As a theater director and actor I spend a lot of time thinking about "charisma". What is it that makes some people interesting to look at, even when they're not doing anything?
Physical attractiveness can play into it, but there are some very charismatic actors who aren't attractive. Acting skill plays into it, but often charismatic actors are only mediocre at "acting". It's commonly associated with confidence, but some charismatic actors have a habit of playing un-confident roles. (Which is not the same as a lack of personal confidence, but what is it they're doing that conveys both "confident" and "insecure" simultaneously?")
It's often said to be about commitment, a sense that they're really "present" and really focused on you. That's certainly something we want actors to do: the more they care about their scene-partners, the more the audience will be drawn to both. (That's true even when the focus is based on a negative emotion, like hatred, but it has to be a really targeted kind of hate and not just a general anger.)
I can teach a lot about the theory of acting, but I have only a vague idea of why it works. When it does, it can be really potent, though it can be be incredibly hard to get. People will often do the same wrong thing harder. A lot of the silly acting games they teach are about getting you to at least do a different thing than what you were doing, hoping that somehow you'll accidentally discover the right track.
I'm not sure any of this is really "charisma" in the sense that this writer means it. I certainly support his overall gist: soft skills are massively underrated.
Charisma is indeed a complex trait. That's why, in the article, I say:
"...it is not a single trait but a broad spectrum of traits that share things in common."
What I'm trying to convey here is that if you try to define charisma, no matter what definition you come up with, you will always leave many things outside its definition. Instead of trying to define it, I think it's better to explore the different traits that make a person charismatic. In the article, I decided to explore three of them: making meaningful connections, empathy, and warmth.
I agree there are many more traits that could describe a charismatic person. I also agree that "presence" might be one of the most important ones that were left out of the article.
Which brings us to an interesting question: What does it mean to be present?
Just as with Charisma, Presence is just another skill that is better not to define but to explore through the behaviors it displays.
"The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao..."
As long as we're having fun with it, I don't understand why the fake version of the opening isn't "Dao can dao, very dao. Name can name, very name". That is surely what a modern speaker will think when they see the text.
> but I have only a vague idea of why it works. When it does, it can be really potent, though it can be be incredibly hard to get
The top reference in the article is the book The Charisma Myth (really highly recommend it)
In that book, Olivia Fox-Cabane (the author), explains that we are subconsciously attuned to the cues of charisma. It's essentially an instinctive trait that we are wired with. Hence, it is very easy for people to detect charisma, and it is pretty much impossible to fake charisma
So then, a good way to develop charisma, is to change the way you feel internally. Essentially develop the ability to "feel charismatic", and then your body will reflect it outwardly, which will make people notice it, which will make them treat you like a charismatic person, which will make you feel charismatic, thus creating a virtuous cycle
The book has many exercises to bootstrap the process and develop the skills to be more charismatic. They really do work, but also require plenty of practice
My guess is that it's the same thing in personal interactions - the depth of emotional genuineness.
Humans universally desire connection to other humans; it's survival, it's desire, it's necessary for emotional processing. Empathy understanding others' emotions; it's a universal skill. We need to be expert readers of emotion. We can sense when it's false or partly covered up, and long for that deeper connection that unlocks our own emotions.
An actor has the challenge of finding genuine emotions to play a fictional person.
> It's often said to be about commitment, a sense that they're really "present" and really focused on you. That's certainly something we want actors to do: the more they care about their scene-partners, the more the audience will be drawn to both.
This is an enormously important point. The secret is that charisma is mostly a "pull" (react) process. Does it feel like I'm happy to see you? Am I surfing your energy? Am I empathetic? How do I handle your feedback? Am I really listening, or just waiting until you stop talking to say my piece?
If you mistake it for primarily a "push" (act) process, people will just think you're a wanker. As the author puts it, "Charisma is all about how you make others feel". Charisma is a full-duplex process.
That might be good advice for arrogant actors, but it's not a good definition.
Charisma is not just about relationship, or how they interact with people.
Charisma means having hidden information that lets you operate in the world more efficiently. It lets you maintain your self where others cave to external pressure. It's excellence demonstrated through poise and resilience. It means being worth watching.
Charisma in an acting context is different in that it adds another ball to juggle, but it's still a mostly-reactive exercise. Stella Adler's "acting is reacting" is an adage for a reason, and without that foundation, a person will not be perceived as charismatic even if they "act charismatic".
As a player in the 80s and as someone who was just a kid, we all assumed it meant attractiveness despite the explanation in either PHB or DMG that someone like Hitler would have had a high charisma. And then they went and added the comeliness stat that was explicitly stated to be attractiveness. It was hard for us to understand.
Amusingly, I'm getting a chance to put that into practice right now. I'm playing an extremely tiny supporting role in my current play. I was actually up for the lead, but didn't get it. (I think they made the right choice.)
Before I had played a lead, this would be very frustrating. Having played leads, I now know what it is the lead needs from me, and I can be very important in my place. It's a useful demonstration of what a good actor can do without the script giving them a lot.
(I know that was a joke, but I thought it was worth noting.)
> As a theater director and actor I spend a lot of time thinking about "charisma". What is it that makes some people interesting to look at, even when they're not doing anything?
> Physical attractiveness can play into it [etc...]
You might be interested to know (at least, I was) that the original concept was developed out of the study of rhetoric, and referred to the phenomenon that two different people giving identical speeches (that is, identically worded speeches) might receive very different reactions from an audience. This is, as you note, a very broad phenomenon, with many different causes. But all of them would be called "charisma" because the concern was with the effect on the audience.
Because of this, I find "Underrated soft skills: Charisma" to be something of a weird title - in my understanding "charisma" refers to all soft skills.
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My favorite demonstration of the idea comes from a comedy sketch I found on youtube titled "MDE: Trex helps out Robby". Trex seems to be a pickup artist who has been called in to help someone who has trouble getting dates:
> [Trex:] (whispering to Robby) I just spent an enormous amount of time and money training you to be my protegé. I want you to go in there, I want you to talk to that fly-ass bitch on the right side, I want you to say some wild shit to her. Say "I'm dat gorilla dick nigga. I make dyke pussy wet."
> [Robby:] (whispering to Trex) I'm not saying the N-word. Sorry.
> [Trex:] "I'm the gorilla dick pussy god. I make dyke pussy wet."
> [Robby:] All right. Sorry. (Robby rolls his wheelchair over to the fly-ass bitch on the right side.)
> [Robby:] (out loud, kind of) I'm like gr -- ah -- gerilla -- GOrilla. I'm like gorilla dick baby. (pauses, thinks, readjusts his glasses) I'm that gorilla dick (pause) god. I make di- dyke pussy...ies wet. Okay. (exhales loudly, readjusts his glasses) I'm like gr - god damn it I can't - (scene cuts to Trex whispering in Robby's ear)
This has always struck me as a great example of being able to provide advice to someone else that would work for you, but won't work for them.
I think the author confuses simple likability for charisma. Charismatic people generally have a lot of likability, but not all likable people are charismatic.
Charismatic people aren't just able to get people to like them, they are able to persuade people to adopt their viewpoint. When someone charismatic wants X to happen, you find yourself also wanting X to happen.
This distinction matters, because the easy path to likability is agreeability: simply do what the people around you want you to do. They'll all like you, which is definitely valuable. But it won't necessarily get you closer to your goals.
Charisma, which is a quite rare trait, has a special balance of likeability and dis-agreeability, where people will get on board with your plan and feel good doing it. It's the ability to increase their agreeability.
I had lots of this when I was starting my career. As far as I could tell, it was some combination of being seen as very sharp, energetic, quirky, and most of all enthusiastic in a vision and enjoying every minute working toward it. After getting back from some OS/2 developer course at Redmond, I accidentally got a mainframe COBOL ERP software company to turning a pet side project into effectively a Visual Basic for OS/2. It did have a COBOL generator back-end though so they could sell to existing customers. The company's profits declined as it alienated existing customers that were paying large support contracts.
