It’s the female version! Discover the 3 factors that contribute to your charisma and how to immediately affect your impact on others.
Watch the training video below or read the transcript provided.
Thanks to Olivia Fox Cabane and her book The Charisma Myth for a great book!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
KATIE: Here’s the topic for the month for you women that are interested in improving your female leadership capabilities. Nothing fancy here – just Katie and Carol talking about charisma.
CAROL: Charisma – can you have it? Do you have it?
This month we are going to be talking about a book, it’s Olivia Fox Cabane. She wrote The Charisma Myth.
KATIE: It’s a great book. What a great thing to talk about because it’s so – everybody needs it, everybody can work on it.
CAROL: Well that’s the thing. We all think that somebody else has charisma, not us. But in fact you can learn how to have charisma and that’s the premise or her book. It’s how anyone can master the art and science of personal magnetism.
KATIE: I love it. Not being a gravitater, which is somebody who hangs around others. That’s different, right? You’ve never heard that term probably?
CAROL: No I haven’t. All right, so what is charisma there are three aspects to charisma. Katie do you want to tell them what they are?
KATIE: I will tell you what they are. They are:
Presence, power and warmth.
CAROL: So there are three of them. Presence, how to be more present with people. So interestingly, there are skills that you can practice this. Have you ever been with a person in a room who is looking past you at who else is in the room to see who they might be going to next or –
KATIE: I wonder if my best friend is here yet? I wonder if there are any cute guys in the room? That sort of thing?
CAROL: Yeah and it’s just awful. You really feel like they are not listening to you.
KATIE: You feel like they don’t care about you.
CAROL: Right. That is a person without presence.
And honestly, sometimes that’s me so I need to practice this. I need to practice being present with people and really listening to what they are saying, listening empathetically.
One of the exercises that Olivia Fox Cabane talks about in her book is being more present in your body. So feeling yourself in your body. Feeling your butt in your chair. Feeling your groundedness.
KATIE: While you talk about it I will practice.
CAROL: Feeling yourself grounded and the other thing is if you feel yourself going away from the conversation, thinking about what you are going to say next or who else is in the room, bring yourself back by feeling your toes, wiggling your toes and have that be a reminder of being present with that person.
KATIE: Love it. I was describing this model to my husband. Even as I was talking about it I noticed he became more present.
CAROL: Isn’t that nice?
KATIE: Because once you start thinking how closely tied being present is to be charismatic, you automatically start paying more attention. You are automatically start thinking, “Of course I want to be more present. Why don’t I pay more attention to that?”
CAROL: So a lot of charismatic people – that is the thing that makes them charismatic is they will spend the time with you. After you get done with them, you feel like you are their best friend. So that’s how a lot of politicians do it as well.
KATIE: So let’s go into the second aspect, which is power. Power can be very complex, especially with women. Say something about power.
CAROL: Well one to have exercises that she talks about is making yourself the big gorilla in the room. So having power is partially – you don’t have to be the biggest person. You know Katie is small in stature but she can be the biggest person in the room because –
KATIE: I’m loud.
CAROL: – that’s only part of it. It’s really feeling your power in the room and introducing yourself and feeling good about it.
One to have things – I can’t remember if it was in this book or another book I was reading around the same time, they were talking about if you are about to go into a meeting where you need to show yourself and show your power, go into the bathroom first, get yourself in a situation, anchor your mind in a powerful situation that you’ve been in before, and feel your power. Really get your self-confidence, everything comes into this.
So get yourself in a frame of mind to walk into the room with as much power as you can possess.
KATIE: If you don’t have self-esteem, if you are someone that is challenged by your self-esteem, do you think that’s going to be reflective if how you are present in a room?
CAROL: Absolutely. So, again, anchor yourself in a feeling of being powerful and anchor yourself with some thought in your mind of when you were powerful.
KATIE: One of the skills that we learned two months ago, around sphere and self-confidence is to be not only to anchor but also to fake it to make it.
So if you’re feeling like you might be a little weaselly, I’d say go in there and pretend that you are not.
CAROL: Right.
KATIE: People will start treating you as if you are not and then you will feel a little bit more power.
CAROL: They’ll start treating you as if you are.
KATIE: As if you are not weaselly.
CAROL: Right.
KATIE: Let’s go to warmth which is the third of the three in this model for charisma. Warmth is the sense that you get from folks, I imagine a lot of it has to do with the nonverbal and you are sending. Looking at someone’s eyes, giving a feel for whether they are sending you warm messages or not. Whether they care.
CAROL: A direct quote from the book is, “Warmth simply put is good will toward others. Warmth tells us whether or not people will want to use whatever power they have in our favor.”
So I think of my sister-in-law. She is so full of warmth. She’s always very present with you. She’s always asking you about your personal life. She remembers it from the last time. I have a little problem with that. Where did they come from? But she’s absolutely wonderful at this and you think of other people. You think of Ghandi When you think of warmth. I mean those are the ones who have the huge charisma around this. And then I think of my sister-in-law who just exudes warmth and love and kindness in everything she does.
KATIE: And combined with the presence and the power is so powerful in its own way, in a charismatic way because at the heart of it, a charismatic person which we would all like to be, a charismatic person is someone not only that is liked but also has influence on others and wouldn’t we all like to have that? We want to be able to make a difference in the world.
When we talk about leadership, which is what this all the under the banner of, leadership is having to influence others to do things.
CAROL: Right and if you are charismatic, it can make a difference in your life.
KATIE: Okay let’s leave it at that.
This month scribed members who are our pack of faithful followers, will be getting an assignment each week. As you know, you do the Monday Morning Detox, a small brief podcast, only about 4 or 5 minutes along with a one page work sheet assignment. They pay $8 a month.
CAROL: Nothing less than a latte.
KATIE: They love to be held accountable and they love to be a part of our movement to help women become better leaders globally, not just in your backyard but globally.
CAROL: That’s right. We had a sign up the other day from a women in Nairobi.
KATIE: I love it.
CAROL: Fabulous.
KATIE: What? We are the world. We are the children. And that’s it for this month. We’ll have more next month. Follow us all through the month with blogs and things.
CAROL: And don’t forget our podcast which we will be momentarily. We’ll be podcasting from these studios.
KATIE: We will actually use these things, these props. Have a good one.
CAROL: Thank you.
(Music plays)
[end of transcript]