In Part 1 we covered:

• Making strong offers
• Giving focus and getting commitment
• Listening

For Part 2 I’ll be covering

• Authenticity
• Making the other person look good
• Outcome Independence

Authenticity

According to dictionary.com, their definition of authenticity is:

• The quality of being authentic or of established authority for truth and correctness
• Genuineness; the quality of being genuine or not corrupted from the original.

This is what I was referring to earlier in simply being “real” with people you come across in your social interactions. In improv, by being authentic and improvising with a brutal honesty can really help you connect with your audience because there is nothing being held back. You are expressing yourself from your core and things flow naturally in how you express yourself, your body language, the tonality of your voice, and steady eye contact. Everything is aligned and you’re totally congruent in how you’re expressing yourself.

This can easily be applied to your everyday social interactions as well. I’m not saying that you should be brutally honest in every situation. Use your own judgment. You wouldn’t want to do that in a professional environment

Making the other person look good

How exactly do you go about making the other person ‘look’ good? In improv, making your fellow improviser look good is doing everything you can in a support position with their offers and yes-anding them to drive the scene forward.

When you have a group of improvisers looking to make each other look good, what you get is a cohesive group that is making the scene flow naturally, and appreciating each others presence, improvisation skill-set as well as to generally have fun with whatever suggestion you’re given to work with.

Similarly, when you’re in an interaction with someone, genuinely appreciating (and meaning it) what the other person brings to the conversation be it their beliefs, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, their presence or how they present themselves to you is how you make them look good and feel good about sharing a part of themselves. You’re essentially giving the other person your approval without judgment.

In turn, when your appreciation or interest in the other person is genuine and you’re actively contributing and adding value to the interaction by sharing and relating it to your own insights and experiences – a connection is formed. This is where you want to be, and when you get here, you’ll find how amazing and fun it is to connect with people from all walks of life – and the label of being “charismatic” is attached to you

The second installment of How to be Charismatic Using Improv

Being outcome independent

Let go of any preconceived notions of how things will work out when you’re among new people, friends or acquaintances. Here, you are indifferent to the outcome because you’re merely enjoying the other person’s presence. When a conversation is fun and enjoyable, people will naturally like you and want to connect with you.

Give up any ‘plan’ that you’re going to network like crazy and make ‘solid contacts’ for the purposes of whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. When you’re trying, people will sense it, but when you’re just letting things flow, giving value, yes-anding, showing genuine appreciation, listening and not getting at any particular outcome, things will come to you when you’ve incorporated all the previous concepts to make you personality magnetic.

While this is a counter-intuitive and abstract concept, letting go of any outcome you want to arrive to will ultimately trip you up in being liked by other people because they feel that you want to “get something” from them. Trying to be charming as opposed to just ‘being’ and letting others decide you’re charming is the key. You’re not there to get anything, you just “are” and that’s what will make you magnetic.

Putting it all together

How do you become charismatic or good with people? You certainly don’t need to take a slew of improv classes or take courses on how to become more social (although they can help and put you on the right track).

My simple and basic answer is that it all comes down to the fundamentals, in excelling in the social arts and becoming charismatic. To excel in any sort of art, it takes theory, practice and skill. For the theory portion, it can be learned in the timeless classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which is recommended by business executives, world leaders and self-help authors as influences for the success in their own lives. It was hugely influential in how I interact with people and how I connect with them.

But having the theory in your head after finishing a book isn’t the goal. The goal is to immediately apply what you’ve learned to the real world. This is where the practice comes in and it can be applied to anyone – family, friends, work colleagues and the new and interesting people who you will meet and naturally gravitate towards you.

As you get better and practice the fundamentals of being better more people, you’ll notice that your conversation skills become better and the social aspect of your life will be more rich and rewarding – and you’ll be blown away by the way people react to you with your confidence and charm

Tags: authenticity, charisma, improv, social dynamics

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 12:06 am and is filed under authenticity, charisma, improv, social dynamics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.