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How to Increase Your Charisma
What is charisma?
Sooner or later almost everyone I coach asks me that question. And it immediately leads to the next inevitable query: How can I increase my own?
Charisma, as it is generally understood, is something you know when you see but you have a hard time putting your finger on or defining. Some celebrities, speakers, politicians, and ordinary people just have it, apparently. They light up a room when they walk in. They steal the scene in a movie or take up everyone’s attention while they’re on stage. Everyone’s interest focuses on them. People cluster around them. The rest of us lean into their conversations in order to catch every word. It’s magic.
I once saw an actor playing Hamlet who completely and shamelessly stole all the audience’s attention just in the way that he came on stage. There was a long and dramatic pause. Then we saw one hand snaking around the edge of the set. Then a second hand. The actor already had us entranced and only his two hands were visible. By the time he finally entered, we were completely enrolled in whatever he was doing.
What’s going on? Most people think that charisma is something magical that people like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have and the rest of us don’t. But it’s actually much simpler than that — and something you can control.
