Right hello, hello.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good day.
We are starting off with a brand new theme for may.
We are going to be looking at charisma and magnetic presence, so that's our focus for the month of may.
I'm really excited about it because we in our live calls, the topic of charisma is something that comes up and we have lots of different ways of talking about it.
We have frameworks and strategies, and that's our focus for this month.
So i'm super excited, and i hope you are too.
So let's go ahead.
I'm going to share my screen and then at the end, we can address any questions that you might have in terms of what we covered and what maybe it makes you think of.
You have other questions that you know, maybe that were not in here, but that come to mind.
Right, i'm also going to give you a worksheet and we'll go through it, and then i would love for you to be able to fill it out and then post it in the community.
You can also bring it to one of our live ama coaching calls and we can talk about it there as well.
If you want to do both, that's also fine, both posted in the community as well.
As know, just come and talk about it as well in the live ama okay, so that's our theme and let's jump right in.
I'm going to share my screen.
Okay beautiful, can everyone see this?
Yes, All right.
Feel free to type in the interactive chat.
Excellent.
Thank you, Sonja.
All right.
So I want to welcome you all today again.
So, like I said today, we are talking about how to be more charismatic without becoming someone else.
Sometimes this idea of being charismatic might make you feel like, oh well, if you're not charismatic right now, that means you need to assume another identity.
And that's not that at all.
So I really want to emphasize this second part here is without becoming somebody else, somebody that you're not, because when we hear the word charisma right, you might often imagine somebody who is loud, who's dazzling, who's extroverted, who's maybe hilarious, commanding attention effortlessly and just super seamlessly charming all the time right.
Basically somebody who walks into a room and everybody stops mid-sentence as if they've just entered a movie scene or the red carpet.
For most normal humans, that sounds exhausting right, it sounds almost daunting and even terrifying.
So today, we're not talking about putting on a fake personality, okay.
We're not talking about becoming louder or more polished or more theatrical or more on all the time.
It's not about a performance.
We're talking about charisma as a communication skill.
That's the part i want to highlight and underline right and more specifically, we're talking about charisma as the skill of helping people feel more connected, more engaged, more seen and more alive around you.
So what does that mean?
It means that charisma is not just something reserved for extroverts.
It's not reserved for performers.
It's not reserved for people who are naturally kind of the center of attention or that other people gravitate towards.
You can be quiet and charismatic.
You can be thoughtful and charismatic.
You can be introverted and charismatic.
You can be calm and charismatic.
And you can also be deeply, thoroughly, most authentically yourself and charismatic.
So, before we jump into what I'm going to share, I want you to put a number in the chat on a scale of one to five.
How charismatic do you usually feel in social interaction?
So one would be you feel invisible or awkward.
Three is it depends on the situation.
Five is I feel naturally magnetic and comfortable.
So just drop a number in the chat.
And you don't need to explain or anything.
Okay, good.
We have a two.
Anybody else?
Thank you okay, two great good yeah absolutely, absolutely.
So, whatever number you put it's, this is not fixed.
Okay, this is not your identity forever and ever.
This is just your starting point today.
So this is a good baseline okay, and the goal is not to become more impressive.
Right, the goal today is not to become more impressive.
The goal is to become more clearly experienced by other people.
What does that mean?
It means when people interact with you, they can feel your warmth.
They can feel your attention.
They can feel your personality, your point of view and your energy more easily, without having to read between the lines, without having to wonder and be inquisitive about that, they more easily understand you.
Right?
That's what we're building today and this is part of part and parcel of charisma.
Okay, so let's start with the pain point.
Okay, you can be smart and thoughtful and kind and interesting and capable and all the amazing adjectives that you want to add there and still feel invisible in conversations, right?
Maybe some of you are nodding along to this, and that can be extremely frustrating right, because you know that there's more to you than what people are experiencing, but you're not able to get that out right.
Maybe you leave a conversation thinking why didn't i say more?
Why didn't i open my mouth?
Why didn't i use more animations and you know gestures?
Why didn't i gesticulate?
Why did i sound so flat?
Why do other people seem to create connections so easily and build rapport, like they were born knowing how to do that?
Why do i feel like i disappear in group settings?
