>>presenter: Charisma is like magic.
Charisma is kind of the last actual form of
magic that we have in the world and people
traditionally react to the fact that there's
still magic in the world in one of two ways;
some people pretend that there is no magic,
there is no charisma, it doesn't actually
have affect.
A lot of the tech world would like to believe
that technology moves the mountains, but really
the charisma, that magic moves bigger mountains
than technology ever has and maybe ever will.
There are other people who love charisma because
it's magic and they kind of want it to stay
magic.
But what I'm excited about today, is that
Olivia who's come here to speak to us has
been laying that patient out on the table
and really kind for the first time dissecting
it to look at what makes it magic.
In some ways it's kind of sad, but also really
brave and tremendously exciting to take one
of these things, which we don't understand,
and to make it apparent and understandable
to us.
And I think this is an incredibly exciting
frontier; Olivia's at the front of it.
Her book is in its second printing maybe headed
for its third and hasn't even come out yet.
It's already been a huge success in the schools
where she's been teaching it.
We're very lucky to have her here.
Please help me welcome my good friend Olivia.
[Applause]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Thank you.
The question I am always asked when I start
speaking is of course because of the book
title what is the charisma myth.
And the first and easy one to bust is that
charisma is not innate.
It can be learned and here's how.
So the fact that charisma is not innate was
the first one that kind of took us by surprise
but I can tell you that in controlled laboratory
experiments researchers were able to lower
or raise people's level of charisma like turning
a dial.
Just by instructing them to display certain
specific charismatic behaviors.
This is what the research has found.
Charisma is nothing but a set of specific
behaviors.
So of course, the next question is, “What
are these behaviors?”
Turns out that there are three main components
to charisma.
The first is presence.
This is the foundation upon which all else
rests.
If you speak to people who've met Bill Clinton
this is one of the first things that they
talk about.
Clinton has an extraordinary presence right.
What presence means is simply that.
The ability to fully focus on the person that
you're speaking to, the ability to make them
feel that they are the only person in the
room.
And of course Clinton is known to do that
to an extraordinary degree.
And I met hardened Republicans who told me
Bill Clinton I hated him before I met him,
I hated him after I met him, when I met him,
man, I love the man.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Without presence everything
falls apart.
Have you ever been in a conversation where
only half your mind was present and the other
half was busy doing something else?
Raise your hands if that's ever happened to
you.
[Hands raising]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Awesome.
When that happens you may think that you are
getting away with it.
We think we can fake presence.
We think we can fake listening.
We think that as long as we seem attentive
and kind of pay attention to what's going
on, we've done enough.
But we're wrong.
In that conversation when only half your mind
was present and the other half was busy doing
something else, there is a good chance that
your facial expressions were split second
delayed and your eyes got a slight glazed
over look, tiny, and yet people will catch
that because people will read your face in
as fast as seventeen to thirty-two milliseconds.
At a gut level when there's that slight delay
it gives a feeling that there's something
not quite right, something doesn't quite fit.
At worst they get the feeling that you are
inauthentic.
Nothing kills charisma faster than appearing
inauthentic.
The used car salesmen approach does not work
well, not recommended.
So presence of course the question you're
going to ask me is how do you get it?
How do you ensure that you are present in
the conversation?
My favorite trick is also one of the most
simple you could find; focus on your toes.
And the reason I mean that is that your toes
are about as far from your brain as possible.
It makes your brain so sweep through your
entire body at high speed to feel all the
physical sensations up and down.
It gets you physically present in the moment.
You can do that right.
Despite focusing on your toes, you will have
upped your level of charisma right away.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Didn't know your toes
were going to be crucial to charisma.
By the way something I should mention is that
there is no Q and A period at the end of this
talk.
The time to ask questions is now.
Stop me at any time, raise your hands, and
shout out, I'll be fine with that.
So your toes, right, that's number one.
