3 Elements of Charismatic Leadership
The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane has been re-entering our consciousness lately here at Sway. This book from way back in 2012 sets up a really good framework for thinking about how to develop better personal leadership and rapport among others.
When meeting new people and getting to know them we often have subtle ways of assessing their “goodness.” According to Olivia Fox Cabane, others’ social goodness is made up of three categories: 1) power, 2) warmth, and 3) presence–which can always be amplified and reorganized according to specific leadership needs or situations.
Below, we’ll go through each of these elements of charismatic leadership and break down what happens when only two of the three charisma elements are present.
Three Elements of Charisma
Power
According to Olivia Fox Cabane, power is your capacity to influence outcomes. Power can be baked into a position like being the manager of a team, or just being the person on the team with the most expertise in a necessary field (for example, data analysis on a long-term project). Power can also show up in how influential you are with other team members.
Warmth
On the other hand, warmth is how much other people tend to perceive that you have good intentions toward them. Warmth can be a general air of friendliness, asking someone how they’re doing, checking in on someone’s feelings, giving gifts, bringing snacks to the office, etc.
Presence
To tie it all together, presence is the element of leadership that lets others know that you perceive what’s going on around you. This can mean actually being in the office and paying attention at meetings, or it can mean listening well in conversations. Human beings can read facial expressions in just a few milliseconds, so your ability to stay tuned-in with good listening skills is paramount. Presence can also be how well you perceive the situation that’s going on socially, how “tuned-in” you are to team dynamics, etc.
Dysfunctional Leadership Archetypes
Hopefully, the breakdown above makes sense. Nevertheless, we’ve found that any leader (including ourselves) has always unequal amounts of power, warmth, and presence which can skew their leadership style into something dysfunctional in the long-run. We’ll explain through the usage of some fun caricatures below:
Power + Presence, but not Warmth: The Authoritarian
So when power and presence combine without warmth, you have the manager who is always around, tends to be a workaholic, and who is certainly a force to be reckoned with. This manager can drive good results in the short-term. However, long-term their leadership tends to lead to burn out for the team, a stressful and conflict-heavy work environment, and they are just generally disliked by everyone, even if producing good results.
Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada is a good example of this archetype. The Authoritarian is respected and feared but not loved and can be a dangerous long-term liability that erodes the foundation of teamsmanship and can stifle steady progress over the long run.
Power + Warmth, but not Presence: The Aloof, Chaotic Manager
When power and warmth combine without presence, you end up with a powerful manager who has good intentions that are clearly visible, but the manager is chaotic, reactive, and difficult to maneuver around by others on the team. Over the long-term, these managers create a lot of anxiety in the workplace as things can change too abruptly and eventually a team will not trust this person to follow through or even know what’s going on half of the time.
The archetype for this leader would be someone like Michael Scott from The Office. Or, perhaps the nepotistic son of the owner who is dropped in as CEO of a company and begins managing it without even knowing what the company does. This type of leader has visibly good intentions but is removed from the day-to-day.
Presence + Warmth, but not Power: The Sidekick or Lackey
Lastly, when presence and warmth combine without power, you end up with a leader or manager who is basically not leading–either because they don’t know how, or, in my experience, because these leaders have absconded from the role of leader in order to be liked. These types can be hyperattuned to the needs of those around them, mostly because they have very little to offer otherwise and people can sense that. Over the long-term these types of leaders are usually replaced by someone more competent.
A good archetype of this leader would be any kind of happy-go-lucky sidekick pushed into a leadership role. They are there, and you appreciate them, but you can’t follow them.
Applications
So we’ve seen that all three elements of power, presence, and warmth are necessary to have a charismatic leadership style, but how does one go about developing this charisma? This is where we’d recommend you go read Cabane’s book. The above is an extrapolation of her framework with some additional thoughts, but the book itself is full of tips and tricks for how to increase your charisma.
Still, here are some initial thoughts from us at Sway:
Be kind to yourself
A lot of people miss out on being charismatic simply because they have too much negative self-talk. A huge part of Cabane’s book is full of practices to help you walk into the room believing that you belong there.
Self-assess
The reason I like the caricatures above is because we find anyone tends to do better with two of the three charisma elements and those three things are hard to maintain all at the same time. Some leadership styles are inherently weak in one of the elements, so a good place to start is by asking, what leadership traps do I fall into? Another good question is, what elements of charisma am I asked to use most often?
Work on your charisma weaknesses
Once you self-assess, you can begin to think of practices to help your charisma. If you find yourself lacking warmth, try smiling more and asking people about their day more often. If you find yourself lacking presence, practice your listening skills (and maybe even do an active listening training with Sway). If you find yourself lacking power, take a class in a useful skill or practice saying “no” to requests more often in your day-to-day life.
The reason Cabane says charisma is a “myth” in her book’s title is because most of us tend to believe that some people have charisma and others simply don’t. The reality is that all of us can possess insane amounts of the stuff if we just know how to tune in, show good intentions, and demonstrate power and usefulness.