And then what happens?
That internal spiral begins.
You know that spiral right, and it's that negative loop and it's just going over and over again and it's replaying in our head and it comes up at the most inconvenient times, like when we should be focused on another task or when we're sleeping, and it wakes us up in the middle of the night.
And to all those questions that you had right.
Should I be, should I have done this?
Do I lack personality?
Do I need to become more extroverted?
Am I boring?
Am I awkward?
Am I weird?
Like the answer to those questions are usually no.
Okay.
Usually it's not that you lack personality.
Usually it's the issue of your personalities not being transmitted clearly enough that people there's a there's a disconnect right.
The wires are kind of getting crossed. so that's a really important distinction right a lot of people have a very rich inner world but in conversation only a small percentage of that richness comes out for whatever reason it could be social anxiety it could be nerves it could be you know you woke up on the wrong side of the bed whatever it is or maybe it's this you know this thought of you not being charismatic right and i put that in quotes but inside you know you have the humor the insight the personality the opinions the the warmth the you know um emotion, the resonance, the playfulness, the depth, but outside the image that you're projecting because of those nerves, overthinking the self-monitoring the fear of judgment the fear of evaluation which is the evaluation apprehension what comes out is things like oh yeah interesting that's great yeah totally oh nice haha yeah i don't know maybe right these very kind of like humdrum answers right there's no depth to them and there's nothing wrong with those phrases you know in a silo we all use them but you know if that becomes your entire social presence then people don't really have much to connect with right so Drop an emoji in the chat if you have ever felt like your real personality was not really coming through in a conversation.
You can do like a thumbs up for yeah, absolutely.
Yes, it was awkward.
Yes, I disappear into the wallpaper.
Sometimes it depends on who I'm with.
Okay, just drop something in the chat.
Drop an emoji that reflects this.
And, you know, I just want you to know, it's really common.
It's really common.
It doesn't mean that you're boring.
It doesn't mean that you don't have charisma.
It just means that your signal is being muted.
That's a great one, Rafa.
Yes, Sonia.
Okay, good.
I just want you to feel a bit of solace knowing that you're not the only one that feels this way.
So many people feel this way.
There's also the whole thing of imposter syndrome.
That's part of this too, right?
So we're going to turn up the signal.
We're not trying to change who you are.
We're not trying to become fake.
We're not trying to, you know, become a social circus performer.
We just want you to become more visible, right?
Your real personality to come visible, audible and felt.
And this is true for your workplace self as well as your social self.
So let's think about okay, here's.
Here's a question that i want you to respond to and you can write it down or you can write it in the chat, but i want you to think about this right, one situation, one social situation where you feel the least charismatic.
So it could be meetings, it could be networking, it could be group conversations, it could be dating, it could be with confident people, it could be on camera, or when i'm nervous, or when i'm speaking about, you know subject that i'm not very acquainted with or confident in, or if i'm speaking in, you know um, my second or third language anything, anything.
Hmm, rafa says group work meeting yeah yeah, so work, workplace scenario okay, so this is a question i just i i'm thank you for sharing it keep, keep thinking about that, keep it in mind.
Right, what?
Where do you feel the least charismatic?
Okay, so i want us to reframe the problem here.
A lot of this comes down to mindset and recalibrating our cognition around the concept reframing.
The reality of this is that most people misunderstand charisma.
They think that charisma means being being the most the biggest personality in the room, the loudest, the funniest, the most confident, the most dominant, the most socially effortless, the least awkward.
But the thing is that charisma is not about taking up all the space.
Okay, in fact, some people take up a lot of space and they're not charismatic at all.
Right, they might be loud, but they might not be connecting with people.
They might be impressive on paper or in real life, but they might not be warm.
They might be entertaining, but maybe they're, you know, not emotionally attuned.
So true, charisma is not so much about grabbing attention.
It's more about giving attention, being attention giving.
That's the biggest shift here, right?
So charisma is not like just you know, look at me, look at me, look what i can do.
It's also i see you, I'm here.
This moment matters.
You're not just background noise to me, engaged with what is happening right.
That is why somebody can be quietly charismatic, because it's attention-giving.