Technique number two is to focus on the pupils
of the person that you are speaking to and
you'll be surprised to see how in their irises
and pupils there are an extraordinary array
of colors that can deep you quite captivated
and better yet they will give you that deep
soul searching eye contact.
This is absolutely fantastic; a true Clintonesque
approach.
Consequences of course, but we will not go
into that that today.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Yes.
>>male#1: When people do this to me I find
it really creepy.
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: When they do this thing
to you, you find it really creepy, the deep
soul searching eye contact?
>>Student: Yes.
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Yeah, don't overdo.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: So when two human beings
stare deeply into one another's eyes there's
an adrenaline like substance called PEA or
phenyl ethylamine that goes gushing through
your bloodstream and theirs.
It is the same hormone that produces the phenomenon
we call love at first sight.
So it's a very useful hormone.
Throughout this talk what I'm actually going
to be teaching you to do is how to play chemist
with your own brain to get a more charismatic
brain.
However, in studies where rows of two strangers
were asked to stare intently in one another's
eyes, within just a few minutes, participants
reported increased affection and some even
passionate feelings for one another.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: So clearly you don't
want to overdo it.
They can be very effective.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: This is only to keep
yourself present and if you think that this
is not going to feel comfortable switch to
the third one.
Here's the third; you know how in independent
movies and indie movies the main character
even if he is completely uninteresting I'm
thinking a clerk, small rats, any Kevin Smith
movie, yet they become fascinating to you.
Just because they are the hero of the movie.
Yes?
Do that with the person you're speaking to
pretend that they're the heroes of an indie
movie.
All right, so that's presence.
So the next is power and there's a misconception
about power, which is that someone who's powerful
that power is like the power to command an
army.
That's actually incorrect.
The way we perceive power in someone is through
signs of status, such as of course expensive
clothing, titles, corner office, or how other
people around that person react to them.
But most of all, it's in body language.
If someone appears confident we will assume
that they have something to be confident about.
The key thing to remember is that in general
people will accept whatever you project.
So one of the main things to talk about here
because very few people ever do is what kills
confidence?
What kills that projection of power?
>>male#2: Self-doubt?
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Yeah, self doubt.
Specifically self criticism.
And in one of the manifestations of self doubt
known as the imposter syndrome competent people
feel that they don't really know what they're
doing and it's only a matter of time before
they're found out and exposed as a fraud.
The interesting thing about the imposter syndrome
is that the higher up the intelligence ladder
you go the worse it hits.
I know that every time I speak at MIT at Harvard,
at Yale, at Stanford you could hear a pin
drop, the room goes silent.
Every year the incoming class of Stanford
GSB is asked, how many of you in here feel
that you are the one mistake the admissions
committee made?
Every year two thirds of the students immediately
raise their hands.
So the original researchers estimated that
it hits about seventy to eighty percent of
the population.
It can have pretty unfortunate effects are
our creativity because the imposter syndrome
tends to launch the threat response of sympathetic
nervous system which I'm sure you've heard
about; that's the fight or flight response
which launches adrenaline and cortisol through
our veins and when you're in a threat response
there's a fantastic podcast on iTunes on Stanford
U called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, which
I highly recommend.
When you're in fight or flight mode your body
wants you surviving the next ten seconds;
it doesn't care about the next 10 years.
So, it's going to put all its resources towards
the important stuff, like muscle reaction,
like breathing rate, like heart rate, and
it's going to shut down all the superfluous
functions, such as cognitive reasoning; really
not important at that moment, free association
and all the stuff that's kind of important
for innovation.
So in the work I've been doing on the mental
side of innovations, the psychology of innovation,
we found that things such as the imposter
syndrome, self doubt, and self criticism and
of course the inability to handle uncertainty
kills you innovation potential it's pretty
dramatic.
So of course the next question is: “how
would you handle the imposter syndrome?
How do you handle self doubt?”
There are three steps.
We're going to cover one right now and hopefully
we'll have the time to cover the next two
under the warmth heading.
The first one you've actually just done right
now, destigmatization, lifting the stigma
off the experience.
