How to Improve Your Charisma, with Olivia Fox Cabane

**Dave Stachowiak** (0:00)
Charisma, we all notice leaders who have it, and many of us wish we had more of it. Good news though, like so many leadership skills we talk about on this podcast, you can get better at it. In this episode, how almost anyone can improve their charisma. This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 797
Produced by Innovate Learning.
Maximizing human potential.
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps leaders thrive at key inflection points. I say that phrase at the start of every single episode. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And it's because we often look at people that we think are extraordinary leaders, and we often are extraordinary leaders, and we see all the things that they do so well, and we think, wow, they're just so naturally good at that. And of course, we all have our natural talents. And yet, also, and the good news for all of us is, almost every area of leadership we can get better at, we can build our skills. And guess what? Charisma, no different. Oftentimes we think about charisma as something people either have it or they don't. And today's guest is going to share with us that charisma is something absolutely we can learn and get better at. And I'm so pleased to welcome Olivia Fox Cabane. She is one of the world's leading authorities on the science of charisma and the bestselling author of The Charisma Myth, which has been translated into 27 languages. Previously director of the Innovative Leadership for Stanford StartX, Olivia has lectured on charisma, leadership and innovation at Harvard, Yale, MIT, the Marine War College and the United Nations. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, and has recently released the revised version of The Charisma Myth, How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism. Olivia, such a pleasure to have you.

**Olivia Fox Cabane** (2:09)
Thanks. It's really great to be here.

**Dave Stachowiak** (2:11)
I mentioned this in the introduction that we all know someone who has so much charisma. We see them walk into a room.
Maybe we've worked with them, maybe we've worked for them, maybe it's a friend. And they just light up the place and it seems like everyone hangs on every word. And I think a lot of us look at that kind of person and we think, gosh, I wish that I was more like that because I know how important charisma is. And one of the things that really gives me so much hope in getting into your research is you say charisma is a skill that you can learn and practice. I don't think we normally think about charisma like that, do we?

**Olivia Fox Cabane** (2:51)
Yeah, I think the single biggest myth about charisma is that it is an innate quality. You either have it or you don't.
And to be honest, the research is fairly recent. The key studies came out in 1989 showing that, no, actually charisma is nothing but behavior. And a little later on, the study showed that not only is it nothing but behavior, but in addition, that behavior can be learned.

**Dave Stachowiak** (3:17)
Ah, and you don't need charisma to be successful, and you make that point very clearly in your work. That said, it helps, right?

**Olivia Fox Cabane** (3:28)
I do want to be clear that charisma is a great added boost. It's the X factor that can get things done faster or bigger, but you don't even need it to get people to do what you want them to do. Robert Cialdini's masterpiece on influence can help you become an expert in the field of compliance, as it's known, but that will simply get people to comply.
Charisma is everything else. It's how you get people to be inspired, but the stunning thing is that no one realizes really just how deep the ramifications of charisma go.

**Dave Stachowiak** (4:07)
You say in the research that contrary to popular belief, people are not simply born charismatic. And I think about that, and I think that makes sense on a logical level, and yet it just seems like so many people are.
What's the disconnect between why it seems, and maybe it's just my own experience, but it seems like you run into people like, gosh, it just seems like they've always been like that, or I knew them when they were younger and they were like that. What's the disconnect there?

**Olivia Fox Cabane** (4:39)
So let me be upfront. There are genetic predispositions. It's just the same way that not everyone's going to become Michael Phelps, not everyone's going to become Bill Clinton.