Can Public Speakers Fake Charisma?
Many of the clients and students who I work with ask me how they can acquire the allusive soft skill of charisma.
I was taken by surprise the first time I was asked and it has given me considerable food for thought.
My initial reaction was, “Either you have it or you don’t”. Hmmm. But in giving it more consideration I believe it is a component of confidence, which can be grown and nurtured throughout a lifetime.
But Carol Kinsey Goman, who is showcased in Lou Hampton’s blog “Speak to Lead” believes it can be faked.
Charisma has been described as personal magnetism or charm. To me, charisma is all about an individual’s infectious positive attitude and personal energy, as projected through his or her body language.
People are the most charismatic when they are genuinely enthused, confident and upbeat about themselves and their topic. And as a leadership coach, I help clients develop their own unique brand of charisma.
I also help them fake it. Carol Kinsey Gorman, PhD
She believes that using method acting techniques and standing powerfully in your body will have your audience perceiving you as charismatic. Also she states an interesting result – you will actually feel more charismatic too.
I believe that using power stance techniques and method acting are stop gap measures and that true charisma and confidence comes from within – from our core of believing in yourself. It is strengthened through nurturing by our family and peers. And through our successes.
Which in turn means taking leaps of faith, enduring failures and celebrating successes, and practicing until we get it right – fear of public speaking be damned!
How about you? Do you think charisma can be faked? Have you tried method acting or using the power stance to fake confidence during a presentation? Did it work and have staying power?
Image Attribution: Jörg Daniel Fluck
Tags: charisma, Confidence, Fear of Public Speaking, presentation
Hi Janice,
As an actor and presentation coach, I’d like to clear up a common misconception in your post.
Acting is not pretending to be something you are not. A great actor like Sir Anthony Hopkins is not a dissembler, not a fake. Instead, acting reveals some part of us which we normally hide. That might be the monstrous Hannibal Lechter inside us, or the confident charismatic.
Method acting and body work are not ways to adopt a facade, they are techniques to find something within yourself. If understood as such, the results are eminently sustainable, and utterly real.
These are tools to help a presenter move forward, not masks to be hidden behind.
Yours, Adam
Hi Adam;
Interesting perspective and you have given me considerable food for thought.
And I am going to counter your insight – I know people, including myself who could never “know” Hannibal Lechter. The horror of his psychological makeup doesn’t exist for some. If you were to leverage off of something (quoted: “the something within yourself”) in your makeup, wouldn’t you still be “faking it?”
I rumbling around in my thoughts Adam and will consider your comments some more.
Thanks for challenging and helping us to push the boundaries and stretch our biases.
Warm regards, Janice
Hi Janice,
I hope none of us ever “know” Lechter, but he is within us all. That is why he is fascinating, dangerous and – interestingly – charismatic.
What an actor learns is to open various curtains in his outward facade which are usually kept closed, while closing others which are usually open. The revealed view is an unfamiliar one, but no more “fake” than the everyday vista; except that it is less practiced.
My point is, the tools you mention do not add anything to a person, they merely help reveal what is hidden. They are not easily mastered and, used wrongly, will indeed seem inauthentic. But if understood, they can be powerful.
All the best, Adam
Point well taken – thanks Adam.