We all understand the importance of social skills, but charisma can be a tough one to adopt. Lifehack.org recommends focusing on presence.
Picture: Davidlohr Bueso/Flickr
Knowing the right people can get you somewhere in your career and life, assuming you’re on good terms with those people. Charisma can take you a long way with building your network, but charisma doesn’t just mean being interesting — you need to be interested in others too. “Presence” is being fully invested in the conversation, even when you’re not leading it.
Lifehack explains why this works:
Everyone wants to feel important. The best and easiest way to make people feel important is to legitimately listen to what they have to say, and clarify your understanding of their thoughts. This means thoroughly listening to another person’s point of view, instead of planning in your head what you are going to say next. While thinking what you are going to say next, how can you be fully understanding of what another person has to say? When you have an awesome idea, don’t you want people to listen? There is nothing more frustrating than when you have the best idea ever, and nobody seems to want to listen to you. When you finally find someone that makes an effort to understand you, don’t you feel a strong appreciation for them? This is the power of presence, and you can leverage this every day when you interact with people.
If you want to be more present, focus on being the person who wants to listen instead of the person who wants to respond. I would recommend being selective with this trait. If you think someone is better kept at a distance, it’s probably best to be a little less attentive so they’re not so drawn to using you as a sounding board. Lifehack offers some other charisma boosting tips below.
3 Magnetic Qualities of Charismatic People [Lifehack]
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