Charismatic leaders are people who utilizes their charm and interpersonal skills to inspire, motivate, and influence their followers. They make use of their exemplary communication abilities, captivating authority, and empathetic personality. They are proven to be invaluable assets in a team.
Charismatic leaders influence their followers by being empathetic, relatable, and humble. They don’t come off as superior in skills and experiences. Rather, they strive to be an invaluable part of the team, despite being its leader, eagerly working with everyone to attain common goals.
If you’re wondering how you can use charisma to influence your team, read on because we will talk about the different approaches you can apply. You’ll learn how to use the power of communication to influence people toward your desired direction and how humility, passion, and optimism can allow you to influence your followers to strive for excellence and be vital members of the team.
How Can You Use Charisma To Influence Your Team?
You can use charisma to influence your team by developing strong interpersonal relationships rather than mere professional connections. Get to know them deeper, help them develop their strengths, and walk with them through difficult challenges. Be open, relatable, humble, passionate, and optimistic.
Here are some unique ways charismatic leaders influence their followers:
1. Use the Power of Precise Communication
Charismatic leaders are effective communicators. They take advantage of the power of language to evoke the emotions, mindset, and actions they want. They make use of verbal and non-verbal tactics when communicating with their team and leading them toward common goals.
Your choice of words, articulation, gestures, and the tone with which you deliver your messages are critical in ensuring your team fully understands your point of view. Your method of delivery must never be weak for a strong message to effectively get through to your followers. Otherwise, you run the risk of your message diminishing in value and relevance.
Here are some tips to help ensure your message effectively gets across to your team and you elicit the precise reactions you desire:
- Eye contact. Maintaining eye contact while communicating with your team members sends the message that you are earnest, trustworthy, and truthful.
- Posture. Maintain a confident, assertive, yet non-confrontational stance to win your team’s attention and respect. Keep your back straight and your chin level with the ground. Maintain an open, engaging countenance to encourage interaction from your followers.
- Gestures. Gesturing will help you to convey explicit information and your followers to better understand your messages. For instance, when you say “The client wants a new door design for the kitchen” while moving your arms as if swinging 2 doors wide open in front of you, your team will instantly grasp that the client wants double-swinging doors, not a standard, run-of-the-mill door.
- Tone. Keep your tone animated and engaging to grab and retain your team’s attention. Be mindful about overdoing this since you might come across as insincere and pretentious.
The ability and willingness to listen also play a big role in a charismatic leader’s effectiveness. Communication is a 2-way street, and they make this concept apparent by always making their followers feel seen and heard.
This conjures up memories from a recent social gathering my friend Jijo went to. Her friend is married to one of the city’s banking industry big shots. Over the years, they frequently mingled and enjoyed casual conversations during parties and social gatherings, but Jijo never really had any intimate conversations with them.
A couple of weeks ago, at a social event, Jijo was sitting at a table with a couple of friends, and during a lull in the conversation, her aforementioned friend’s distinguished husband turned to her colleague and asked, “So how’s Ysabel? She’s probably 14 or 15 by now. Does she still do ballet?”
Jijos’s colleague was astounded. Ysabel is his teenage daughter who has been dancing ballet since she was 3. He believes he casually mentioned this in a previous conversation, never really thinking that anyone was paying much attention since it was just small talk.
As they talked (and yes, Jijo was eavesdropping!), she began to realize how this man was able to make it big at a relatively young age in such a demanding, competitive industry. Sure, he’s hardworking, exceptionally smart, and accomplished in his chosen field, but he’s also a magnetic, charming person — a charismatic leader.
2. Show Humility
If you’re a charismatic leader, arrogance is never an option. You must be pragmatic and humble enough to know your own strengths and limitations. You must exhibit a desire and willingness to further enhance your skills and experiences. You must also be quick to own up to your shortcomings and mistakes, and comfortably express your misgivings and fears.
The ability to practice vulnerability is one of the unique traits of a charismatic leader. Don’t be afraid to show your true self when managing a team. This will help make you more relatable and approachable. This also shows an acknowledgment that you consider yourself an integral part of the team, not just its leader.
