How some people always get what they want

We all know them!

Men and women who drags all attention when they enter a room. Fascinating persons who seems to able to sell anything to anyone anytime.

And often without a lot of words. How do they do it?

They are charismatic or have charisma, we say. And because these people are typically also the best leaders who really nail the motivational talks, the sales pitches and meetings with the press.

The good news are that we ALL have charisma. But in order to use it to sell more, appear more inspirational in a professional context, we need to identify the charismatic elements of our personality and work with it both in terms of content and strategic performance.

Here’s my 3-step guide:

1. Passion drives your Charisma

– Find your Professional & Personal Persuasive Passions

Passion persuades everybody. Passion is what makes us stand out from the crowd. When we talk about something that we are passionate about, we make our nonverbal communication work for us: Intensity and variation in voice, excited gestures and lively eyes are transferred immediately to the person or audience we’re talking to. And these emotions and expressions are transferred directly to our audience – without them noticing anything other than they’re engaging in a very exciting communication situation. The reason for this are mirror neurons – a chemical reaction in our brains.

The key to get passion into your communication is to tie what you are passionate about together with your professional message. Match your passion with your professional message. That means you have to be ready to give a bit of yourself. It’s very important for me to underline that it shouldn’t be private information, we don’t want to hear about that. But the personal stuff that makes you interesting: Your love for mountain bikes, hunting, golf etc. 

They way I do it is this: I point out what keywords the professional message and the personal interests have in common. For example, I see clear connections between Leadership and Golf: Endurance, analytical skills, strategic thinking and will power.

What does your passion have in common with your role as an executive?

2. Charisma outperform products, pricing etc.

– Work on your credibility, as clients buy you (and not your product)

The next step is to realize that people buy you, they don’t buy your product. Of course in a professional context we do care about quality of products and services and evaluate them. But first we make up our mind about you. So in order to appear charismatic it’s really important to spend some time establishing your Credibility and present your passion. This is not a new phenomenon. In Ancient Greece Aristotle dealt with a speaker’s character (ethos) as a very important means to persuasion. The reason? Instantly and instinctively we do not separate content from the person delivering it.

What do you do and say about yourself to establish your Credibility?

3. It is Charismas-time all year round

– Boost your Strategic Performance and practice, practice, practice

The last part of cracking the Charisma Code is your performance. On stage, in meeting rooms, at receptions and so on. A major mistake that I face on behalf of my clients every day is the misconception that the content will do the job. That we are home safe if our content is well-planned, strategic and contains a bit of passion. But it doesn’t.

Performance are at least as important as the actual content. Often more because the content is either too long, too complex and too boring. And when we doubt the content, we trust the nonverbal communication – tone of voice, gestures and the look in our eyes. Therefore we must master it to appear charismatic. Primarily, verbal messages serve a cognitive or content function. The nonverbal messages serve primarily an emotional and relation function. Both types of communication are necessary for receivers to get and understand the entire message and its meaning. 

If you think of yourself – and want to appear – as an open minded and encouraging leader – you must make sure that your performance shows the same. This is where Strategic Performance becomes something to think about and train with a professional. In this case I would recommend rehearsing the presentation focusing on eye contact, opening gestures tone and power of voice and influencing of the audiences’ feelings. 

The true beauty of working with Strategic Performance is that it’s very easy to reduce the amount of words we need to say. Instead of a lot of words, we pay attention to communicate our message through two channels instead of one – and that is truly engaging and charismatic.

Everyone has got it – so what will YOU do now to crack the Charisma Code?

A living and active network is worth gold.. but how often and how much do you need to communicate to maintain our relationships?

Time is a challenge for most people, or rather the lack of time.

I’ve got three tricks to strengthen your network communication and be more economic with how you spend you time:  

Draw a line – choose your frequency for answering 
Let me be clear: It is perfectly okay not to answer within 60 minutes after you’ve got a request. With regards to your image amongst your network it might be comprehensive to create a personal guideline that helps you being consistent in how quick you reply. 

It’s my personal experience that a 24 hour reply-deadline works really well. It gives me time to focus both on network on a daily basis and also solve other tasks. 

It’s worth noting that there’s a message in the timeframe itself. The importance or urgency drop down as time is ticking. 

Answer everybody. Always. 
One of the secrets about being succesful in your network is to work strategically in all directions at the same time. 

You never know where your new business is hidden or where new options arise – no matter if you’re looking for a new employee, a new client or a new member to your board. Every single person you meet can be important for you. 

