Charisma is learnable, and misleading
Researchers have tested this many times, in different places, over many years, and they keep finding the same result. This one is safe to trust.
Researchers wondered whether charisma, the quality that makes someone seem like a natural leader, is an innate gift or a learnable skill. So they tried to teach it. They identified about a dozen specific, trainable techniques, things like using metaphors and stories, speaking in three-part lists, setting high expectations, and using confident body language and voice. Then they trained people in these tactics and had observers rate them. The trained speakers were rated clearly more charismatic and more leader-like than before, and more than untrained controls. Charisma, it turned out, is largely a set of behaviours that can be taught and rehearsed.
Charisma is a skill that can be learned and performed, which means it is a poor guide to how good someone actually is at the underlying work. The person who lights up the room may simply have practised the techniques that light up rooms, and you are wired to read that glow as competence even when the two are unrelated. This matters intensely in hiring, where the charismatic candidate tends to get rated higher across the board, whatever the evidence says. Separate the performance from the substance: watch what the person can actually do, scored on its own, because charisma is measuring your reaction, not their ability.
Charisma says a dozen learnable tactics get someone rated as more charismatic and more leader-like, so the impression of a natural leader can be trained. The pratfall effect says a competent person who spills coffee on themselves is rated more likeable, not less, because the flaw reads as real. Polish wins in one and a flaw wins in the other, and both are measuring the same thing: your reaction, not their ability. The pratfall only helps someone already seen as competent, and charisma can be trained to produce that impression. Neither tells you what the person can do. Score the work on its own, and treat both the shine and the endearing stumble as facts about you.
Charisma says a dozen learnable tactics get someone rated as more charismatic and more leader-like, so the glow can be practised. Avis says openly admitting to being number two made the rest of the pitch believable and gained ground on the leader. Polish wins one and a confessed weakness wins the other. What separates them is what the audience is being asked to do. An evaluator rating a person reads the glow as competence and does not notice. A customer choosing between claims that all say best has stopped believing any of them, so the one that names a limit is the only one with a reason to be trusted. So when you are the one presenting, the admission works. When you are the one judging, the shine is telling you about your own reaction, and the entry that warns you about it is the first one.
Source: Antonakis, Fenley and Liechti, Can charisma be taught? Tests of two interventions, Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2011: 34 managers and 41 MBA students, with a training effect on rated charisma of medium size.
Malcolm Gladwell, 2019
How badly we misread people we do not know, and how sure of ourselves we stay while doing it.
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