At some point in my life I unconsciously decided that charisma (in this sense) was something I did not want to exercise, and was perhaps even wrong to exercise.
In so many facets of our lives already, our wants are being manipulated for the benefit of others. And who am I to decide what is important? For things that involve other people, I’d rather make that decision collectively. I want the thoughts, opinions, and feelings of people who don’t possess or exercise charisma to have space and weight.
I was struck by another comment calling the feedback loop a "virtuous cycle". Early-elementary-school me found it disturbingly weird and an unwanted responsibility for others' choices. Consciously resolved by "I'm so not doing this thing anymore".
Perhaps styles of leadership might be taught early, so there's greater awareness of possibilities/alternatives?
And I really don't think charisma is teachable, but it is extremely useful, and weirdly real (in that one can be persuaded of things one doesn't actually believe and not really understand how you are agreeing even as you agree) (source: married to a very charismatic but also fairly selfish person for ~20 years, also worked with fairly charismatic bosses).
> and weirdly real (in that one can be persuaded of things one doesn't actually believe and not really understand how you are agreeing even as you agree)
Yeah, it's fascinating if you've never been in the presence of someone with a lot of charisma. It really does feel like they're hacking your primitive primate brain or something.
It can also produce a creepy feeling if you’ve had past bad experiences with similar people. My pet theory is that this is why so many polarizing figures are able to get equal numbers of devoted followers and also people who despise them: it’s almost like a disease that produces a population that has “immunity.”
Check Olivia Fox Cabane’s book The Charisma Myth. I’ve read this and found about 30-40% of it to be implementable and a percent of that have positive outcomes.
There's that subtle art of "make sure that him/her believes it was his/her idea to do it."
If you go up to someone and directly ask for something, or ask something of an audience in a group, and they feel "solicited" and put on-the-spot, it's one thing; if you can plant ideas and lead people to know what they should do, they'll simply take action when they realize that the time is right, rather than receiving that "Call To Action".
Gaslighting usually has you believing falsehoods. But yes, a charismatic person can empower you to be a better person on one extreme, or convince you you are worthless that on the other extreme.
> better person on one extreme, or convince you you are worthless that on the other extreme
Or to recast this positively, if humility is a virtue and arrogance/vainglory is deadly, then knowing and accepting that we are powerless/unworthy is perhaps the most important step on the journey to "being a better person".
The best leaders are the ones who've learned how to be servants and followers.
> would you say you satisfy the author's intent of demonstrating this skill?
I think I'm pretty likable in large part because I have a lot of social anxiety which leads to high agreeability.
I don't think I'm particularly charismatic.
> i would actually argue that your definition of charismatic tends towards manipulative. i don't think that's what you really meant.
It is, in fact. Charisma operates at a level separate from morality. Charisma is a gun. It's what you do with it that determines the ethical stance.
Certainly, there are many charismatic people that use that tool simply to manipulate others for their own personal benefit. At the extreme you get populist demagogues.
But there are also charismatic people who use that gift to bring others together to accomplish goals that benefit everyone. Good charismatic people can make you into a better version of yourself.
> i would actually argue that your definition of charismatic tends towards manipulative
All team endeavors require some kind of consensus-forming. In my experience, strong, charismatic leadership is significantly preferable to a bunch of nerds engaging in dialectics.
Manipulation and charisma are different concepts. There are plenty of highly charismatic manipulative people, just as there are many highly manipulative people with absolutely no charisma.
Charisma may make it easier to manipulate people or it may create an environment where you don’t need to manipulate people to form a consensus.
This is well meaning advice but it makes the mistake of believing the block to engineers attaining charisma is a lack of knowing how to do it. In reality, what you see is primarily an emotional reaction, where they find emotional justifications for why this advice is not right for them.
I find what's often unacknowledged is just how much interest in technical matters is driven by a trauma response. A lot of us were unpopular as children or were ostracized for being weird and attaining mastery over an "objective" arena allowed us to feel better about our place in the world.
Asking people like that to "just be charismatic" is asking them to depart from a safe space and enter into an arena they've previously associated with a lot of unpleasant emotions. People will act out in ways that feel are perfectly "rational" for them but are coming from places they're unable to explain because they're driven by more primal urges.
For the advice to stick, you have to address the root cause which is the emotional, not the informational need. Otherwise, you're going to see the same well meaning advice go around in circles with only a minority of the field being motivated to act on it.
I agree with you. This is the real ultimate truth:
> "For the advice to stick, you have to address the root cause which is the emotional, not the informational need. Otherwise, you're going to see the same well meaning advice go around in circles with only a minority of the field being motivated to act on it."
The emotional trauma is the real thing you need to address. Still, many people in the tech industry are not yet ready to go deeper on the emotional part, so you need to help them go there using skillful means, which means meeting people where they are.
A piece of informative advice is not completely helpful, but it can trigger the curiosity that people need to go deeper into the emotional realm.
> interest in technical matters is driven by a trauma response
Wow, I’ve never considered this but it makes sense, to a degree. Children who are “properly” socialized, or socially motivated, would have much less time available to pursue technical skill acquisition. I could imagine things snowball from there as they choose paths of least resistance in life, e.g. opting for engineering rather than sales as a career.
I don't think that's what the GP says. They mean that people undergoing trauma from personal interactions look for a way to relieve it, of course. Trauma is about survival (whether or not the person is aware or really in danger); there is a strong drive to resolve it and mastery is a very common way. In this case, by mastering something non-social they get strength and stability.
> interest in technical matters is driven by a trauma response... attaining mastery over an "objective" arena allowed us to feel better about our place in the world.
Interesting insight. I do think there's some truth to this - seeking an "objective" truth is emotionally comforting because it eliminates all the messy ambiguity of human culture.
But it's not that technical folks lack these social skills, it's that we've been conditioned not to use them for fear of appearing subjective and not rigorous enough.
In it's toxic form, this leads technical folks outright rejecting messages from anyone who tries to be charismatic. The effort is viewed negatively and with suspicion. Surely the correct answer would be dull and obvious and not require showmanship to convey. Charisma is an attempt to manipulate the room using levers other than objective facts. The horror! /s
Reality is you can't ignore the human factors. Your ability to sell the idea is just as important as your ability to code it.
There's a reason things like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" remain so popular. (Side note: the explanation is to become a more enjoyable person to have around. It's not a collection of life hacks for exploiting others.)
We've all worked with people who believe their code should speak for itself. Thing is, it doesn't. It never has. It never will. All collaboration work is a social process, and no matter how beautiful someone's output is, if they're an asshole no one wants to be in the room with, their magnum opus will rot in a neglected PR.
Charisma is not sufficient by itself. You've still gotta have chops, or at least a willingness to work to get them. But charisma+chops will take you much farther than skill alone.
You’re reinforcing his point without realizing it.
There are a few uncharismatic people across the planet who are so unreasonably unrivaled in their combination of intelligence, drive, and luck that they are accepted despite their social shortcomings.
Though as I understand it, Woz is quite kind, and while Torvalds is blunt, he often is charismatic, as he easily convinces others that his path is correct (if he actually believes it is).
It's not for nothing that Free Open Source Software projects enjoy the tongue-in-cheek term "Benevolent Dictator For Life". And Theo de Raadt is an earlier example of how to sow discord in an OS project, fork it, and remake the codebase [OpenBSD] for a distinctive market sector, while retaining that distasteful arrogance that drew the attention of the community.
People are always surprised when I say that I’m an engineer (they usually guess I’m a professor, sometimes an actor or comedian), and am often discretely asked, “why are you normal and easy to talk to, when every tech/computer guy at my business is an utter freak”
More nerds should apply an engineering approach to “having a nice personality”. It’s a totally solvable problem — or, if you prefer, an attainable skill.