Minor details matter
The minor details matter. Of course this is about finding your own style, but remembering and mentioning birthdays, sports and holidays actually matter. Because it shows that you listen for real and think about your network as human beings – not just a job function. 

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(Well, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere)

Many professionals pay serious attention to big speaking events (with good reason), but often forget that what build them as strong persuasive communicators is a consistent and insisting focus on rhetorical excellence in the (less glamorous) meetings and presentations.

That being said, one complain I often hear from leaders is that they lack preparation time and tools. So what to do then?

In Denmark (and likewise in many other countries too), managers in the private sector on average spend 11.4 hours per week on meetings. Managers in the public sector, however, spend a whopping 14.1 hours per week. And only 1 in 4 of these manages think that the results of these meetings match the resources spent on them.

Easy and effective 7 steps to any meeting introduction

Read here and get a super simple and effective 7 Step Model you can use for all meetings:

 1.   Welcome / Greeting of the participants

2.   Purpose and goal, including reason(s) for the meeting

3.   Presentation of participants and their roles in the meeting

4.   Structure, plan, and duration

5.   Rules of the meeting (interruptions, debates, etc.)

6.   Emphasising the type of meeting (discussion, information, brain storm, decision making etc.)

7.   Expected next step(s) after the meeting

 The structure seems easy, right? The content can be a little more difficult. While the structure can be used for any type of meeting, the content needs to be tailored to the specific meeting, your subject, participants, and even to your business style.

At ordinary meetings you might not get as much applause as you do at the big speaking events – but your meeting delegates will reward you with Credibility and the Black Belt in Meeting Introductions.

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Talking too much about the product or service and focus too little on what actually persuades the person in front of you is a big (and common) mistake that many professionals make in sales.

Time runs fast in general, but especially in sales meetings, I hear professionals complain about time running fast. Conducting a sales meeting is an art in itself and I have three rhetorical tricks that will help you through the meeting ensuring that you stay focused on persuade the other person and not ‘just’ talking about the product or service:

Kill the abstract language

Words like “innovation/innovative”, “strategic” and “growth” are all words that can be relevant in many contexts. Only problem is that these words don’t transform into concrete ideas and mental pictures in the mind of the receiver.

When you use abstract words like these ones, make sure that the word is followed by a sentence like this “…which for you would mean that…” or “for you and your business a concrete example of this will be…”.

When you do this, your communication and you become much more relateable and you are one step closer to persuade effectively.

Think and TALK about your product from the perspective of your receiver

Most people have a good grip on their Unique Selling Points and why their service or product will benefit the potential client. But what most people miss out on is the opportunity to carefully prepare sentences that are designed to persuade in a subtle way.

When you have your UPS and other key messages in front of you, consider wrapping them into a few of these persuasive sentences:

• “You mentioned previously that (…) this made me think of [USP] that I see as closely related to your point (…)”
  
• “Going through your requirements and trying to image being in your shoes right now, I would have XX on my mind. If I should try to link the benefits of what we can do for you, I’m thinking of [USP, USP, USP]”
  
• “When you say X, X and X, I’m thinking [USP, USP, USP]. Let me go more into depth (…)

These sentences are created as mind triggers and will immediately create a connection between you and the potential client – and of course the product or solution you are persuading the person to engage in.

Emotional appeals are rare in business communication, but they are much needed. Get two concrete tricks to make your message stick.

Emotional appeals leave the brain a lot faster than logical ones (statistics, data, numbers), so here’s ttwo tips to work with your emotional appeals.

Emotional appeals are about either the speaker or the topic

You are using emotional appeals when your communication is either 1) touching your listeners feelings about you or 2) touching your listeners feelings about the subject.

Here are a couple of ideas for your next presentation or meeting:

“Personally, what I find motivating and thrilling about entering a LEAN-process with our team is…” (Emotional appeals connected to you, your credibility and authority).

“Working with LEAN-tools is not a sleeping pillow or something that make our brains unnecessary, but something we can lean on in questions of process management…” (Emotional appeals connected to the listeners feelings about the subject)

Pauses are key to make messages stick

A great way to work with emotional appeals in business communication is actually saying nothing at all. Yes, pauses. are. incredibly. effective.

As pausing is a crucial part of music and acting, pausing is – or should be – a crucial part of business communication.

Pauses create tension.

Pauses create excitement.

Pauses increase attention to what you are saying – both the words before and after the pause.

Besides that, pausing helps control breathing and pace – which are also important factors when it comes to conveying a message.