The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (28 page)

Make sure that throughout your interaction you express your care and concern both nonverbally and verbally; tell them, if appropriate, what you would like to do to ease their discomfort. Show that you fully understand not just how unwelcome the news is but also the ramifications it could have for them.

Throughout the experience, turn your kindness charisma not just toward them but also toward yourself. Use all the internal tools you’ve gained to handle this difficult experience as best as you can and keep giving yourself praise and encouragement. You’re doing your best.

Delivering Criticism

“Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger,” said humorist Franklin Jones. Have you ever winced at the mere memory of a comment heard years ago? Few things sting as badly or last as long as a nasty comment.

For many of my clients, having to occasionally deliver negative feedback is the worst part of their jobs. Many tell me that when they know they have criticism to deliver, they walk around with a knot in their stomach all day, dreading the upcoming conversation.

Unfortunately, criticism—like dental exams, airport security, and, depending on whom you ask, taxes—is a necessary evil. You may not like it, but sometimes you just have to do it. At some point in your life,
someone
—whether it’s a parent, spouse, friend, colleague, or boss—will do something wrong and you’ll have to tell them about it. The question, of course, is how to do it right.

There are four crucial steps to charismatically delivering criticism.

First,
think about your timing and the location
. Try to be as empathetic as possible in your choice of both. Consider the
individual’s levels of stress and fatigue. With criticism (or with “constructive feedback”), try to provide it as soon as possible after witnessing the behavior you want to change. Just be sure the person is in a physically and emotionally receptive state when you do so.

Second,
get into the right mindset, one of compassion and empathy
. Yes, even when delivering criticism, your compassion will play out across your body language and affect the entire interaction in a positive way. Warmth is also important here. Accessing kindness or focus charisma will ease the situation, whereas authority charisma would worsen it.

When people feel that you have their best interests at heart, it can change the dynamic entirely. Chris, an executive from Los Angeles, told me about a former boss who he felt was truly invested in his success. This boss, when pointing out areas of improvement, would remind Chris that he wanted him to be promoted as soon as possible and that’s why he was pointing out the things that needed to be better.

To access the right mental state, you can also try thinking of a person whom you highly respect just before you deliver criticism. You might think of a favorite grandparent, mentor, spiritual figure, or anyone who is important to you. If you were to make this comment to them, or in front of them, how would you word your criticism? In what ways do you see your comments changing now? Try to remind yourself of this regularly throughout the difficult conversation and imagine the respected mentor watching you.

Third,
decide exactly what points you want to make: be specific
. Focusing on a few key points rather than making an exhaustive list will prevent the other person from feeling overwhelmed. In addition, if your criticism is too general, their danger-wary brain might imagine the worst possible interpretations of your message.

Fourth,
depersonalize.
As much as possible, communicate that
what you’re critiquing is the behavior, not the person.
It’s harder to find common ground when someone feels that their intentions or character traits have been criticized. Be very wary of assuming you’ve accurately guessed a person’s motives. Instead, focus on observed behaviors and verified facts.

Even when focusing on the behavior, aim to make the criticism as
impersonal as possible. The wrong way to do this would be to say: “Why do you always procrastinate on presentations until the very last minute?” This is both personal and generalized. Instead, zero in on one observed behavior: “When you wait until the very last minute to prepare the presentation, I feel anxious.” After all,
we
create the feelings of anxiety in our bodies—it’s our decision to become upset. If possible, don’t mention their actions at all. Just explain what’s going on for you: “When I don’t see a finished presentation until the last minute, I feel anxious.”

Critical Delivery

Now that you’ve thought about timing and location and chosen the specific, empathetically phrased points you want to make, you’re ready to start charismatically delivering the difficult feedback. It’s important to start off on the right foot. The way you begin will greatly affect people’s perception of the conversation.

Human beings remember “firsts”—the first time something happens, or the beginning of an experience—and we tend to remember “lasts” as well. In a study done on patients who had received a colonoscopy exam, some were given a full exam for three minutes, while others received a longer exam but the device was held immobile during the final two minutes, thereby finishing the procedure on a far less painful note. This second group of patients remembered the entire exam as less painful, and they were more willing to undergo the procedure a second time.
³

If you start your criticism with a positive beginning, it will affect the rest of the experience. In the first moments, when people are most apprehensive, what they need is reassurance. You can give them solid ground to stand on by expressing the fact that you value them—that you recognize their worth as human beings, and that they matter to you as colleagues, as clients.

Once they are reassured of their own worth, people will accept your comments far more easily, and they’ll get less defensive. Indeed, this step may be the most important one to mitigate a defensive reaction. Defensiveness, after all, is often just the outward face of fear and insecurity.

Let’s say a colleague has been falling behind on his commitments. Instead of pointing to this fact directly, first acknowledge his many positive contributions. This way, he will feel that his entire history is fairly recognized. It also recognizes the behavior as momentary, a lapse in otherwise good behavior.

Once you’ve started on a positive note, you can bring up the actual issue you want to address. Tell people exactly what you want to see from them, as opposed to what you don’t want to see. Teachers are taught “Don’t have
don’t
rules,” warning them that if they tell their class, for instance, to “not put the beans in their ears,” they might find half the students promptly doing so.

When you tell the person you are criticizing the corrective action you’d like to see, depersonalize the behavior change just as you had the criticism. Rather than asking, “Could you get the presentation done earlier?” say, “In the future, I’d greatly appreciate it if the presentation could be ready a few days in advance.” That takes who was right or wrong off the table and focuses instead on something you can both agree on without anyone having to win or lose.

