You Too Can Be Charismatic!

So I’m working on my charisma.  You know - that certain something you might say some of us simply exude.  Just born with it.  Enchanting.  Captivating.  

"It's from the Greek, and it generally refers to a gift, something [a person] didn't necessarily have to earn or deserve," says Mark Oppenheimer who teaches at Yale University.  "But it's this talent, or unique capability.  It comes from the gods, really." 

As I said, I’m working on it. 

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, researchers say they can use science to measure charisma, assuming you have some to measure. 

With a little device they call the “Sociometer,” the creation of Professor Alex Pentland and his team at MIT, a person’s charm can be gauged.  To do this, according to Pentland, the Sociometer measures not what you say, but how you say it.   

Really?  Doesn’t matter what I say?  I’m all over this!  On my way to personal magnetism. 

"So the first thing is energy,” says Pentland in an interview on CBS.  “You have to be energetic."  

OK, if I want to be charismatic I have to be energetic.  I can be energetic.  I am so energetic.  

"It shows up in your hands,” he goes on.  “It shows up in your voice, the way you carry yourself and do things."   

Yeah!  Yeah!  I’m getting’ it!  If you could only see me.  I’m an absolute Liberace at the keyboard. 

According to the MIT team and their Sociometer, high scorers have a real advantage.  Consider what happened when Pentland used his high-tech gadget to assess charisma's impact on corporate business decisions: Without knowing anything about the business plan, [or] the person presenting it, “We predicted how well [the] plan would be rated.  And the two things that really mattered were:  Did [the presenter] sound like they were excited?  And, were they fluid in how they produced the speech?” 

That’s it!  Any animated schmo can effect a winning sales pitch so long as she doesn’t twist her tongue!  Really.  She sells seashells by the seashore. 

And get this:  Professor Joseph Nye of the Harvard Kennedy School says, though we may not like to admit it, winning personalities win elections.  "There is an attractiveness that leads some people to be able to get others to follow them by their personality." 

Oppenheimer, who also studied the subject at Yale concurs: "Most American voters ultimately don't vote on specific policy questions.  They're responding to something else - charisma."  Yikes. 

Sure enough, in a new CBS "Sunday Morning" poll, 3 out of 4 voters say that indefinable something will play a role in their vote - one in four says a major role.  It’s a good way to save time studying candidates and their positions on the issues. 

Supposedly you can be trained to be charismatic.  So, even a bumbling oaf, not to mention any names, can take classes and come out Clooney-esque.  So says John Neffinger, an Ivy League law school graduate who now runs workshops for the charismatically challenged.  He defines charisma as a combination of strength and warmth, beginning with body language.   

Just like Grandma said:  Stand up straight and smile!  Neffinger agrees, "… that is actually the basic formula.  Standing up straight says, ‘I'm here to be taken seriously.  Don't mess with me!’ and that projects strength.  Smiling genuinely projects a lot of warmth." 

The winning combination, and this is where it gets tricky, is a smile that projects both warmth and strength.  "There are two different things going on, on the face," says Neffinger.  "On the bottom half of the face is just a little bit of a smile.  So you got warmth going on the bottom.  But what goes on in the eyes is, there's an intention to the look in the eyes.  There's a determination.  And that intensity connotes strength." 

No wonder Mitt Romney looks so stiff.  He’s trying to remember all this stuff that doesn’t come naturally while fending off Newt Gingrich and Stephen Colbert.   

But with such a simple recipe, I feel certain I can work up from my current state of shy and socially inept, through the intermediate stages of awkward but well meaning, and disarmingly pushy, all the way up to mesmerizingly irresistible.   

I’m very excited about this.  Warmly, sincerely, and with strength. 

Vote for me.

What's a Voter to Do?

I married into a nest of Republicans. In this family, a game established by the patriarch entails a set of questions of his device, always about events of the day and politics. After every holiday meal, all generations debate the answers, singing out in happy banter, voicing their insights, opinions, and assertions, all decidedly to the right of center.

My beloved father-in-law and his three children, including my husband, all have advanced college degrees. The same for their spouses, and their children, and now even their children’s spouses, our son being the only exception. (He went to technical school and remains single, thank God.)

It makes an impressive collection of conservatives working on pumpkin pie and whipped cream.

Arriving from a blue collar family in Oklahoma made up of teachers, oil refinery workers, deputy clerks in the county office, and postal employees, I kept quiet at the California dinner table for a long time. My mom and I are the only ones with any college on the Oklahoma side of my life. Back there, we were the sages. But if we mentioned our bachelor’s or master’s degrees, we’d only be showing off. And the conversations on Aunt June’s floral velvet sofa after an orgy of mashed potatoes and gravy heaped on turkey and green beans never approached the erudition of my West Coast family.

Somewhere during my acclimation, I remember hearing that only Democrats have hearts, and only Republicans have brains. There I found my rationale for becoming independent of party affiliations. I have a heart and a brain, and I vote all over the ballot.

Lately, though, neither my intellect nor my conscience can find comfort.

I listen to the debates; I read the stuff in the paper and the voter’s pamphlets. I put x’s and o’s on the chart in the “Election 2010” section of the Times like a gridiron coach developing a play book, choosing quarterbacks and defensive linesmen. I try not to be a one issue voter. I think about the economy and education and jobs and taxes and immigration.

But my guts count for something. And this candidate makes my shoulders sag. That one makes me hold my nose. Too many candidates seem like more of the same self-serving do-nothing office-holding politicos, unwilling or unable to do more than join the pack and play self-righteous. Any candidates who do seem fresh and selfless also seem doomed to be swallowed into the belly of the business-as-usual whale.

It’s crazy making! What’s a voter to do? Choose a stinker, or throw your vote away in feeble protest.

What I’d like to do is grab the table by its edge and flip it skyward. Start over. New game. New players. New strategy. New plan. I understand why some people don’t want to play at all.

Yet I marked my vote-by-mail ballot and sent it off to be counted. Why?

Maybe I voted because 21 people were killed in Karachi, Pakistan, during elections there. No one’s going to shoot me to keep me from participating in our frustrating democracy, though my exasperated brother-in-law sometimes shakes his head at me.

Maybe I voted because in the face of seemingly fossilized opinions and limited enlightenment, we elected a black man; and now we are mad at him not because he’s black, but because he hasn’t solved our problems fast enough.

Maybe I voted because I want to be heard. The action of voting says I do not give up and become a conspiracy-theory survivalist living in a commune with shotguns, “keep out” signs, and trip wires. I use the system to improve the system. I will not slink away in bitterness and retreat.

Maybe I voted because I’m just now starting to get it. At sixty, I’m finally beginning to understand enough of the intricacies of human nature, of complex systems, of long-term change, and yes, of politics, that by voting, my hope and belief are renewed.

Wow. Who knew? Renewed hope. Renewed belief. Voting: a shot of B-12 for the campaign weary.

In fact, now that I think of it, no nest of Republicans or Democrats can keep me from voting.

I voted...Will you?