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?