So think of somebody in your life or that you know.
Maybe it does.
You don't have to know them necessarily that well, but you can but think of a person who makes you feel calm, seen and important when they talk to you.
Okay, they might not be flashy, they might not be telling jokes every five seconds, but when you're with them you feel like the conversation has weight.
You feel like they're truly there.
They're truly present.
They give you their undivided attention.
They're not thinking about something else or sucked in.
You know their e-mail or on the phone or whatever distraction there is.
Okay?
So that's charisma.
That's charisma.
What is one word that describes how now, keeping that person in mind, how that person makes you feel.
Is it safe, is it seen, is it energized, is it important, is it calm understood inspired welcomed, valued?
Just write.
Write something in the chat.
Write something in the chat like how does this person like?
If you think about it, most of these words are not about the person performing.
They're about the experience that person creates for the people they're engaged in social interaction with right.
So instead of defining charisma as being magnetic, that's one facet of it.
I want us to really reframe it and think about it more as charisma, as the ability to create a felt experience of connection, energy and presence.
Okay, what does that mean?
It means that charisma is relational.
It's not just a trait that you have that you were born with or that you learned.
It's something that happens between you and the other person involved, right?
And that's actually really great news because If charisma is relational, then it can be practiced, right? guys should all be like super happy about this right now right so then you don't have to ask am i charismatic am i not charismatic the better questions that i want you to be asking are am i present am i mindful am i warm am i expressive am i responding specifically am i letting people feel my energy my vibes Am I helping people feel understood and feel interesting in their own right?
These are skills.
And these skills can be practiced because skills can be practiced.
So that should come as such great news to you.
So let's bring in a little bit of science for the moment, right?
In social psychology there's a very useful idea that people often evaluate others along two major dimensions warmth and confidence.
Competence, right?
So warmth and answers questions like, can I trust you?
Are your intentions good?
Do I feel safe with you?
Do you seem kind, open, and socially aware?
And then competence answers questions like, Can I respect you?
Do you seem capable?
Do you know what you're doing?
Can I trust your judgment?
So this matters because charisma usually involves both of these things, right?
The warmth and the competence.
So if you have warmth without having competence, people might like you, but they might not fully take you seriously.
And if you have competence, without warmth, then people may respect you, but they might not feel drawn to you.
Charisma lives in this combination of the two things, because warmth makes people feel safe and competence makes people have confidence in you.
And so together, warmth and competence creates social magnetism.
Okay, so put a W in the chat if you tend to over focus on warmth, and put a C in the chat if you tend to over focus on competence.
For a W right.
That means that you maybe try a little bit more to be liked or agreeable or easygoing or pleasant or nonthreatening.
And then C competence would mean that maybe you overindex on trying to sound smart, trying to sound correct, trying to sound polished, useful or impressive, and then maybe you kind of bounce between the two of those things, then put a, B.
So I'll give you a moment.
I really would like for you to think about this.
So just one letter, W, C, or B for bouncing between both of those.
All right, excellent, excellent.
Okay, so over indexing on competence.
Okay, that looks like a lot of the answers today are from that side of the pendulum.
Okay, excellent, right?
This is really good.
This is good self-awareness that we're building here.
This is a useful self-awareness check.
A lot of ambitious professionals over focus on competence.
Right, you know, we try to sound smart, we try to sound polished prepared credentialed articulate, correct and all of those things are very valuable.
But the thing is, if we leave out warmth And if it's just competence on its own, then it can feel cold and distant and intimidating or even sometimes, in certain occasions, condescending.
And on the flip side, if people over-index on being agreeable, you know they smile, they accommodate, they nod and they often soften everything that they say.
They might create that warmth.
But then they, you know, if they never express a point of view of their own right, they never speak with clarity, they never share their own ideas, and they might not be seen as confident or grounded.
So that's why the nice charismatic sweet spot is warm enough to connect and clear enough to trust.
Warm enough to connect and clear enough to trust.
And that's what we are looking into.
Okay, so here's our framework, right?
We've got charisma.
So C is connect before impressing.
And you'll have all these slides and the worksheet and the replay and everything.
So don't feel like you need to write every bit of this information down.
