Charisma vs. Truth

Some people seem to have more charisma than others.  You know the type – they walk into a room and everyone watches them.  The whole geometry of the room will adjust to make that charismatic person the focus of attention.  And those people, often, are the ones who have a gift for stage performance.  It’s easier for them to command attention, and they have a natural charm that gives them a big boost in developing rapport with an audience.

However, every strength brings with it a weakness, and charisma is no exception.  The pitfall I see these natural performers fall into time and time again is that they rely on their charisma, and never have to learn to be real.  It works up to a point, but eventually they reach a plateau and can go no further on charisma alone.  It’s like a person who has been gifted with a superb vocal instrument – it’s so easy for them to do a pretty good job, some of them never really learn how to sing well!  But their naturally great instrument takes them only so far, and gets harder to use (incorrectly) as they get older.  To get beyond “pretty good” and avoid getting worse with age, they need to do all that hard work and learn how to really use their voice.

The same is true of the natural performer.  They experience immediate success as a novice, but then they plateau because raw charisma will get them only so far.  When they first appear on stage you are spellbound by their energy, but after a while you begin to notice the cracks in the façade – charming facial expressions that seem to come up too often and at the wrong times, strong and compelling movements that become repetitive.  You can see these things if you know what you’re looking for, but for most people it just seems like a slight insincerity that they can’t quite put their finger on.

The natural performer, if they want to start getting better results, needs to go back and do all the same work that everyone else does – how to frame a story for themselves, how to create a compelling vision to keep them engaged and on track, etc.  But when they do that work, look out!  The combination of their natural gifts with honesty and truth is hard to beat!