I know you have good intentions with your advice, and maybe it has come easy for you
But for a lot of people, developing social skills and "a nice personality" has been a life-long struggle
There is a big overlap in STEM with the autism spectrum, with ADHD, with anxiety and trauma, all of which make it very hard for people to "fit in" and develop social skills that come easily to neurotypical people
So while I share your sentiment that soft skills are valuable and are worth developing. Please don't judge others for not doing so, and keep in mind that they might not even have the capacity to do it, even if they want to. They might also have had a really hard time their whole lives being judged and rejected by "normal people". Please have some extra empathy with them
> “why are you normal and easy to talk to, when every tech/computer guy at my business is an utter freak”
Well, some people certainly have a judgment problem of their own (not referring to parent commenter here).
> It’s a totally solvable problem — or, if you prefer, an attainable skill.
The resistance to developing this trait is also telling and belies a lack of objectivity: if it's a weak point for you, then even a modest amount of effort and attention can help a significant amount. If you're not interested in doing the work, that's totally fine, just work/pay/ask to figure out what the relevant 20% is that gets you 80% there. I suspect it will be somewhat different for everyone.
I feel like my charisma (feels like too strong a term for myself, but whatever) took a big leap once I became more comfortable with myself and learning to be okay with people not liking me. Still working on the last one but small increments help a lot. Once people perceive you don't need something from them without being stand-offish, they're often more open to you.
Yes! Exactly this. Many years ago I got this epiphany that “it’s just another kind of interface”. Specifically to me as a system.
In this day and age I’m not even convinced anymore that I’m not actually just some kind of an elaborate fine-tuning layer running in a cluster somewhere, but that’s a whole another discussion!
Overall the article is pretty good and makes a great point about the value of technical people developing soft skills
> Charisma sets enjoyable coworkers apart from difficult ones
This statement is not really true though. There are plenty of very charismatic people who are not enjoyable to work with, and there are plenty of uncharismatic people who are very enjoyable to work with
An example of the former, Steve Jobs was a famously charismatic person, who used his charisma very effectively to lead Apple and create amazing products. However he is also known for being a pretty difficult person to work with and being a bully and a-hole to many
As the article notes (as well as the top reference book, The Charisma Myth), there are many different styles of charisma. But charisma doesn't magically make someone be a great co-worker or empathetic leader
PS: I highly recommend getting a copy of The Charisma Myth and doing the exercises. They are amazing at calming social anxiety. Even if you don't really want to be charismatic, if you feel like you often get uncomfortable in social situations, the exercises in this book can help you immensely
I don't remember whether it's from "How to make friends...", but I still remember the phrase "Don't be interesting, be interested".
This is easier said than done of course when you have ADHD and your mind starts wandering the moment you start talking to another person, but at least there's a plan to improve :)
Pretty funny calling "the most important skill in corporate amaerica" an underrated skill. That reality is a part of why many in the tech world reject traditional workplaces full of politics, inefficiencies, and corruption. Charismatic people sadly drive all of that, at the cost of the workers below often.
Now on a micro level, sure. It's still pretty obvious. Be likeable, don't rock the boat unless the boat is tumbling down a waterfall. Make people feel better in your presence. The skills to acquire are a bit ephemeral, but you'll always have an easier time navigating a workplace if people simply feel happier than not when communicating. Not fairly underrated unless you haven't been around a mass social outing like school.
Soft skills aren't underrated. On the contrary, people talk about them all the damn time to the point that it dominates hiring practices and the interview process
Good article overall. Quite often we are caught in our own dilemma and risk being toxic. My only criticism of the article will be not mentioning the risks of being "too empathic" and absorbing other people's problems into yourself. You should not only be able to get into their shoes, but also get out of there too and do it relatively quickly. Otherwise, you cannot survive as a leader of many and will be quickly crushed emotionally.
My tip is that if you're not the type that can easily read body language, or adjust your own body language, you're better off just acting genuine and yourself - rather than trying to fake charisma. Charisma minus all the non-verbal elements tends to equal fake/creepy/robotic.
This might be relevant: The Charisma Myth by Cabane [0]. I haven't read the book, but I listened to a talk. IIRC, it was this: https://youtu.be/LMu_md_5PQ4. I am not sure.
She proposes that charisma is something that can be learned to a very high degree, and she teaches those methods.
That book changed my life. I recommend for anyone and everyone to read it and at least try the 3 tips from the intro
I've given away 100+ (paid) copies of this book to friends, family, co-workers and strangers
I first learned about the book when I randomly attended a talk by Olivia Fox-Cabane (the author) at Stanford. Out of curiosity I bought the book, read it, thought it was interesting, but didn't do the exercises - nothing really changed
A few months later, I picked it up again and started working through the exercises... wow! huge impact, I went from being extremely uncomfortable in pretty much any social situation, to being able to hold a conversation with almost anyone, including strangers on the street, to then people wanting to be with me and to lead them
The secret is to make the exercises into a habit, they really change they way you feel internally, which reflects outwards, deeply impacts how other people perceive you and how they treat you, which then reinforces they way you feel internally and creates a virtuous cycle
In practice, this sort of thing amounts to proclaiming lower primate tribal dynamics “human skills” and enabling them rather than supplanting or engineering around them.
Sure, you’re more effective in the context of the game if you play the game and play it competently, but that is advocating for the best way to do the dumb/wrong thing instead of advocating for the smart/right thing.
As a kid, I didn't understand charisma. So I got a natural 18 for my D&D fighter, big deal. I'ma gonna run the goblins through with my long sword now...
As an adult, I assess every person I meet through the charisma lens first, if not almost first, because I think it's the foundation of your reputation with others. Seems it's almost magic.
Why? It's a serious question and essential to understand about oneself. Why are you avoiding socializing? It's fundamental to humanity, in common even with other great apes, etc.
Great summary, and sort of highlights how charisma is very frequently useful for deception. That's why the advice that people should "go learn to be charismatic" is very different from "learn social skills / be easy to work with / don't be a dick".
Influencing people is certainly a necessary skill to some extent, but if you're actively working on becoming very good at it, then you're not really worthy of trust almost by definition. Better get good enough so that other people can't recognize it. Check out my best-selling new book "How to lie effectively and ensure your political machinations are never fully recognized as such"
Its an important skill for corporate engineers that want to ladder climb. I think this over focus lately on communication in engineering is making work suck more. This is how politic players dominate and technical work doesn't matter as much as how you sell impact, real or not. We're all stuck playing their game. Engineers get stuck with poorly made decisions made by peoples who feelings cant get hurt, the things we build start to suck. Like a code review you have to hold back on because you can't leave to many comments tearing it apart without coming off like a dick.
Only sub par engineers need to constantly be politely told they suck and have to sugar coat everything for them. Good engineers come up with good ideas, at least good at a foundational level, where you can discuss the pros and cons. If an idea has some legitimate merit but a drawback you don't think is worth it, then the criticisms are real and honest, no ones feelings are getting hurt.
This is a pretty idealistic and unrealistic take on human behavior. I realize a lot of software types like to pooh-pooh soft skills and think that the ideal is that people can always be Perfect Rational Beings. But this is not how actual humans operate, not even software people.
It's one thing to use a software career to explore the things that give you joy. Building software is fun. But it's another thing to use it to run away from things you're intimidated by, like interacting with other people or empathizing with them. "I got into software so I wouldn't have to deal with people" is a joke, but it's not really a realistic way of approaching the world beyond the very junior level.
You can either rant about how people should be or meet them as they actually are.
You didn't really address the value of charisma. You just vented against ladder climbing corporate engineers and insinuated you are mean in code reviews.
Charisma isn't lying or being sensitive, so you aren't opposed to it.
There's a whole section in this article called "Motivation" which tries to highlight the importance of soft skills in general for engineers. It doesn't begin with just charisma. Charsmia is just one part of the soft skills overview this series is going over it looks like
The ability to play the game is part of being a good engineer. That doesn't mean you have to out-do the sales team for outgoingness or anything like that, but you do have to be able to persuade people of the rightness of your ideas. That's will never be a purely technical skill.