H is holding presence.
A, animate your expression.
R, respond with specificity.
I, invite emotional safety.
S, signal energy through your voice, through your tone of voice.
Okay.
M, make others feel interesting.
And then A, anchor in your reality.
And this is not a checklist that you have to perform perfectly in every conversation.
So I don't want you to like, please don't go into your next coffee chat thinking, okay, now I need to execute all eight letters of charisma with extreme precision because that would be the least charismatic thing that you can do instead i want you to think of it as a road map right in the conversation if you feel flat or disconnected or socially awkward or forgettable then this framework helps bring you back into it kind of brings you back into that's that reality of that moment right so maybe you're speaking clearly but you're not speaking warmly maybe you're warm but you're not specific enough maybe you're interested but your face and your voice are not showing it and so it's incongruous right it's incongruous maybe you're trying to impress but you're forgetting to connect with the person maybe you're so focused on being liked that you're not letting your real point of view shine through okay so the first thing is connection before performance right we actually want to eliminate performance altogether the second is expression creates energy And the third is specificity creates memorability.
Okay, so I want you to ask, how can I connect with this person in this moment?
Okay, these are the.
This is the heart of it, right?
It's not about becoming somebody else, it's not faking confidence or fake it till you make it.
It's not performance, it's really the connection, the expression and the specificity, and when you do those things, you are going to feel so much more confident and so much more charismatic.
Okay, so the connection before impressing, right.
This might seem well.
I think this would probably be the most important reframe that we can do here.
Because a lot of people try to become charismatic by asking, how can I seem more interesting?
How can I sound smarter?
How can I appear more polished?
How can I make people like me?
How can I be more memorable?
And look, I get it.
Those questions are understandable.
Especially in high stakes situations can make you feel very, very self-focused.
And when we are very self-focused, what happens?
Anxiety goes up.
When the focus is all about ourselves, when it's the ego that takes over, we get very, very nervous, self-conscious.
The opposite of charismatic right.
And when you are constantly monitoring right, you're self-monitoring, you're in a state of hyper.
You're hyper focused.
Then you're going to become less socially fluid, less socially fluent too Okay.
So instead of asking how do I seem impressive, I want you to ask how can I help this moment feel more connected?
Maybe you're offering a specific reflection.
Maybe you're showing some vulnerability.
Maybe you're sharing a small personal detail.
Maybe you're really just zoning in on the person and listening to them.
Maybe you're saying something humorous or it's self-deprecating, but that's aligned with your personality, right?
Like.
This is what we should think about, because charisma is often something that begins with attention.
It's having this curious mindset, genuinely curious about learning about other people.
Right?
And then you avoid those humdrum answers.
Like, oh, nice.
Oh, interesting.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
Right expression.
Charisma needs expression.
This is where a lot of thoughtful, intelligent people get stuck, because they have super interesting thoughts but they deliver them with such little emotional signal there's no emotional resonance.
Right, They might be monotone, their face is neutral, their gestures are minimal, their reactions are muted, the language is vague, voice is flat or monotone.
And again, that doesn't mean that they're boring.
It means that their signal is low, too low, okay?
For example, let's say you're watching a movie but the brightness is turned down and the sound is super low and half the emotional scenes are removed.
Well, the story might be excellent, but you're not experiencing it fully, right?
This is what happens when your communication signal is too muted.
So you need to become a little bit more readable.
Let your face react, let your voice move and ebb and flow.
Let your hands support your words.
Let your language become more specific.
Let your enthusiasm show through when something actually interesting know, something interests you.
Let your humor shine when there's something funny, right?
Because a lot of people, especially you know, people who are afraid to be judged, and i think that's probably everybody on the planet our nervous system does something protective.
What does it do?
It reduces expression.
So you don't want to look too excited, you don't want to seem too intense, you don't want to be too much right, you don't want to be rejected for caring.
So what do you do?
You flatten, right?
But then what is the problem with that?
What's the problem with flattening?
Then the people around you cannot feel who you are.
Charisma requires people to feel something from you, right?
So the practice is you know not to be fake.
The practice is let 10 more of your natural reaction come through.
Let 10 more of your expression come true.