Because one of the hardest burdens for the
human being to bear; one of the emotions that
kills us faster than anything else is shame.
There's a fantastic TED talk by Brené Brown
on shame and vulnerability that I would highly
recommend.
All you need to know is that just by knowing
that the impostor syndrome has a name that
it's normal you can see it as simply a legacy
of your genetic heritage.
Just like our appendix.
Sometimes the appendix gets inflamed and we
get appendicitis.
Sometimes the imposter syndrome acts up and
we get an attack of the imposter syndrome.
Same thing, no big deal.
That's step one.
Step two and three, which is detach and rewrite;
we will hopefully have the time to see that
in the warmth section.
But for now what I'd like to do is give you
a sense of how broadcasting confidence and
power through your body language works.
This is called learning to display alpha gorilla
body language.
[Light laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: So if you think of a
gorilla, right; imagine a gorilla owns half
the jungle.
Rival comes in and breeches his territory.
Gorilla is annoyed.
What would the gorilla do?
Beats his chest, right, inflates, makes big
noises why is he doing that?
>>male#3: To create fear
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: To create fear how?
>>male#3: By looking bigger.
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: I think I heard.
By looking bigger.
And what Sanford research has found, is that
guess what, humans do the same thing.
High status confident people tend to use furniture,
quote unquote, wrong.
They will sit on the table, they'll drape
their arms on two chairs, they'll put their
feet on the table, and they'll put their feet
on three chairs.
What they're doing is that they're claiming
more space as theirs.
They're being alpha gorillas.
So what you need to learn is, think of the
opposite, right, which is the nervous kid
who's kind of hunched over huddling over is
not alpha gorilla body language.
So if you wouldn't mind, put down laptops,
books, whatever, stand up.
[Audience stands]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: They didn't tell you
it was a physical exercise to wear comfortable
clothing and good shoes?
All right.
Stretch your arms toward the ceiling and try
to touch the ceiling with your fingertips.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Now put your fingertips towards the side of
the wall.
Sides of the wall people, it should not be
this difficult.
I see that math is not math is not your forte
clearly.
All right, you can just let your arms drop.
Your shoulders back and now I want you to
inflate, puff up, take about as much air as
you can.
You can exhale.
Put your arms behind your back and now what
I want you to do is imagine that you are a
five star general reviewing his troops.
So have that look like, right, you get your
feet a little bit wider, you're going to tilt
your nose up a little bit because; imagine
a troop of GI Joes passing in front of you
and your kind of reviewing them as they pass
by.
All right, do you feel a physical change through
your body?
[Audience member answers]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Yes.
Excellent.
What is happening is that when people take
expansive poses, which are what this is called
you, get a flood of assertiveness promoting
hormones through your veins.
You are learning to play chemist with your
own brain.
Thank you very much ladies and gentleman,
you can sit down.
[Audience sits down]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: So this is a virtual
cycle because the more you take on an expansive
pose, the more you'll get those chemicals
flowing through your body which of course
is going to affect your body language which
gives yet another boost, et cetera.
All you have to do is get the cycle going.
So what I'm often asked is it's great if I
can look powerful and confident; that's fantastic,
but how do I avoid appearing arrogant?
If you think back towards the pose you were
taking; when people are considered to be arrogant
or snobbish, it's often said that they were
looking down their nose at someone.
Yeah?
What this means is that their head was tilted
too far up so in order to appear non arrogant,
you just bring your chin down.
This has the added benefit of opening up your
eyes wider which is going to make you appear
more thoughtful and more intelligent.
Just kind of nice combination.
The other thing is to pause for two seconds
before you speak.
This will again give the impression that you
are giving such consideration to their statement
because it is so important that you can't
just answer back that that, you've got to
absorb it.
And one of my good friends who is here in
the audience today said that when he was here
at Google meeting Clinton for the first time
and he was so excited to meet the former president
comes up to him; he's so nervous that he doesn't
know what to say and he finds himself saying:
Mr. President, thank you for your service
to this country”.