It's all related. Your effectiveness depends to some extent on the people who work with you (both up and down the org chart) and the problems you work on. Unless you work solo, charisma matters as much and maybe even more than other hard skills.
> I think this over focus lately on communication in engineering is making work suck more. This is how politic players dominate and technical work doesn't matter as much as how you sell impact, real or not.
Yes, tech companies have become more about ladders, optics, proxy metrics, performance review than about building, experimenting, leading with technical skill.
This happens because tech got infected with corpo MBA-style practices. Obviously, not a thriving environment for innovators. Great environment for corporate leeches who themselves can't do anything but want to tell "others" what they should be doing.
It's also a great environment for skilled technical people who don't mind speaking to another human being in person every now and then.
The idea that you are either an MBA-type "politic player" with zero technical skills whatsoever, or someone doing the "real work" who is super technical but starts fopsweating at the idea of having to present their work or write something that isn't code doesn't really line up with my experience.
A sizable percentage of my managers have written code while being managers. A sizable percentage of my programming coworkers have had MBAs.
The two extremes do not last very long in any healthy organization.
I hate to break it to you, but you get to write software because you work for a company that needs to generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders. That is why "corpo MBA" people exist.
Inconveniently for some software types, the world doesn't and shouldn't revolve around software development.
Hopefully we can just get away from "MBA types" vs. "software types" altogether.
You should be well rounded. Managers with MBAs who work for tech companies should be able to have technical conversations, and be able to share their opinions with technical people without sounding like imbeciles. Software engineers should be able to understand and discuss business considerations without sounding like it is beneath them, or similarly sounding like they think the money just appears in the bank account magically.
The healthiest organizations promote this multidisciplinary approach, they invest in their employees to help make it happen, and most importantly and perhaps most controversially, if you're not well rounded and knowledgable about all aspects of the business it is extremely career-limiting beyond the lowest levels of management or whatever the terminal IC role is in the org.
> Hopefully we can just get away from "MBA types" vs. "software types" altogether.
Sounds great. Except.. if you're advocating for "charisma" in the first place, then that's probably not really the goal and definitely not the effect that you'll see. Hence the various cranky/skeptical/cynical comments in this thread. There's plenty of charisma in tech already, and it's usually associated with fraudsters like SBF.
> I hate to break it to you, but you get to write software because you work for a company that needs to generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders. That is why "corpo MBA" people exist.
No one's blaming MBA. In fact, if the corpo MBA people actually focused on - generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders - that'd be great. Use some skill to generate these.
But corpo MBAs spend an enormous amount of time in ladder-climbing, promos, hirings, firings, reorgs - all of which are orthogonal to the points you described earlier: generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders.
TL;DR corpo MBA are not doing what is required of them. Instead, they are sucking on innovators with corpo policies - leading to the original post.
I hate to break it to you, but unless you design a business exactly exquisitely perfect the first time AND trap its employees in amber so they never want to leave, get promoted, or age and retire, then a large part of running it properly is "promos, hirings, firings, and reorgs."
Making the machine run better and more efficiently is how they generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to the shareholders. It's the test automation of the business world.
> I hate to break it to you, but unless you design a business exactly exquisitely perfect the first time AND trap its employees in amber so they never want to leave, get promoted, or age and retire, then a large part of running it properly is "promos, hirings, firings, and reorgs."
This is exactly corpo MBA-style which is orthogonal to innovation. By stating this statement, you just contradicted your own point earlier about why corpo MBAs are needed.
I hate to break it to you - you ARE the typical corpo MBA who will shift goalposts to justify your own position - and it is very evident to anyone engaging in a discussion with you.
I wish the author hadn't used the word Charisma in the title. He doesn't actually describe or define charisma in the text. I suppose this is a primary element of a successful (click attracting) blog post: to provoke discussion by what you leave out.
My takeaway is to ignore the title and per the text, be able to work with other engineers (play well with others). That means speaking their language and being able to relate to others, both with technical precision as warranted, and with human/emotive understanding. To remember that it's not about you, it's about the team/org. To keep in mind principles such as "assume good intent". etc.
Now, it does so happen that most orgs are dysfunctional so being successful at that more "human" / relatability part does mean being successfully dysfunctional. Sadly. Author does live in his utopian world and the blog is titled as such.
If we assume that both the typical engineer and non technical person is not a jerk, it’s still easier to talk to an engineer because you both speak the same language and usually have the same concept of the world.
It’s harder for many engineers to be outcome focus (what non engineers care about “business value”) and work backwards without getting into the weeds. Engineers usually think in terms of process.
Engineers are also more pessimistic thinking about all of the things that can go wrong and non engineers are usually more optimistic seeing everything that is possible. I’m not passing judgment on either.
It depends on what position you are being hired for. In my previous life before I pivoted in consulting, I was often being hired to be the CTO/director/manager’s “lieutenant” - the person who actually implemented his priorities and who he could just tell what needed to be done and for me to be the “cat herder”, “change agent”, hands on architect. If I hit off with the with the hiring manager, everything else fell into places.
reframing 'soft' skills as 'durable' skills creates a more powerful way of relating to them. Olivia Fox-Cabane's book is a great primer.
unfortunately, I've inherited an immoderate amount of charisma and that makes not being overbearing a full time job. maintaining any skills that even approach what strangers guess I can do is a consuming pursuit. setting expectations so people don't feel betrayed when it lands that I'm actually average or less in most meaningful ways is a constant battle. we demonize the 'halo-effect,' thinking people get unjust advantages, yet don't also reflect that projecting envy and putting people on pedastals and then knocking them off is pathological.
show me a charismatic person and I will show you someone who is used to being manipulated and embattled. if you have ever seen an intact male in a dog park, he's not the one starting the fights but somehow he's always in the middle of them. after a while the diplomacy reads as manipulative. I could be describing the experience of an attractive woman, as the dynamic is similar. there is a great deal of peril in being the object of envy.
reality is, I'm a mid technologist who writes and speaks persuasively and pursues difficult hobbies to justify it. is it bullshit? I work very hard for it not to be. if you happen to acquire charisma later in life, be warey of its pitfalls as well.
If you are already charismatic, don't hide your light under a bush. I often say, I'll be humble when I'm that great too.
As a theater director and actor I spend a lot of time thinking about "charisma". What is it that makes some people interesting to look at, even when they're not doing anything?
Physical attractiveness can play into it, but there are some very charismatic actors who aren't attractive. Acting skill plays into it, but often charismatic actors are only mediocre at "acting". It's commonly associated with confidence, but some charismatic actors have a habit of playing un-confident roles. (Which is not the same as a lack of personal confidence, but what is it they're doing that conveys both "confident" and "insecure" simultaneously?")
It's often said to be about commitment, a sense that they're really "present" and really focused on you. That's certainly something we want actors to do: the more they care about their scene-partners, the more the audience will be drawn to both. (That's true even when the focus is based on a negative emotion, like hatred, but it has to be a really targeted kind of hate and not just a general anger.)
I can teach a lot about the theory of acting, but I have only a vague idea of why it works. When it does, it can be really potent, though it can be be incredibly hard to get. People will often do the same wrong thing harder. A lot of the silly acting games they teach are about getting you to at least do a different thing than what you were doing, hoping that somehow you'll accidentally discover the right track.
I'm not sure any of this is really "charisma" in the sense that this writer means it. I certainly support his overall gist: soft skills are massively underrated.
The author of the article chiming in here...
Charisma is indeed a complex trait. That's why, in the article, I say:
"...it is not a single trait but a broad spectrum of traits that share things in common."
What I'm trying to convey here is that if you try to define charisma, no matter what definition you come up with, you will always leave many things outside its definition. Instead of trying to define it, I think it's better to explore the different traits that make a person charismatic. In the article, I decided to explore three of them: making meaningful connections, empathy, and warmth.
