The Science Of Charismatic Communicators
I am fortunate that I get to work with and coach a lot of amazing entrepreneurs, executives and corporate professionals. One thing that comes up time and time again is how to be more engaging, how to hold a room, how to have ‘executive presence’.
While there are number of components that need to go into the melting pot to achieve this, one of the critical factors is charisma; a mystical power often associated with Hollywood celebrities, pop stars and cigarette smoking cowboys.
The good news is charisma isn’t reserved for the select few that fell from the tree of charm and beauty, charisma is available to every single one of us, like Harry Potter had to go to Hogwarts to unleash his inner wizard, there are a few things you need to know and start doing to activate your inner awesome.
My goal in this article is highlight one of the tools you can focus on that will instantly boost your executive presence and guess what….. It will work immediately.
If you haven’t already read Olivia Fox’s book ‘The Charisma Myth’, I highly recommend grabbing yourself a copy if you are serious about increasing your executive presence. In her book Olivia outlines the three major factors that make someone charismatic.
Power - Your ability to effect the world around you
Presence - How in the moment you are with the people/person you are with
Warmth - How you will use your power to help others
The style of charisma you radiate will depend on your strength in each of these. For example someone like Mother Teresa would be very high in warmth, whereas a leader like Barrack Obama is going to be loading this charisma formula up with power, that being said all three are needed for charisma to exist and you must be able to adjust your levels of each to suit the communication goal.
The Study
Vanessa Van Edwards at the Science Of People, conducted research around Ted Talks to find out if there was a ’secret’ that was being used by Ted Talkers that went viral (or at least had substantial viewing numbers).
After careful, and I imagine painstaking viewing of hundreds of TED Talks, what Vanessa found was those speakers who had high viewer numbers used more gestures when they spoke.
The least viewed speakers used an average of 272 hand gestures, while the high viewed talks used on 465 hand gestures.
You can check out her full article here
Now hold on…. Before you start whipping out the jazz hands with every person you meet, I need to share a little tool that will assist you in using your gestures to maximum effect.
WARNING! - DO NOT IGNORE THIS TOOL BECAUSE OF ITS SIMPLICITY, IN THE RIGHT HANDS (yes pun was intended) THIS IS LIKE HAVING A SUPERPOWER
The C-Spot.
If this were a word found in the dictionary the description would be as follows.
The C-Spot
Noun
1) Where Communication Feels Good
2) An imaginary horizontal line that runs right across your belly button to just past your shoulders.
Verb
1) To communicate from an area that breeds confidence
When you gesture within this area it has a non-verbal impact on your words that is HUGE. Gesturing in the C-Spot adds clarity, confidence and certainty to the words you say. You will be seen as credible, charismatic, centred (at this point I assume you get the c-spot reference).
Think of it like this, the words you say are the ‘Data’, the way you use your non-verbals to deliver the words give your words their meaning, they create an experience for the listener.
The C-Spot is just the beginning of how you can use gestures to be more effective as a communicator, we can use gestures and take people on a journey, add an extra dimension to the way we communicate, this is something I cover in more detail during the public speaking workshops and training sessions that I run.
If you would like to find out how I can help your team communicate with more confidence and impact, drop me a message and let’s organise a time to have a chat.
Thanks for dropping by,
Anthony Laye - Take Action Create Your Story.