Charisma or presence?
One day a good fairy appears and says to you: 'I know how hard you have been working. Because you are such a committed and hard working person I've decided to give you a special gift - the power of charisma. When I wave my magic wand you will instantly become an incredibly charismatic person – the sort of person who not only attracts everybody's attention the moment you walk in the room, but whose few well chosen words inspire people to action.'
It's a tempting offer – but here's why you should decline it, and what you should ask for instead.
Henry Tosi and his colleagues at the University of Florida conducted some interesting research. They assessed the charisma of chief executives of Fortune 500 companies (by asking senior managers to rate their boss for charisma) and then compared this charisma rating with the financial performance of those companies. Do charismatic bosses deliver better results? The research provided a conclusive answer to this question - charisma made no difference whatsoever to organisational performance.
Why would you want to be charismatic if it made no difference to the results your team or organisation can deliver? Well, part two of Tosi's research provides an answer to that question. Charismatic CEOs didn't achieve better performance for their company – but they did earn a lot more money. The more charismatic the CEO was rated, the higher the financial reward package.
In fact, not only is charisma unhelpful when it comes to leading a successful organisation, on occasions it can be positively destructive. One of the most charismatic business leaders of recent times is a guy called Bernard Madoff, until recently chairman of a big investment businesses on Wall Street, now in prison for what has been described as 'the biggest investor fraud ever committed by a single person'.
So if you are interested in being charismatic and earning lots of money, take the good fairy's offer. But if you are interested in leading a successful team or organisation, you have to ask for something else. And what you should ask for is presence.
Presence is the ability to focus your attention fully on the other person you are communicating with - when you are talking and when you are listening. And whereas there's some evidence that charisma is a quality you either have or you don't, presence is something anyone can develop simply by paying more attention to the people around them.
Many business people live their lives in a kind of constant rush, so that in any given interaction their mind is half on what they've just done, and half on all the other things they've got to do that day – which doesn't leave much energy to focus on the present interaction. But some business people really take the time to focus on their interaction with whomever they're with – whether it's a key decision maker or the person on the reception desk. It's not that they spend hugely longer on the interaction – but they spend enough time to make the other person feel that they really matter. There's something hugely genuine about true presence.
Most importantly, presence engenders trust, and trust is the building block of any enduringly successful organisation.
So forget charisma, and ask the good fairy for presence instead. And here's what she'll probably say: 'You don't need me to grant you that wish. You can do it yourself – if only you're willing to spend a little bit more time on giving other people your full attention'