The science of learning charisma

Do you just stand and watch?

In a series of lectures on rhetoric, prof. Michael Drout makes a statement that we need to learn how to speak, because this is how society finds truth. Thanks to speaking, Martin Luther King started a change that brought more justice to the USA. Thanks to speaking, Winston Churchill was able to uplift the spirit in the UK and mobilize the young to fight on the beaches and on the fields. Fight in cities to eradicate Nazism from Europe. Words have power and should be used by everyone, who has good intentions.

This includes you, doesn't it?

Nevertheless, I think prof. Drout was too gentle to us. I think we need to learn rhetoric, because it is our public duty to react when something wrong is happening. One of the most evil thing these days that is happening in front of our very eyes is using words to manipulate, deceit, misguide and make divisions.

And we stand there and watch... It's just like if we've seen robbers getting into our neighbor's house and decided not to call the police.

We should learn to speak better

But how should we do so? I had a pleasure to talk about this with a person who dedicated over a dozen years to researching it and received worldwide recognition for his work - prof. John Antonakis .

Prof. Antonakis shows with his work, that charisma can be taught and the formula to learn it is pretty simple, while the power it offers is remarkable. In example, during one of his field experiments, he found that charismatic motivational speech can be an incentive as powerful as monetary rewards in a work even as dull as addressing envelopes.

To learn charisma, you first need to 2) understand its components, 2) then be able to recognise them in use and finally - 3) start practicing implementation of it in your work. There are 3 components that altogether make your argument more charismatic that you can learn and practice.

3 components of charisma

1. Values. We all want to do what is right. It is therefore necessary to bind what you say with your values. Prof. Antonakis suggests to use integrity, passion, ambitious goals and confidence to set a moral foundation to your opinion.
2. Symbolism. Since the beginning of language, we used symbolism to explain things that were not understandable to us. 'The god of sun is fighting, so we need to pray to support him, so he rises the next morning' etc. In here you have multiple tactics to choose from: similes, metaphors, analogies, anecdotes, contrasts, and other rhetoric devices. Playing with them offers a lot of fun.
3. Non-verbal ques. The last component of charisma is what the majority of public speaking focuses on, but it appears to be least effective. Nevertheless, once the body of your opinion is constructed, you can practice presenting it, focusing on expressions of voice, body, and face. In this order, as the voice modulation is the most crucial of the three.

Your turn

With this insight, I challenge you to put some charisma into practice, in your next debate, either here on LinkedIn, or during the next meeting at work.

If you want to follow guidance into the steps of learning charisma, I also challenge you to identify the specific elements I incorporated in this text. Tried to put as many as possible :)) Please share your ideas in comments!

If you would like to learn more

This insight is a small part of Science of Business Podcast interview I was conducting with prof. John Antonakis. You can listen to it here: