs. This is normal. Many of my clients tell me they feel incredibly frustrated for the first few days, noticing how often and how eagerly they bob their head.

Give yourself a break. Everyone goes through this period of frustration, and it really is possible to break these habits. The client who called her nodding bobble-heading proudly reported: “I still nod my head occasionally, but I now do it deliberately, in well-chosen moments.”

Be aware, however, that broadcasting too much power can come across as either arrogant or intimidating for some people. The warmth-enhancing techniques you gained earlier in this chapter, such as keeping your eyes in soft focus, will counter this. You can also aim to bring your chin down a few degrees—imagine a king bowing his head to a noble emissary. This has a double benefit. It avoids giving the impression that you’re contemptuously looking down your nose at someone (the impression given when your head is tilted back) and simultaneously makes you appear more thoughtful, attentive, and deliberate as your eyes automatically open wider.

Knowing What to Do When

The same amount of nonverbal communication or reassurance can be appropriate and helpful in one context but hold you back in another. For instance, if you’re seeking to make a shy colleague or subordinate feel comfortable and open up, you would be smart to punctuate your interaction with both nonverbal (nodding) and verbal (uh-huh) reassurance.

If they’re looking insecure and you think they need to be reassured, ramp up the amount of warmth you’re projecting. Use any of the warmth-enhancing visualizations you gained in
Chapter 5
or the verbal warmth techniques from
Chapter 8
, and adapt your body language to theirs.

On the other hand, when you’d like to be seen as a confident peer or a respected boss, focus on poise and containment and limit your reassurance. Rather than synchronizing your body language with theirs (unless theirs is the very essence of confidence you want to display), keep to your own rhythms and maintain your confident, contained posture.

You now have the basics of projecting presence, power, and warmth through both verbal and nonverbal communication.

You first learned how to build a solid internal foundation for charisma, then how to bring your charisma into the world. Now you’re ready to learn how to apply these tools in difficult situations. The next chapter will help you stay charismatic when it counts the most.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

While our words speak to a person’s logical mind, our nonverbal communication speaks to a person’s emotional mind.

Nonverbal communication amplifies verbal communication when the two are congruent.