And the minute he said that he was like “Oh
god”.
But Clinton takes him saying “Thank you
so much”.
It was like the most amazing thing [laughter]
someone had ever told him.
And my friend says that he nailed it.
I have never seen anyone take a compliment
that way.
So pausing for two seconds before you speak.
You can actually try to alpha gorilla exercise
as you're walking down the street and what's
fascinating is that realize that when we're
moving through an environment, subconsciously
our brain is constantly scanning our surroundings
for anything that we need to deviate around.
Whether it be inanimate or whether it be animate,
i.e., human, and we are constantly reading
one another's body language to decide how
to react and in this situation whether to
move aside or not.
If they seem like a bigger alpha gorilla than
we are, we're going to move aside.
But if we are broadcasting the stronger alpha
gorilla body language they're going to move
aside.
So one of the assignments that I give to my
clients; which I actually first heard from
a young Stanford boxing student, their coach
had given them this assignment of go to a
crowded environment be the alpha gorilla.
And your job is to make people move aside
for you.
I don't care if it means a collision.
You'll learn to apologize later.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: For the moment be the
alpha gorilla.
And some of my clients who've tried this told
me it's amazing.
It was like Moses parting the sea [laughter].
They could see people as they were walking
around with that alpha gorilla body language
they could see people parting way for them.
So try that and of course a non dangerous
situation.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: All right.
So that's power.
We've seen presence, we're seen power, remind
me what the third one is.
[Audience member answers]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Warmth.
Excellent.
They're paying attention.
Fantastic.
Warmth is not comfortable for many of us.
For many of us warmth is that category of
messy uncomfortable feeling range.
We'd much rather stay in the nice well organized
space of our heads.
Unfortunately warmth is absolutely critical
to charisma.
All three components, presence, power, and
warmth are critical to charisma.
You cannot delete any one of them entirely.
The only thing that will change is depending
which element of charisma is strongest, which
element whether it be presence or power, or
warmth, you'll get different kinds of charisma.
High warmth or high your warmth is for example
kindness charisma what the Dalai Lama has.
Higher power is your authority charisma, which
is our classic you know dictator charisma.
They all have different benefits.
Authority charisma is super useful when you're
a crisis situation and need people to obey
and react fast.
Terrible for brainstorming.
It kills critical thinking and feedback.
Warmth charisma is wonderful when you've got
someone who's coming to you with a big problem
it kind of wraps them around in a pink fluffy
blanket cocoon.
Not so useful when you trying to get people
to move and get out of the fire fast.
So the important thing about warmth to know
is that you cannot fake warmth.
The reason for that is that warmth is evaluated
entirely and completely through body language
and the thing is there is far too much body
language for us to control consciously.
Were you aware of your eyelids fluttering
in front of your eyes until I mentioned at
right now.
How about the weight of your tongue in your
mouth?
What about the position of your toes?
Had you forgotten your eyelids again?
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: It is impossible for
us to control our body language entirely.
Even when we control the main expression on
our face, sooner or later, what's called a
micro expression will flash and the problem
is that even if it's as fast as seventeen
to thirty two milliseconds, as you know, people
will catch that, and on a gut level if the
main expression of the micro are incompatible,
incongruent is a technical term, they'll get
the gut feeling that there's something that's
not quite right; something doesn't quite fit
and you'll come across as inauthentic.
This is why great actors were exhausted after
great performances because they had been working
so hard to get their entire body language
in congruence and even with years of training
it was impossible to get it perfectly in congruence
because, think of it every minute you had
tens of thousands of units of body language
pouring out of you.
So did Hollywood do?
What form of acting did they come up with?
>>male#4: Method acting
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Method acting.
What's method acting?
>>male#4: Having the emotion.
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: You have the emotion.
What that means is that you don't try to control
the body language you actually try to control
the source, which is your subconscious mind.
In Hollywood this is called method acting.
In sports it's called sports psychology or
visualization and eighty six percent of American
Olympic athletes use this tool.
