Dear Engaging Guru,

I recently asked my speaking network for their best answers around presentation skills, voice, story telling, stage presence, tricks of the trade, etc. See their replies at Charisma List.

Please share with me one or two of the most meaningful lessons you have learned in developing your platform charisma.

Ed Rigsbee
www.rigsbee.com

Here is my charisma breakthrough: the importance of Status

Dear Ed:

Thanks for sharing great advice from your network.

Here is my charisma breakthrough: the importance of Status. When I can control the audience’s status and my own status, I am charismatic.

In the preparation, I look for the greater good these people do. I ask myself, what I admire about them. I make sure they feel good about who they are, and what they do.

Humor and Status

It’s been said, comedians gets paid to put themselves down or put others down. Every time we poke fun or tease, we are playing a status game. It’s OK to tease the audience, but first you have to establish the right to do so by letting them know, deep down, you admire them. However, the best targets for humor are their competition, yourself (and Paris Hilton)

It’s very effective to have a strong introduction that establishes your credibility to be the speaker, to be on that stage, hold the floor and the microphone for that audience. You enter with the body language of someone important. Always start with high status.

Next, you poke fun at yourself. When you lower yourself, audience members react in one of two ways.

    * They relate to your screw up, and that makes you human too, a comrade in life’s little calamities. They also honor your courageous for being willing to risk embarrassment.
    * They don’t relate, but they laugh at you, and feel better about themselves.

Be Important

People will often say, “be confident”. I think the secret sauce is to “be important” (and choose when to be unimportant so others can feel important). People pay attention to people who they believe are important. If you are confident, but unimportant, only unimportant people will listen to you. Important people only pay attention to other important people. Second, leave the audience feeling important.

Alternatively, you can try walking on stage like a wimp, or act like a demigod while putting down your audience throughout the speech. That, however, is some sort of negatively charged charisma. I think you were talking about the good kind, right Ed?

So that was my breakthrough as a speaker, to become charismatic is to control status.

The Lesson:

I focus on managing my own status signals and the status feelings I create in others.

Regards,
Michael

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Michael Cushman, The Engaging Guru, wants you to master enrolling others in your truth, get the goodies of life, and change the world.  www.engagingchange.com