I agree there are many more traits that could describe a charismatic person. I also agree that "presence" might be one of the most important ones that were left out of the article.
Which brings us to an interesting question: What does it mean to be present?
Just as with Charisma, Presence is just another skill that is better not to define but to explore through the behaviors it displays.
"The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao..."
Genuine openness seems to cover many of these traits.
Tao can Tao not constant Tao; Game can Game not constant Game
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
As long as we're having fun with it, I don't understand why the fake version of the opening isn't "Dao can dao, very dao. Name can name, very name". That is surely what a modern speaker will think when they see the text.
> but I have only a vague idea of why it works. When it does, it can be really potent, though it can be be incredibly hard to get
The top reference in the article is the book The Charisma Myth (really highly recommend it)
In that book, Olivia Fox-Cabane (the author), explains that we are subconsciously attuned to the cues of charisma. It's essentially an instinctive trait that we are wired with. Hence, it is very easy for people to detect charisma, and it is pretty much impossible to fake charisma
So then, a good way to develop charisma, is to change the way you feel internally. Essentially develop the ability to "feel charismatic", and then your body will reflect it outwardly, which will make people notice it, which will make them treat you like a charismatic person, which will make you feel charismatic, thus creating a virtuous cycle
The book has many exercises to bootstrap the process and develop the skills to be more charismatic. They really do work, but also require plenty of practice
Thanks. I've put in a request at my library.
I seem to have a fair amount of "stage presence". People have liked to watch me act, even when I was brand new at the craft.
With a little luck, the book will affirm some of the things I'm already doing, but make me aware of it. And hopefully teach me a few new ones.
My guess is that it's the same thing in personal interactions - the depth of emotional genuineness.
Humans universally desire connection to other humans; it's survival, it's desire, it's necessary for emotional processing. Empathy understanding others' emotions; it's a universal skill. We need to be expert readers of emotion. We can sense when it's false or partly covered up, and long for that deeper connection that unlocks our own emotions.
An actor has the challenge of finding genuine emotions to play a fictional person.
> It's often said to be about commitment, a sense that they're really "present" and really focused on you. That's certainly something we want actors to do: the more they care about their scene-partners, the more the audience will be drawn to both.
This is an enormously important point. The secret is that charisma is mostly a "pull" (react) process. Does it feel like I'm happy to see you? Am I surfing your energy? Am I empathetic? How do I handle your feedback? Am I really listening, or just waiting until you stop talking to say my piece?
If you mistake it for primarily a "push" (act) process, people will just think you're a wanker. As the author puts it, "Charisma is all about how you make others feel". Charisma is a full-duplex process.
That might be good advice for arrogant actors, but it's not a good definition.
Charisma is not just about relationship, or how they interact with people.
Charisma means having hidden information that lets you operate in the world more efficiently. It lets you maintain your self where others cave to external pressure. It's excellence demonstrated through poise and resilience. It means being worth watching.
Charisma in an acting context is different in that it adds another ball to juggle, but it's still a mostly-reactive exercise. Stella Adler's "acting is reacting" is an adage for a reason, and without that foundation, a person will not be perceived as charismatic even if they "act charismatic".
This is something I also try to teach new D&D players - of the six stats, charisma is the one that's most often misunderstood and misinterpreted.
As a player in the 80s and as someone who was just a kid, we all assumed it meant attractiveness despite the explanation in either PHB or DMG that someone like Hitler would have had a high charisma. And then they went and added the comeliness stat that was explicitly stated to be attractiveness. It was hard for us to understand.
I think it involves smiling.
I'm still waiting for the right script.
Amusingly, I'm getting a chance to put that into practice right now. I'm playing an extremely tiny supporting role in my current play. I was actually up for the lead, but didn't get it. (I think they made the right choice.)
Before I had played a lead, this would be very frustrating. Having played leads, I now know what it is the lead needs from me, and I can be very important in my place. It's a useful demonstration of what a good actor can do without the script giving them a lot.
(I know that was a joke, but I thought it was worth noting.)
> As a theater director and actor I spend a lot of time thinking about "charisma". What is it that makes some people interesting to look at, even when they're not doing anything?
> Physical attractiveness can play into it [etc...]
You might be interested to know (at least, I was) that the original concept was developed out of the study of rhetoric, and referred to the phenomenon that two different people giving identical speeches (that is, identically worded speeches) might receive very different reactions from an audience. This is, as you note, a very broad phenomenon, with many different causes. But all of them would be called "charisma" because the concern was with the effect on the audience.
Because of this, I find "Underrated soft skills: Charisma" to be something of a weird title - in my understanding "charisma" refers to all soft skills.
-----
My favorite demonstration of the idea comes from a comedy sketch I found on youtube titled "MDE: Trex helps out Robby". Trex seems to be a pickup artist who has been called in to help someone who has trouble getting dates:
> [Trex:] (whispering to Robby) I just spent an enormous amount of time and money training you to be my protegé. I want you to go in there, I want you to talk to that fly-ass bitch on the right side, I want you to say some wild shit to her. Say "I'm dat gorilla dick nigga. I make dyke pussy wet."
> [Robby:] (whispering to Trex) I'm not saying the N-word. Sorry.
> [Trex:] "I'm the gorilla dick pussy god. I make dyke pussy wet."
> [Robby:] All right. Sorry. (Robby rolls his wheelchair over to the fly-ass bitch on the right side.)
> [Robby:] (out loud, kind of) I'm like gr -- ah -- gerilla -- GOrilla. I'm like gorilla dick baby. (pauses, thinks, readjusts his glasses) I'm that gorilla dick (pause) god. I make di- dyke pussy...ies wet. Okay. (exhales loudly, readjusts his glasses) I'm like gr - god damn it I can't - (scene cuts to Trex whispering in Robby's ear)
This has always struck me as a great example of being able to provide advice to someone else that would work for you, but won't work for them.
I think the author confuses simple likability for charisma. Charismatic people generally have a lot of likability, but not all likable people are charismatic.
Charismatic people aren't just able to get people to like them, they are able to persuade people to adopt their viewpoint. When someone charismatic wants X to happen, you find yourself also wanting X to happen.
This distinction matters, because the easy path to likability is agreeability: simply do what the people around you want you to do. They'll all like you, which is definitely valuable. But it won't necessarily get you closer to your goals.
Charisma, which is a quite rare trait, has a special balance of likeability and dis-agreeability, where people will get on board with your plan and feel good doing it. It's the ability to increase their agreeability.
I had lots of this when I was starting my career. As far as I could tell, it was some combination of being seen as very sharp, energetic, quirky, and most of all enthusiastic in a vision and enjoying every minute working toward it. After getting back from some OS/2 developer course at Redmond, I accidentally got a mainframe COBOL ERP software company to turning a pet side project into effectively a Visual Basic for OS/2. It did have a COBOL generator back-end though so they could sell to existing customers. The company's profits declined as it alienated existing customers that were paying large support contracts.
At some point in my life I unconsciously decided that charisma (in this sense) was something I did not want to exercise, and was perhaps even wrong to exercise.
In so many facets of our lives already, our wants are being manipulated for the benefit of others. And who am I to decide what is important? For things that involve other people, I’d rather make that decision collectively. I want the thoughts, opinions, and feelings of people who don’t possess or exercise charisma to have space and weight.
I was struck by another comment calling the feedback loop a "virtuous cycle". Early-elementary-school me found it disturbingly weird and an unwanted responsibility for others' choices. Consciously resolved by "I'm so not doing this thing anymore".
Perhaps styles of leadership might be taught early, so there's greater awareness of possibilities/alternatives?
And I really don't think charisma is teachable, but it is extremely useful, and weirdly real (in that one can be persuaded of things one doesn't actually believe and not really understand how you are agreeing even as you agree) (source: married to a very charismatic but also fairly selfish person for ~20 years, also worked with fairly charismatic bosses).