Golfer Jack Nicklaus used to say he would
never hit a shot, even in practice, without
visualizing it first.
So you're going to try it for yourselves.
Could you please find someone in the room
that you do not like.
[laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: I am kidding.
Turn towards your neighbor.
Find your neighbor and turn towards him or
her.
Just look at each other, that's all you need
to do.
[Audience chatter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: All right people.
Just look at each other, not me.
Look at each other's eyes.
Look at each other's eyes.
Close your eyes.
Close your eyes.
I want you to think about a problem at work.
Something annoying, irritating, embarrassing.
Something uncertain.
Something the outcome of which is a real problem.
Get into that problem.
Open your eyes.
All right.
I think you got the message.
Close your eyes again.
Close your eyes again.
Now I'd like to think of one person in your
life that you have great affection for.
Whether this be a human being or a pet or
even a stuffed animal.
Find one being that you could have great affection
for and just think of feel your affection
for them and their affection for you.
Open your eyes.
[Laughter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Did you see a difference
in their face?
Where you see the biggest difference?
[Audience chatter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Where do you see the
biggest difference?
[Audience chatter]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: The eyes.
All right.
What are the eyes?
How many of you are thinking the windows to
the soul?
Yeah.
You are absolutely right.
The area around the eyes is the most mobile
of the entire human face and therefore also
the most expressive, which is why poker players
wear sunglasses.
Shipping magnate Onassis to also wear sunglasses
when he was negotiating shipping contracts
so that opponents could not see what he was
thinking.
So your eyes is one of the biggest tellers
of warmth.
The other one is yours voice.
Voice is critical.
One of my favorite stats to quote is that
the MIT media lab was able to predict with
eighty-seven percent accuracy the outcome
of sales calls, negotiations, and business
plan pitches without listening to a single
word of content.
Only by analyzing the voice fluctuation and
the facial expressions of the person pitching.
So with voice what you'll want to get is a
highly fluctuating voice.
Think of someone speaking to a baby; you know
how your voice goes all sing song when you
do that?
That's what you want to do.
Not that exaggerated but that's the direction.
What you'll want to work against is anyone
with a nasal voice; you are at a disadvantage.
Nasal voices just tend to sound colder.
They're less easily pleasant to listen to.
So if that's the case…
>>male#5: Could we have an example?
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: This would be a nasal
voice.
I'm of course exaggerating, but taking it
from the example, my voice tends to fluctuate
off the charts; I'm a professional speaker,
this is what I do.
You don't need to have a voice that is that
fluctuating, but think of playing with speed,
pitch, tempo, intonation.
The worst -the opposite would be a flat monotone
voice that is also cold and nasal.
>>male#6: Can it be controlled?
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Yes.
Oh completely.
You can learn to tweak your voice at will.
The same thing for voice, though you cannot
control, again, you can't control directly
your facial expressions and body language
because if I were to tell you exactly the
kind of body language you want for charisma
you'd have to be controlling ten thousand,
at least, ten thousand different pieces of
body language at the same time.
Much faster to go straight to the source.
Get the specific image you want and that will
affect the entire body language.
So again to recap tell you what you've learned
today.
What is charisma?
[Audience member answering]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Presence, power, and
warmth.
Thank you.
What else?
[Audience member answering]
>>Olivia Fox Cabane: Body language is important.
All right, I think we've got that one straight.
Body language is absolutely critical.
Charisma is a whole lot of body language.
There is of course a whole lot more to it,
which you will find in the book.
I have not quite enough time for that today,
but here are two good ways to reach me for
all the questions that I haven't answered
yet.
My email is olivia@askolivia.com and the website
is of course askolivia.com.
On the website you'll find many freebies,
including a breakdown of how Steve Jobs methodically
learned charisma step by step.
Because I have news for you Steve Jobs is
one of those who learned charisma.
He was not born with it.
With that said ladies and gentleman, it was
absolutely a pleasure speaking with you today.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]