Mahatma Gandhi, a celebrated political and spiritual leader, chose to demonstrate humility as his brand of leadership. He promoted resistance to tyranny through non-violent means and didn’t command his followers to act in accordance with his plans. Rather, he encouraged them to accompany him, and he was known to go about his work regardless of how many people stood next to him in his fight against oppression.
3. Project Optimism
A charismatic leader influences followers and creates an encouraging vibe in the workplace where team members are made to feel that even if there are challenges ahead, the team can always rise above them all. They always look at the brighter side and exhibit strong confidence in the team’s capabilities. In essence, charismatic leaders are their team’s anchors when faced with challenges.
Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity and a well-loved global figure known for her hard work in tending to the poor, afflicted, sick, dying, and orphaned and abandoned children, is a great example of a charismatic leader. She went about her work with good cheer and selflessness, making sure to spread hope and love wherever she went.
She did not only provide food, water, medicines, and shelter to those she ministered — she also taught them valuable skills that can help them move forward in their lives. Mother Teresa taught them about soap-making, needlecraft, basket-weaving, and many others so they could earn money, enjoy a sense of fulfillment, and be able to provide for themselves and their families. She gave other people hope, especially in the face of adversity.
4. Value Interpersonal Relationships
Charismatic leaders place a high premium on establishing interpersonal relationships within the team. They connect with team members on a more personal level and encourage their team to do the same by not strictly observing a purely professional interconnection. They like getting to know each of their followers better, uncovering their strengths, discovering their limitations, understanding their struggles, and discussing challenges with them.
A charismatic leader always chooses to see the bigger picture. They consider their followers’ feelings, circumstances, and ideas, and take these into account when making decisions and plans for the team. They are empathetic, always capable of and willing to understand and share other people’s perspectives.
A friend of mine told me a short story about the leader of a small software development team. She said, “I always find it interesting to observe him with his team members. Their meetings are always laid back and engaging, yet they’re able to discuss pertinent issues and tick things off their to-do list. The secret lies in how he treats his team — with respect and empathy.”
Rather than complaining about their shortcomings or berating them for mistakes, the team leader crafts these discussions in such a way that his team members don’t feel threatened or embarrassed. He encourages them to pinpoint areas of improvement, then they brainstorm ideas on how they can resolve issues or refine how things are done.
His leadership style is quite similar to that of Nelson Mandela, acclaimed for his efforts in uniting the country and fighting racial oppression and discrimination. Despite being unjustifiably imprisoned for 27 years, he emerged back into society with the same fervor and hope for a better tomorrow.
Rather than dwelling on negativities and retaliation, he focused his efforts on uniting and leading the country to bring about healing and change. He led a peaceful rebellion to help a racially-divided country finally enjoy peace and harmony. His humility, compassion, and empathy were his secret weapons in rallying his followers to fight for change.
5. Ignite Passion
Passion is one of the more apparent attributes of a charismatic leader. When you are passionate and genuinely enthusiastic about your work, this mindset could easily rub off on your team members, making the workplace a highly functional, engaging, collaborative space. Passion can help make a team more purposeful and productive.
One way to ignite passion in your followers is to eagerly share your vision with them to inspire them to work together toward common goals. Frame your vision in such a way that it appeals to your team’s values and sentiments, making it compelling and worth aspiring for.
Here are some pointers:
- Share stories. Rather than relying on facts alone, share persuasive, relevant anecdotes with your followers to further entrench the significance of your vision. This lends a more personal touch to your ideas, making them more relatable and real.
- Remain positive. Negative feedback is unavoidable, but don’t dwell on skepticism and pessimism. Acknowledge the concerns, but immediately pivot the discussion away from the potentially dismissive notions by offering corroborating evidence of strengths and some anecdotal incidents.
- Be consistent and tenacious. Constantly talk about your vision until each team member is well-versed and highly familiar with all its ins and outs. Encourage your followers to share their own ideas and views, so that your vision doesn’t lose its thrill and soon occupies a central space within your team’s dynamics. This is one way to ensure that your team always works synergistically toward the same goals.