> and weirdly real (in that one can be persuaded of things one doesn't actually believe and not really understand how you are agreeing even as you agree)
Yeah, it's fascinating if you've never been in the presence of someone with a lot of charisma. It really does feel like they're hacking your primitive primate brain or something.
It can also produce a creepy feeling if you’ve had past bad experiences with similar people. My pet theory is that this is why so many polarizing figures are able to get equal numbers of devoted followers and also people who despise them: it’s almost like a disease that produces a population that has “immunity.”
It is learnable.
Check Olivia Fox Cabane’s book The Charisma Myth. I’ve read this and found about 30-40% of it to be implementable and a percent of that have positive outcomes.
There's that subtle art of "make sure that him/her believes it was his/her idea to do it."
If you go up to someone and directly ask for something, or ask something of an audience in a group, and they feel "solicited" and put on-the-spot, it's one thing; if you can plant ideas and lead people to know what they should do, they'll simply take action when they realize that the time is right, rather than receiving that "Call To Action".
The kids would say aura
The rizz.
slang for charisma, no?
Yes, the word rizz comes directly from ka-RIZZ-ma.
Fo' shizzle, mah nizzle! Hackernewz rizz in da hizz-ouse!
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jive-filters
yes, cha-rizz-ma
Different than gaslighting? One is not with malice?
Gaslighting usually has you believing falsehoods. But yes, a charismatic person can empower you to be a better person on one extreme, or convince you you are worthless that on the other extreme.
> better person on one extreme, or convince you you are worthless that on the other extreme
Or to recast this positively, if humility is a virtue and arrogance/vainglory is deadly, then knowing and accepting that we are powerless/unworthy is perhaps the most important step on the journey to "being a better person".
The best leaders are the ones who've learned how to be servants and followers.
correct but pedantic. would you say you satisfy the author's intent of demonstrating this skill? (whichever it is, likability or charisma)
i would actually argue that your definition of charismatic tends towards manipulative. i don't think that's what you really meant.
> would you say you satisfy the author's intent of demonstrating this skill?
I think I'm pretty likable in large part because I have a lot of social anxiety which leads to high agreeability.
I don't think I'm particularly charismatic.
> i would actually argue that your definition of charismatic tends towards manipulative. i don't think that's what you really meant.
It is, in fact. Charisma operates at a level separate from morality. Charisma is a gun. It's what you do with it that determines the ethical stance.
Certainly, there are many charismatic people that use that tool simply to manipulate others for their own personal benefit. At the extreme you get populist demagogues.
But there are also charismatic people who use that gift to bring others together to accomplish goals that benefit everyone. Good charismatic people can make you into a better version of yourself.
> i would actually argue that your definition of charismatic tends towards manipulative
All team endeavors require some kind of consensus-forming. In my experience, strong, charismatic leadership is significantly preferable to a bunch of nerds engaging in dialectics.
Manipulation and charisma are different concepts. There are plenty of highly charismatic manipulative people, just as there are many highly manipulative people with absolutely no charisma.
Charisma may make it easier to manipulate people or it may create an environment where you don’t need to manipulate people to form a consensus.
This is well meaning advice but it makes the mistake of believing the block to engineers attaining charisma is a lack of knowing how to do it. In reality, what you see is primarily an emotional reaction, where they find emotional justifications for why this advice is not right for them.
I find what's often unacknowledged is just how much interest in technical matters is driven by a trauma response. A lot of us were unpopular as children or were ostracized for being weird and attaining mastery over an "objective" arena allowed us to feel better about our place in the world.
Asking people like that to "just be charismatic" is asking them to depart from a safe space and enter into an arena they've previously associated with a lot of unpleasant emotions. People will act out in ways that feel are perfectly "rational" for them but are coming from places they're unable to explain because they're driven by more primal urges.
For the advice to stick, you have to address the root cause which is the emotional, not the informational need. Otherwise, you're going to see the same well meaning advice go around in circles with only a minority of the field being motivated to act on it.
The author of the article chiming in here...
I agree with you. This is the real ultimate truth:
> "For the advice to stick, you have to address the root cause which is the emotional, not the informational need. Otherwise, you're going to see the same well meaning advice go around in circles with only a minority of the field being motivated to act on it."
The emotional trauma is the real thing you need to address. Still, many people in the tech industry are not yet ready to go deeper on the emotional part, so you need to help them go there using skillful means, which means meeting people where they are.
A piece of informative advice is not completely helpful, but it can trigger the curiosity that people need to go deeper into the emotional realm.
> interest in technical matters is driven by a trauma response
Wow, I’ve never considered this but it makes sense, to a degree. Children who are “properly” socialized, or socially motivated, would have much less time available to pursue technical skill acquisition. I could imagine things snowball from there as they choose paths of least resistance in life, e.g. opting for engineering rather than sales as a career.
I don't think that's what the GP says. They mean that people undergoing trauma from personal interactions look for a way to relieve it, of course. Trauma is about survival (whether or not the person is aware or really in danger); there is a strong drive to resolve it and mastery is a very common way. In this case, by mastering something non-social they get strength and stability.
> interest in technical matters is driven by a trauma response... attaining mastery over an "objective" arena allowed us to feel better about our place in the world.
Interesting insight. I do think there's some truth to this - seeking an "objective" truth is emotionally comforting because it eliminates all the messy ambiguity of human culture.
But it's not that technical folks lack these social skills, it's that we've been conditioned not to use them for fear of appearing subjective and not rigorous enough.
In it's toxic form, this leads technical folks outright rejecting messages from anyone who tries to be charismatic. The effort is viewed negatively and with suspicion. Surely the correct answer would be dull and obvious and not require showmanship to convey. Charisma is an attempt to manipulate the room using levers other than objective facts. The horror! /s
Reality is you can't ignore the human factors. Your ability to sell the idea is just as important as your ability to code it.
There's a reason things like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" remain so popular. (Side note: the explanation is to become a more enjoyable person to have around. It's not a collection of life hacks for exploiting others.)
We've all worked with people who believe their code should speak for itself. Thing is, it doesn't. It never has. It never will. All collaboration work is a social process, and no matter how beautiful someone's output is, if they're an asshole no one wants to be in the room with, their magnum opus will rot in a neglected PR.
Charisma is not sufficient by itself. You've still gotta have chops, or at least a willingness to work to get them. But charisma+chops will take you much farther than skill alone.
I think linus torvalds is an example that would disprove your theory here. He's not likeable, yet his work speaks for itself.
Similarly, Steve Wozniak isn't considered charismatic, yet no one denies his code.
You’re reinforcing his point without realizing it.
There are a few uncharismatic people across the planet who are so unreasonably unrivaled in their combination of intelligence, drive, and luck that they are accepted despite their social shortcomings.
Though as I understand it, Woz is quite kind, and while Torvalds is blunt, he often is charismatic, as he easily convinces others that his path is correct (if he actually believes it is).
It's not for nothing that Free Open Source Software projects enjoy the tongue-in-cheek term "Benevolent Dictator For Life". And Theo de Raadt is an earlier example of how to sow discord in an OS project, fork it, and remake the codebase [OpenBSD] for a distinctive market sector, while retaining that distasteful arrogance that drew the attention of the community.
https://www.openbsd.org/goals.html [Now with "politics-free" as a design goal!]
I disagree. Linus seems plenty likable, although he's blunt in his assessments of what he considers bad ideas. Those can coexist.
And I've never heard anything but good about Woz. He seems like a genuinely nice, enthusiastic, approachable person.
I've never met either of them in person so I can't personally vouch for their charisma, but I don't think of them have reputations as _not_ having it.
Equally good as career advice or dating advice.
People are always surprised when I say that I’m an engineer (they usually guess I’m a professor, sometimes an actor or comedian), and am often discretely asked, “why are you normal and easy to talk to, when every tech/computer guy at my business is an utter freak”
More nerds should apply an engineering approach to “having a nice personality”. It’s a totally solvable problem — or, if you prefer, an attainable skill.
