Podcast: Olivia Fox on charisma

Tim Reid discovered these three key learnings from his interview with Olivia Fox:

• Charisma can be learnt.
• Charisma is a seriously under-utilised marketing tactic which, once nailed, will provide you with a unique point-of-difference.
• Don’t underestimate the vibe we give out when amongst clients and prospects and how it impacts on our sales process.

The key points that Olivia shared in this Small Business Big Marketing podcast are:

The Charisma Basics:

• Charisma myth: that it’s innate. In reality, it’s learned. Usually so young that it then seems innate. The reality is that it is learned, and you can learn it at any age.
• Charisma myth: that it depends on beauty. In reality, it depends on body language.
• What is charisma really? Presence, power and warmth. You need all three to be charismatic, but the degree of each determines the kind of charisma you have.
• High power, low presence, low warmth is authority charisma. Colin Powell has that.
• High presence, lower power, low warmth is called focus charisma. Bill Gates actually has charisma in that respect.
• A good example of someone who leads with high warmth is the Dalai Lama.
• Different kinds of charisma are appropriate for different situations.
• What’s the number one thing to do to increase charisma? Actually, I’ll give you three: increase eye contact, stand like a big gorilla, speak like a preacher. Slow, confident, resonant and warm.

And some surprises:

• Charisma has serious side-effects; it’s not always great to be charismatic, and all forms of charisma come at a cost.
• Olivia is often asked “Are your clients all nerds?” Actually, many of them are highly charismatic people who need to learn how to handle the side-effects of their charisma.
• Charisma is most effective in a crisis. (Think Hitler / Gandhi / Napoleon).
• In controlled laboratory experiments, researchers were able to raise or lower people’s level of charisma as if they were turning a dial.

About these podcasts: The Small Business, Big Marketing podcasts are characterised by plenty of chit chat from Tim who’ll typically kick off with nuggets of advice and tell shaggy dog stories before diving in to the episode’s topic. Sit back, relax and enjoy!

Duration: 37:00 minutes

Links to resources mentioned in the show: https://smallbusinessbigmarketing.com/marketing-podcast-funny-business-3/

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