I received a question which I felt deserved a decent post.

Guy Brown asked:

“Why do certain people have the ability to engage and entice people when they talk, regardless of the topic of conversation?”

In my 16 years of training and speaking, I’ve found that there are an extremely large number of people who are constantly fascinated by the charisma of leaders, people who have that “X” factor, and most of these people are under the spotlight very frequently.

photo credit: bisgovuk

When you watch a leader or a charismatic speaker on stage, you are wowed and you are all ears. So why is it that these people have the ability to draw you in?

After analyzing speakers in competitive settings, I’ve realized the following.

#1 – Dynamic and enticing speakers know how to move on stage.

Yes, I’m talking about physical motions and movements. In 2001, I spent a large portion of my time in the Toastmasters movement learning what makes good body language on stage. By 2002, I had developed a model now known as “SomaSemantics” which I premiered at NLP University in 2004 with Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier in my audience.

This model basically identifies the stance, posture and body language that people take on in order to convey certain kinds of meaning, and emotion congruently. If I have the time, I’d share some of this in a video or something later.

#2 – Enticing speakers know how to initiate and sustain a conversation.

I used to have a problem with this and that’s why I started to study it. There’s always an entry point to a conversation, and it begins with getting someone to answer a question about themselves. Call it cheesy, but it’s the idea that to be interesting to others, you have to be interested in others.

#3 – Attractive speakers know how to vary emotional states.

You’ll realize how powerful some speakers are when they can shift you from emotion to emotion, making you feel certain things that you are aligned to. It is the essence of persuasion and you’ll see evidence of this in Presidential Debates (hint hint), church leaders and pastors and motivational speakers. The charisma did not just come out of the blue. It was deliberate, structured and planned. Even if someone were to be a “natural” at it, you can literally model the capabilities and then test it yourself, if you are able to understand the principles of modeling in NLP.

It’s a pretty fascinating area of study, and I’ve dedicated lots of my time to investigating and testing models out by modeling and applying them as practically as I can.

Charisma is a powerful trait that can be developed, and probably the best secret weapon you can have if you want to build a business as a starlet.