I know you have good intentions with your advice, and maybe it has come easy for you
But for a lot of people, developing social skills and "a nice personality" has been a life-long struggle
There is a big overlap in STEM with the autism spectrum, with ADHD, with anxiety and trauma, all of which make it very hard for people to "fit in" and develop social skills that come easily to neurotypical people
So while I share your sentiment that soft skills are valuable and are worth developing. Please don't judge others for not doing so, and keep in mind that they might not even have the capacity to do it, even if they want to. They might also have had a really hard time their whole lives being judged and rejected by "normal people". Please have some extra empathy with them
> “why are you normal and easy to talk to, when every tech/computer guy at my business is an utter freak”
Well, some people certainly have a judgment problem of their own (not referring to parent commenter here).
> It’s a totally solvable problem — or, if you prefer, an attainable skill.
The resistance to developing this trait is also telling and belies a lack of objectivity: if it's a weak point for you, then even a modest amount of effort and attention can help a significant amount. If you're not interested in doing the work, that's totally fine, just work/pay/ask to figure out what the relevant 20% is that gets you 80% there. I suspect it will be somewhat different for everyone.
I feel like my charisma (feels like too strong a term for myself, but whatever) took a big leap once I became more comfortable with myself and learning to be okay with people not liking me. Still working on the last one but small increments help a lot. Once people perceive you don't need something from them without being stand-offish, they're often more open to you.
Yes! Exactly this. Many years ago I got this epiphany that “it’s just another kind of interface”. Specifically to me as a system.
In this day and age I’m not even convinced anymore that I’m not actually just some kind of an elaborate fine-tuning layer running in a cluster somewhere, but that’s a whole another discussion!
Overall the article is pretty good and makes a great point about the value of technical people developing soft skills
> Charisma sets enjoyable coworkers apart from difficult ones
This statement is not really true though. There are plenty of very charismatic people who are not enjoyable to work with, and there are plenty of uncharismatic people who are very enjoyable to work with
An example of the former, Steve Jobs was a famously charismatic person, who used his charisma very effectively to lead Apple and create amazing products. However he is also known for being a pretty difficult person to work with and being a bully and a-hole to many
As the article notes (as well as the top reference book, The Charisma Myth), there are many different styles of charisma. But charisma doesn't magically make someone be a great co-worker or empathetic leader
PS: I highly recommend getting a copy of The Charisma Myth and doing the exercises. They are amazing at calming social anxiety. Even if you don't really want to be charismatic, if you feel like you often get uncomfortable in social situations, the exercises in this book can help you immensely
I don't remember whether it's from "How to make friends...", but I still remember the phrase "Don't be interesting, be interested".
This is easier said than done of course when you have ADHD and your mind starts wandering the moment you start talking to another person, but at least there's a plan to improve :)
Pretty funny calling "the most important skill in corporate amaerica" an underrated skill. That reality is a part of why many in the tech world reject traditional workplaces full of politics, inefficiencies, and corruption. Charismatic people sadly drive all of that, at the cost of the workers below often.
Now on a micro level, sure. It's still pretty obvious. Be likeable, don't rock the boat unless the boat is tumbling down a waterfall. Make people feel better in your presence. The skills to acquire are a bit ephemeral, but you'll always have an easier time navigating a workplace if people simply feel happier than not when communicating. Not fairly underrated unless you haven't been around a mass social outing like school.
Underrated? Maybe not explicitly but charisma is perhaps the most highly rated human skill across history...
Soft skills aren't underrated. On the contrary, people talk about them all the damn time to the point that it dominates hiring practices and the interview process
Good article overall. Quite often we are caught in our own dilemma and risk being toxic. My only criticism of the article will be not mentioning the risks of being "too empathic" and absorbing other people's problems into yourself. You should not only be able to get into their shoes, but also get out of there too and do it relatively quickly. Otherwise, you cannot survive as a leader of many and will be quickly crushed emotionally.
Idea for your next article: Drinking the kool-aid in your free time - how to be the ideal underling of your manager's dreams.
My tip is that if you're not the type that can easily read body language, or adjust your own body language, you're better off just acting genuine and yourself - rather than trying to fake charisma. Charisma minus all the non-verbal elements tends to equal fake/creepy/robotic.
This might be relevant: The Charisma Myth by Cabane [0]. I haven't read the book, but I listened to a talk. IIRC, it was this: https://youtu.be/LMu_md_5PQ4. I am not sure.
She proposes that charisma is something that can be learned to a very high degree, and she teaches those methods.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Charisma-Myth-Science-Personal-Magnet...
That book changed my life. I recommend for anyone and everyone to read it and at least try the 3 tips from the intro
I've given away 100+ (paid) copies of this book to friends, family, co-workers and strangers
I first learned about the book when I randomly attended a talk by Olivia Fox-Cabane (the author) at Stanford. Out of curiosity I bought the book, read it, thought it was interesting, but didn't do the exercises - nothing really changed
A few months later, I picked it up again and started working through the exercises... wow! huge impact, I went from being extremely uncomfortable in pretty much any social situation, to being able to hold a conversation with almost anyone, including strangers on the street, to then people wanting to be with me and to lead them
The secret is to make the exercises into a habit, they really change they way you feel internally, which reflects outwards, deeply impacts how other people perceive you and how they treat you, which then reinforces they way you feel internally and creates a virtuous cycle
In practice, this sort of thing amounts to proclaiming lower primate tribal dynamics “human skills” and enabling them rather than supplanting or engineering around them.
Sure, you’re more effective in the context of the game if you play the game and play it competently, but that is advocating for the best way to do the dumb/wrong thing instead of advocating for the smart/right thing.
As a kid, I didn't understand charisma. So I got a natural 18 for my D&D fighter, big deal. I'ma gonna run the goblins through with my long sword now...
As an adult, I assess every person I meet through the charisma lens first, if not almost first, because I think it's the foundation of your reputation with others. Seems it's almost magic.
I'd rather invest in intelligence and end up a greybeard wizard
Why? It's a serious question and essential to understand about oneself. Why are you avoiding socializing? It's fundamental to humanity, in common even with other great apes, etc.
"Charisma is the ability to influence without logic." - Quentin Crisp
Great summary, and sort of highlights how charisma is very frequently useful for deception. That's why the advice that people should "go learn to be charismatic" is very different from "learn social skills / be easy to work with / don't be a dick".
Influencing people is certainly a necessary skill to some extent, but if you're actively working on becoming very good at it, then you're not really worthy of trust almost by definition. Better get good enough so that other people can't recognize it. Check out my best-selling new book "How to lie effectively and ensure your political machinations are never fully recognized as such"
This reads like a dispatch from an alien who’s spent the past year studying human beings.
Is charisma a skill? I doubt that.
Its an important skill for corporate engineers that want to ladder climb. I think this over focus lately on communication in engineering is making work suck more. This is how politic players dominate and technical work doesn't matter as much as how you sell impact, real or not. We're all stuck playing their game. Engineers get stuck with poorly made decisions made by peoples who feelings cant get hurt, the things we build start to suck. Like a code review you have to hold back on because you can't leave to many comments tearing it apart without coming off like a dick.
Only sub par engineers need to constantly be politely told they suck and have to sugar coat everything for them. Good engineers come up with good ideas, at least good at a foundational level, where you can discuss the pros and cons. If an idea has some legitimate merit but a drawback you don't think is worth it, then the criticisms are real and honest, no ones feelings are getting hurt.
This is a pretty idealistic and unrealistic take on human behavior. I realize a lot of software types like to pooh-pooh soft skills and think that the ideal is that people can always be Perfect Rational Beings. But this is not how actual humans operate, not even software people.
It's one thing to use a software career to explore the things that give you joy. Building software is fun. But it's another thing to use it to run away from things you're intimidated by, like interacting with other people or empathizing with them. "I got into software so I wouldn't have to deal with people" is a joke, but it's not really a realistic way of approaching the world beyond the very junior level.
