[HN Gopher] Underrated Soft Skills: Charisma
___________________________________________________________________
Underrated Soft Skills: Charisma
Author : andrewstetsenko
Score : 81 points
Date : 2025-03-18 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (utopianengineeringsociety.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (utopianengineeringsociety.substack.com)
| tayo42 wrote:
| 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.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > 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.
| codr7 wrote:
| 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.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| 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.
| pc86 wrote:
| 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.
| photonthug wrote:
| > 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.
| pc86 wrote:
| If SBF is what you think of when you think of charisma,
| you've never actually met a charismatic person.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| All of this right here . . . ^^
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > 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.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| 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.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > 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.
| pc86 wrote:
| 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.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| 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.
| tayo42 wrote:
| 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
| threatofrain wrote:
| Charisma is not about honesty or empathy either. Trump is
| very charismatic. So is Andrew Tate.
| jcon321 wrote:
| I agree with this. The author is just documenting how to "play
| the game", not how to be a good engineer.
| kavalg wrote:
| Which is still valuable to some extent.
| criddell wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| 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.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| 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.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Working with other engineers is the easy part. Managing up
| and working with the "business" is a lot harder.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| 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.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| 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.
| munificent wrote:
| 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.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| The kids would say aura
| munificent wrote:
| The rizz.
| dmonitor wrote:
| slang for charisma, no?
| MiscCompFacts wrote:
| Yes, the word rizz comes directly from ka-RIZZ-ma.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| yes, cha-rizz-ma
| jiveturkey wrote:
| 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.
| munificent wrote:
| _> 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.
| tengbretson wrote:
| > 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.
| hluska wrote:
| 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.
| karmakaze wrote:
| 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.
| lanstin wrote:
| 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).
| munificent wrote:
| _> 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.
| wenc wrote:
| 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.
| ge96 wrote:
| Different than gaslighting? One is not with malice?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| kavalg wrote:
| 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.
| jfengel wrote:
| 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.
| ourmandave wrote:
| I'm still waiting for the right script.
| jfengel wrote:
| 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.)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| 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.
| jghn wrote:
| 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.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _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.
| sdwr wrote:
| 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.
| CharlesW wrote:
| 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".
| nico wrote:
| > 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
| jfengel wrote:
| 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.
| ajhenaor wrote:
| 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..."
| vonunov wrote:
| Tao can Tao not constant Tao; Game can Game not constant Game
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| 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.
| jgilias wrote:
| 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!
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > "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.
| nico wrote:
| 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
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| From my experience, this is what gets you up to the third
| interview with the CEO/manager, but never the job :/.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| megaloblasto wrote:
| 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.
| __rito__ wrote:
| 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...
| nico wrote:
| 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
| runamuck wrote:
| "Charisma is the ability to influence without logic." - Quentin
| Crisp
| photonthug wrote:
| 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"
| dondraper36 wrote:
| 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 :)
| shalmanese wrote:
| 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.
| speuleralert wrote:
| > 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.
| ajhenaor wrote:
| 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.
| perrygeo wrote:
| > 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.
| nico wrote:
| 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
| disambiguation wrote:
| Idea for your next article: Drinking the kool-aid in your free
| time - how to be the ideal underling of your manager's dreams.
| formerphotoj wrote:
| 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.
| blast wrote:
| Is charisma a _skill_? I doubt that.
| nialv7 wrote:
| Underrated? Maybe not explicitly but charisma is perhaps the most
| highly rated human skill across history...
| ergonaught wrote:
| 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.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| 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
| usrnm wrote:
| I'd rather invest in intelligence and end up a greybeard wizard
| giantfrog wrote:
| This reads like a dispatch from an alien who's spent the past
| year studying human beings.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| motohagiography wrote:
| 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.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| 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.
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