Question: When is a Gift Not a gift?
Answer: When it’s a skill.
I teach and coach communication skills. Notice the word ‘skills’. Not gifts, talents, or even aptitudes. Skills. As such, they are ‘learnable’ by anyone.
As a trainer, I can show people, step-by-step, how to make presentations, negotiate, or run a meeting. I can demonstrate the way to make a first impression, write a report, and persuade your listeners… as well as listen to them.
I believe very strongly in the ‘anyone can do it’ philosophy of learning. But there was always one skill about which I hesitated. Charisma. It’s such a slippery concept to start with. We can generally agree on a few people who have it. But what ‘it’ is, we can hardly say.
Now the BBC reports on the UK’s first “Charisma Masterclass”. Click here to see a clip of it in action as well as the thoughts of a reporter who had a try. A basic premise of the speakers seems to be that we in the UK are too backward at putting ourselves forward, and that we need to learn a few lessons from our cousins across the pond.
No problems from me so far. I’ve blogged before about my own preference for the American way of doing things when it comes to customer service at least. I also dislike my own penchant for refusing compliments and downplaying achievements. But is charisma a thing that can be taught? After all, the word literally means ‘gift’!
If asked to list charismatic people, we might mention Nelson Mendela, Mother Teresa or Richard Branson. I’m not sure the common denominator here is charm or communication skills. Sure, there’s a ‘larger than life’ aspect to them. But it’s not necessarily bound up with them as a person. I think that it has to do with the cause they espoused and with that I can only call the ‘empire’ they built up. There is more to them than them. They belong to something bigger. They linked in to something great and in turn symbolise it in their own persons. They have made their own meaning and lived it out. For me, that’s a major part of what charisma comes down to.
I’m not sure a masterclass can impart that. It could help you to go about it for yourself. But I judge that Victor Frankl’s advice is better than most:
“Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”
Charisma is a unintentional aura emitted by a truly successful life.