You can either rant about how people should be or meet them as they actually are.
You didn't really address the value of charisma. You just vented against ladder climbing corporate engineers and insinuated you are mean in code reviews.
Charisma isn't lying or being sensitive, so you aren't opposed to it.
There's a whole section in this article called "Motivation" which tries to highlight the importance of soft skills in general for engineers. It doesn't begin with just charisma. Charsmia is just one part of the soft skills overview this series is going over it looks like
Charisma is not about honesty or empathy either. Trump is very charismatic. So is Andrew Tate.
I agree with this. The author is just documenting how to "play the game", not how to be a good engineer.
The ability to play the game is part of being a good engineer. That doesn't mean you have to out-do the sales team for outgoingness or anything like that, but you do have to be able to persuade people of the rightness of your ideas. That's will never be a purely technical skill.
It's all related. Your effectiveness depends to some extent on the people who work with you (both up and down the org chart) and the problems you work on. Unless you work solo, charisma matters as much and maybe even more than other hard skills.
Which is still valuable to some extent.
> I think this over focus lately on communication in engineering is making work suck more. This is how politic players dominate and technical work doesn't matter as much as how you sell impact, real or not.
Yes, tech companies have become more about ladders, optics, proxy metrics, performance review than about building, experimenting, leading with technical skill.
This happens because tech got infected with corpo MBA-style practices. Obviously, not a thriving environment for innovators. Great environment for corporate leeches who themselves can't do anything but want to tell "others" what they should be doing.
It's also a great environment for skilled technical people who don't mind speaking to another human being in person every now and then.
The idea that you are either an MBA-type "politic player" with zero technical skills whatsoever, or someone doing the "real work" who is super technical but starts fopsweating at the idea of having to present their work or write something that isn't code doesn't really line up with my experience.
A sizable percentage of my managers have written code while being managers. A sizable percentage of my programming coworkers have had MBAs.
The two extremes do not last very long in any healthy organization.
And people wonder why I believe software dev has fallen off a cliff.
This is why; and AI, which I see more as a side effect.
I hate to break it to you, but you get to write software because you work for a company that needs to generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders. That is why "corpo MBA" people exist.
Inconveniently for some software types, the world doesn't and shouldn't revolve around software development.
Hopefully we can just get away from "MBA types" vs. "software types" altogether.
You should be well rounded. Managers with MBAs who work for tech companies should be able to have technical conversations, and be able to share their opinions with technical people without sounding like imbeciles. Software engineers should be able to understand and discuss business considerations without sounding like it is beneath them, or similarly sounding like they think the money just appears in the bank account magically.
The healthiest organizations promote this multidisciplinary approach, they invest in their employees to help make it happen, and most importantly and perhaps most controversially, if you're not well rounded and knowledgable about all aspects of the business it is extremely career-limiting beyond the lowest levels of management or whatever the terminal IC role is in the org.
> Hopefully we can just get away from "MBA types" vs. "software types" altogether.
Sounds great. Except.. if you're advocating for "charisma" in the first place, then that's probably not really the goal and definitely not the effect that you'll see. Hence the various cranky/skeptical/cynical comments in this thread. There's plenty of charisma in tech already, and it's usually associated with fraudsters like SBF.
If SBF is what you think of when you think of charisma, you've never actually met a charismatic person.
All of this right here . . . ^^
> I hate to break it to you, but you get to write software because you work for a company that needs to generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders. That is why "corpo MBA" people exist.
No one's blaming MBA. In fact, if the corpo MBA people actually focused on - generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders - that'd be great. Use some skill to generate these.
But corpo MBAs spend an enormous amount of time in ladder-climbing, promos, hirings, firings, reorgs - all of which are orthogonal to the points you described earlier: generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to its shareholders.
TL;DR corpo MBA are not doing what is required of them. Instead, they are sucking on innovators with corpo policies - leading to the original post.
I hate to break it to you, but unless you design a business exactly exquisitely perfect the first time AND trap its employees in amber so they never want to leave, get promoted, or age and retire, then a large part of running it properly is "promos, hirings, firings, and reorgs."
Making the machine run better and more efficiently is how they generate revenue in order to pay your salary, pay the bills, and give a dividend to the shareholders. It's the test automation of the business world.
> I hate to break it to you, but unless you design a business exactly exquisitely perfect the first time AND trap its employees in amber so they never want to leave, get promoted, or age and retire, then a large part of running it properly is "promos, hirings, firings, and reorgs."
This is exactly corpo MBA-style which is orthogonal to innovation. By stating this statement, you just contradicted your own point earlier about why corpo MBAs are needed.
I hate to break it to you - you ARE the typical corpo MBA who will shift goalposts to justify your own position - and it is very evident to anyone engaging in a discussion with you.
I wish the author hadn't used the word Charisma in the title. He doesn't actually describe or define charisma in the text. I suppose this is a primary element of a successful (click attracting) blog post: to provoke discussion by what you leave out.
My takeaway is to ignore the title and per the text, be able to work with other engineers (play well with others). That means speaking their language and being able to relate to others, both with technical precision as warranted, and with human/emotive understanding. To remember that it's not about you, it's about the team/org. To keep in mind principles such as "assume good intent". etc.
Now, it does so happen that most orgs are dysfunctional so being successful at that more "human" / relatability part does mean being successfully dysfunctional. Sadly. Author does live in his utopian world and the blog is titled as such.
Working with other engineers is the easy part. Managing up and working with the “business” is a lot harder.
i dunno. i've worked with plenty of jerks over my career. some of them brilliant. at times i probably qualify as jerky. less often as i mellow.
If we assume that both the typical engineer and non technical person is not a jerk, it’s still easier to talk to an engineer because you both speak the same language and usually have the same concept of the world.
It’s harder for many engineers to be outcome focus (what non engineers care about “business value”) and work backwards without getting into the weeds. Engineers usually think in terms of process.
Engineers are also more pessimistic thinking about all of the things that can go wrong and non engineers are usually more optimistic seeing everything that is possible. I’m not passing judgment on either.
The “Geek Leader’s Handbook” (https://www.slideshare.net/CommunicationCoach/the-geeks-guid...) and my pass Amazon indoctrination of “Working Backwards” helped me a lot.
From my experience, this is what gets you up to the third interview with the CEO/manager, but never the job :/.
why?
It depends on what position you are being hired for. In my previous life before I pivoted in consulting, I was often being hired to be the CTO/director/manager’s “lieutenant” - the person who actually implemented his priorities and who he could just tell what needed to be done and for me to be the “cat herder”, “change agent”, hands on architect. If I hit off with the with the hiring manager, everything else fell into places.
reframing 'soft' skills as 'durable' skills creates a more powerful way of relating to them. Olivia Fox-Cabane's book is a great primer.
unfortunately, I've inherited an immoderate amount of charisma and that makes not being overbearing a full time job. maintaining any skills that even approach what strangers guess I can do is a consuming pursuit. setting expectations so people don't feel betrayed when it lands that I'm actually average or less in most meaningful ways is a constant battle. we demonize the 'halo-effect,' thinking people get unjust advantages, yet don't also reflect that projecting envy and putting people on pedastals and then knocking them off is pathological.
show me a charismatic person and I will show you someone who is used to being manipulated and embattled. if you have ever seen an intact male in a dog park, he's not the one starting the fights but somehow he's always in the middle of them. after a while the diplomacy reads as manipulative. I could be describing the experience of an attractive woman, as the dynamic is similar. there is a great deal of peril in being the object of envy.
reality is, I'm a mid technologist who writes and speaks persuasively and pursues difficult hobbies to justify it. is it bullshit? I work very hard for it not to be. if you happen to acquire charisma later in life, be warey of its pitfalls as well.
If you are already charismatic, don't hide your light under a bush. I often say, I'll be humble when I'm that great too.