Charisma and Appeal

How you can develop a strong presence and radiate authority

This is a quite literal book title translation of one of the books I published on Amazon. The original is written in German. Now I decided to publish some of it in English here on Medium.

The book has gotten great reviews and I consider it a success, given that this was the first book I ever published. I hope you will enjoy the read as well. If this article gets people interested, then I’ll think about putting more content from my German books up here. It feels more engaging and interesting than translating the book itself and putting it up on Amazon again in English.

Be fierce — from my book cover

Charisma is not magic

It’s simple human psychology. And it works. So what exactly is charisma? The word itself has its roots in the Greek language, where it means “a gift, given out of benevolence”. It was seen as a rare gift, given by the gods to few chosen people. Those people would then use this gift to wrap others around their fingers and win them for their every cause.

So is charisma something genetic, out of our control? Fortunately for us, that’s not true. Even today, many people don’t really understand why we work in the ways we do. Love is an emotional roller coaster, surrounded by feelings that twist and turn our life around at every step. Many people don’t even realize what’s going on inside us. Some don’t even care, as long as “love works”.

The very same happens with charisma. We look someone into the eyes and immediately make the critical decision whether we like that person or not. And through all that, we naively think we’re in total control of the situation. But it’s not our consciousness making that call — it’s our hormonal balance and feelings, being based on a complex biological system.

Even though our appearance has some influence on the outcome of that decision, it’s not the sole factor. Using the right signals, even an otherwise unsympathetic person can cast a spell on us, outright motivating us to follow their lead. That makes charisma an important skill for entrepreneurs and leaders. There are 3 core aspects of charisma that have been identified in people who do have good charisma:

1. Charismatic people are prone to…