One of my favorite activities to work on with speakers is developing their persona. Speakers rarely get to that point on their own. It’s hard to have enough distance from how you are coming across to analyze it clearly, to decide what’s optimal and what’s not, and to embrace a particular set of characteristics.
So, our conversation begins by asking the speaker how they would like to be perceived by the audience. An adjective-rich discussion ensues. Funny? Strong? Relatable? Engaging? Knowledgeable? Energetic? Smart? Did I mention funny? How does the speaker want his or her audiences to talk about them when the speech is over?
When you get past the initial adjective exploration, most speakers say they want to evince some mixture of competence, or expertise, on the one hand, and warmth, or trustworthiness, on the other. Various measures of executive presence also suggest that this polarity of credibility and trust, or competence and warmth, adds up to charisma to the extent that this somewhat mysterious quality can be measured. At the simplest level, this polarity means that you seem to know what you’re talking about, and you do so in a relatable, not boring, way.
But charisma still remains a bit elusive — it is that certain something that makes a person magnetic. A charismatic politician or movie star walks into a room and draws all eyes — the…