Just as when dealing with a difficult person, try to avoid making people feel wrong when you’re delivering criticism. When someone is told they’re wrong, even when they do realize they’re at fault, they will often strive to justify themselves; it can both wound their ego and arouse their resentment, leading them to discredit
you
in an attempt to lessen their own guilt.

Legendary diplomat Benjamin Franklin admitted in his memoirs to learning this lesson the hard way. As a young man, having found one of his adversaries in error, he felt quite right in pointing out the error, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the man had erred. He made his point—and he made an enemy for life. Franklin came to realize that the short-lived pleasure of being right was not worth the long-term negative consequences. From then on, he adopted the practice of “denying [himself] the pleasure of contradicting others.” He would instead begin by observing that “in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared to be some difference.”

You can take a similar path by saying: “You know, I might not be
explaining this the right way. Let me try again.” Choose the high road. Being a charismatic communicator means that others feel good about themselves when they are with you. It means that others look forward to being with you because they like themselves better as a result of being around you.

As always, body language matters here. You can tell someone that you think they’re wrong with a look, intonation, or gesture just as eloquently as you can in words. So use all the tools in your arsenal to stay in an internal state of calm and goodwill. Your body language will follow.

It’s absolutely critical throughout difficult conversations to stay attentive to any signals that the other person might be getting defensive. When you sense defensiveness, whether through their facial expressions, body language, or tone of voice, dial up your warmth to move them back into a more positive frame of mind. You can do this in two ways:

• Verbally:
  Encourage positive mental associations. For example, mention something they’ve done well in the past or something in this situation that you approve of.
  
• Nonverbally:
  Use your body language to influence theirs. Get back into a state of goodwill so that it plays out across your face. The mirror neurons in their brain will replicate the emotions they’re seeing in you, putting them in a more positive state of mind as well.
  

When closing the conversation, if you can, aim to end on a positive note. Remember how important beginnings and endings are—they can color the whole interaction. This is when you can put the emphasis on three important points:

• Next steps:
  Review the steps that will be taken to improve the situation, particularly if you’re going to do any of it together. Give the sense of constructive, forward motion.
  
• Appreciation:
  Tell them how much you appreciate how well they took your feedback. Praise even the slightest good effort
  here; you’re providing positive reinforcement so they’ll improve over time.
  
• A positive future:
  Bring up anything that both of you can look forward to in the future, such as exciting events or upcoming projects—whatever conveys the fact that you’re looking forward to future interactions.
  

Apologies: What to Do
When Things Go Wrong

So you screwed up. You hit
REPLY ALL
by mistake, you didn’t check the numbers, the dog ate your homework. Call it what you will, something bad happened, and, whether they’re right or wrong, someone thinks it’s your fault. Fear not. If you play your cards well, even embarrassing blunders can be turned around.

Having a disagreement or a conflict can actually improve a relationship and be a great thing in the end. When a relationship has gone well from the start, there might be in the back of our mind a slight hesitancy. Everything has gone well so far, but what if that changes? How would they react then? Once you get through a difficult situation and it was well handled, you know that the relationship can withstand difficulty. The apprehension is resolved.

One of my very first clients told me that he actually welcomed making minor mistakes, especially early on in a business relationship. “Most people do such a piss-poor job of apologizing that just by being halfway decent at it, you’ll be head and shoulders above the rest.” Another entrepreneur told me: “I have a pretty good track record of turning screw-ups into up-sells.” So let’s see how you can approach, conduct, and conclude apologies charismatically.

First, as always, get into the right mental state. This means, first and foremost, forgiving yourself. Yes, I’m serious. Though it may sound counterintuitive, having warmth toward yourself—even though you may be at fault—is necessary to prevent making the situation worse through negative body language. It will greatly help avoid any sign of defensiveness in either your voice, your posture, or
any part of your facial expression. So use all the tools we’ve covered to access and stay in a state of self-compassion.

Forgiving yourself and getting into a good mental state also helps you avoid appearing overly apologetic, subservient, or insecure. With the confidence that accompanies a positive internal state you can embody both warmth and contrition, yet still be seen as coming from a place of strength.

Now that you’re in the right mental state, let’s turn to the other person. The graver the offense, the more you should strive for a personal touch. To be satisfied, the person receiving the apology may need to see remorse in your face or, at the very least, hear it in your voice.

Because so much of our communication is nonverbal, when you apologize in person you have the greatest number of tools at your disposal: body language, facial expressions, and vocal tone, in addition to your choice of words. On the phone, you have only your voice and words to work with, and you have even fewer instruments at your disposal in an e-mail.

On the other hand, some people find it easier to handle such difficult situations with the distance that a written medium provides. Written communication has the advantage that you can put hours of thinking into a few lines of communication, and really get them right. Putting something in writing can also be a powerful statement. You are in a sense making it permanent; you are willing to be held to account.

In this case, as with so many of the charisma-enhancing techniques, it will be a question of what is the best fit considering
your
preferences, your best guess of
their
preferences, and what the logistics, timing, and context allow.

Hear Them Out

Whether you’re apologizing in person or on the phone, your first concern is to let the other person have their say. The simplest and most effective way to do so is just to listen: give them the complete presence of focus charisma. Now, I’m not saying that putting this
into practice is easy. For each grievance your counterpart utters, you might have a dozen retorts bubbling up in your mind. But at this point, interrupting is the worst move you could possibly make. No matter how brilliant you are, no matter how right your rejoinder, they will feel belittled rather than accepted and understood.