Come through okay, and be true to that, okay.
So let's look at some examples.
First, instead of saying yeah, that's nice try, i love that.
What made you choose that?
Because this gives it energy, this gives it something that you can run with, right?
A follow-up question instead of.
I'm a communication coach right, i help people stop overthinking what they say so they can sound clear and confident in real time.
It's about the person, not the title, right?
So find something interesting about what you do and share that Thinking out loud with confidence.
I don't know.
Okay, well, that's an okay answer.
It's fine.
But what about I'm still thinking that through, but my instinct is this, right?
Because if you show your honest processing, that's way more charismatic than hollow certainty.
Way more charismatic.
So shifting those.
All right, here is a reset that I want you to do.
We're almost out of time, so I want to get through this and then show you your worksheet.
This is the three-part charisma reset, okay?
So, before you jump into your next conversation, I want you to ask yourself these three simple questions one, how do i want this person to feel?
Two, what energy do i want to bring?
And three, what specific detail can i respond to?
Okay, so how do i want the person to feel?
This is very powerful, because it takes you out of the self-monitoring and into the social intention.
And then, what energy do I want to bring?
That's your social tone.
That's the social tone that you're going to choose.
Maybe it's warmth, confidence, playfulness, curiosity, authority, enthusiasm.
So you need to decide what that is.
And it's not that you're choosing a fake personality.
You're choosing which part of your real personality you want to bring to the table that day or you want to bring forward.
And then the third question what specific detail can I respond to?
This is the practical charisma move right.
Specificity makes people feel seen like when you talk to somebody and then, several conversations later, you remember a specific detail about a conversation you had with them.
They're going to be so impressed with that and they'll realize how amazing an active listener you are right.
So, save those details, remember them.
I i, you know um.
Identify them to the person and with the person, And it's going to be game-changing game-changing.
So inside the academy, we are practicing these.
Like I said, our theme for May is charisma and magnetic presence.
And I really encourage you to fill out the worksheet.
It's a one-page worksheet today.
And I want you to think about the identity that you are bringing, right?
So it's not so much as I must become a charismatic person overnight.
It doesn't work that way.
It's more so.
I'm becoming somebody who right, i'm becoming somebody who brings warmth, presence and expressive clarity into the room.
That's the identity shift right.
It's not about becoming somebody else.
It's about becoming somebody who brings these things warmth presence, expressive clarity into the room, because this is something that you can practice right in your next conversation.
You can bring one percent more warmth.
You can bring one percent more authenticity.
You can bring one percent more specificity.
Let's have a look at the worksheet.
This is great because it's going to help you figure out where you are right now.
Like we talked about in the beginning, your baseline, right?
Same thing here.
And in a few months or in a few weeks you can revisit the worksheet and you can compare your results with what you got today and what you get the next time you fill that worksheet out.
And also come to the live AMA with that worksheet.
We can talk about it there as well.
So let's share that worksheet now that I'm talking about it.
All right.
Let's see.
Where is it?
On my computer.
Here we go.
Okay.
So.
Okay, here we are.
So here we have where I want to feel more charismatic, like what kind of situations they are.
What's your current pattern?
What's your warmth plus confidence check?
What's your three-part charisma reset, then your expression upgrade i want you to choose one small way that you're going to turn the signal up right.
And then what is your charisma rewrites?
Instead of that's nice, what's your specificity that you can bring to that?
And then lastly, we'll end with that identity shift shift.
I am becoming somebody who blah, blah and blah into the room.
So practice one real conversation this week using the framework.
Just choose one area to upgrade the signal okay, because too much doing too many at once can put too much of a cognitive load on you and we don't want to overwhelm the system.
But then over time you add another signal to upgrade and then let us know how it goes.
Fill it out, post it.
It's already posted in the community.
So index learning academy you'll see that post with the worksheet.
Fill it out, share some of your answers or share all of your answers, and then on in the next live coaching session.
Just check out the events page, come in and let's let's go over it, all right.
Thank you so much for joining.
Wonderful job, all of you.
I'm so glad that you enjoyed it and I can't wait to see what you come up with.
I'll see you in the next webinar and our next live AMA coaching session.
Bye everybody.
