Let's face it: charisma matters | John Antonakis | TEDxLausanne

One day John's research findings gave him a shock. Children could reliably pick winners of parliamentary runoff elections only using facial appearances! More studies from politics and business helped confirm that looks could determine a leader's success. Rather than switching careers to plastic surgery, John asked: how can leaders go beyond being "faced" to connect with their audience via words and actions? John found an answer: charisma. He will show what charisma is, how it can be measured, and why it matters, from the U.S. presidency to the most frugal communication medium ever used – Twitter.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Ok.

Take a look at this guy.

And by show of hands,

and everyone please participate,

who thinks he wanted to be
an economist when he grew up?

A lawyer?

Ok. One or two.

A heavy metal bassist?

Ok. Yeah!

We think a face tells a lot.
Does it?

It's not Bon Jovi in the picture.

I am.

(Laughter)

A misguided, indiscreet, 17 year old

who initially wanted to be

an economist.

But now I study psychology.

I also study faces,
you'll see why in a minute,

and, charisma.

I grew up in South Africa

which cultivated my interest in charisma.

I saw my dad as a community leader

running for about a dozen elections

and winning most of them.

I saw my mum managing her shop

and getting the most out of her staff.

I saw South Africa transition peacefully

from aparteid to democracy

mostly because of one great leader.

Nelson Mandela.

So, I have often wondered,
what is charisma?

Can it be measured?

Can it be developed?

I became a professor in the Faculty

of Business and Economics

at the university of Lausanne.

But at times,
I felt like a particle physicist

studying the Higgs field.

Charisma is hard to define,

hard to measure,

but its effects are evident to see.

Like the Higgs field charisma gives mass,

gravitas,

not to particles, but to social movements.

Just when I thought I was beginning
to make a bit of progress,

in 2005 my world was turned upside down.

A study published in the journal Science

by Alex Todorov's lab
at Princeton University,

showed that naive subjects
were able to predict

the results of congressional elections

merely by rating the faces

of the winner and runner up.

What? I thought when I heard it.

Impossible!

Only in America!

(Laughter)

Would this work in Europe?

So you can better understand what they did

take a look at these two guys.

By show of hands, who of the two

seems more competent?

More intelligent?

More leader-like?

Who thinks the guy on the right?

Ok. A couple of hands there.

The guy on the left?

Ok. Evident majority

and the majority got it right!

Now, you don't know them.

These two guys
ran for the Wisconsin senate seat.

On the right, is Timothy Michels,

a Republican.

On the left is Russell Feingold,

a Democrat.

Who actually went on to win.

Whether a pro- or anti- whatever,

pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-God, anti-God,

pro-gay, anti-gay -

in a couple of seconds,
a room of a couple of hundred people

predicted the voting outcomes
of a couple of million

who had a lot more information
than you did.

Is there something in politician's faces

that signals their competence,

or do we carry some evolutionary baggage

that biases our judgement
towards more beautiful, more symmetric

and healthy looking faces?

I repeated the experiments here.

Suprisingly, Swiss subjects

were able to predict the results

of French parliamentary run off elections.

(Laughter)

To entertain the evolutionary argument

I re-ran the experiments with young,

very young children from 5 to 13 years.

Now, such young children don't know

competence, intelligence or leadership,

but they do know what a boat captain is.

So we asked them to play a boat game

and they had to select the boat captain

from among the pairs of faces
of the French elections.

(Laughter)

The kids were as accurate as the adults.

A 71% hit rate at the individual level,

and 85% hit rate
when we averaged the results.

A kid of 5 or 65 "voted" in the same way.

Come, let's try it here

with some election races
from my experiments.

Who thinks the guy on the right

would make a better boat captain?

Evident majority.

I don't even need to go to the left.

Let's try the next one.

Who says the guy on the right?

Ok, 2 or 3 hands.

The guy on the left?

Ok you guys are doing amazing!

Two more to go.

This is a test to see how normal you are.

Ok, don't laugh!

(Laughter)

They haven't chosen their faces, ok.

Who says the guy on the right?

Ok, hardly anyone.

The guy on the left?

Alright, evident majority.

Last pair.

Who says the lady on the right?

Ok, majority already.

Fantastic! Well done.

You guys did excellent. 5 out of 5.

You are normal,
just like the 5 five year olds!

Give yourselves a round of applause.

Come on. Yeah, yeah you passed the test.

(Applause)

Ok.

That's how I felt when I actually
published these results

in the journal Science.

I was rocking. I was the man.

On top of the world!

But, in private, faced, yeah, faced

with this result, I wondered,

what am I suppose to teach?

(Laughter)

What am I supposed to teach

if one's ability to succeed as a leader

depends on one's face?

How could I justify my professorship?

Should I change career

and become a plastic surgeon?

(Laughter)

I have found similar "face effects"

in a variety of situations.

In politics, in academia

and the business world.

Some expert I was on leadership.

I knew nothing!

But one thing I knew for sure,

is that we have a tag around our necks.

People size us up on how we look;

our face, height, whatever

and put a price on the tag.

If we look like a million dollars,

they fill in the blanks

and assume we have
lots of positive characteristics.

If we don't look like a million dollars,

well, then we have a problem.

(Laughter)

So I set out on a mission.

How can we change the price
people put on our tag?

The answer - with charisma.

Charisma is symbolic influence

rooted in values and emotions.

By symbolic I mean, represents something.

Stands for something.

Something that can be seen,

touched and smelled.

Let me show you the results of six studies

my co-authors and I have undertaken

all focusing on that alchemic ability
to connect.

We narrowed charisma down to several

charismatic leadership tactics,

which I will describe in a bit.

In the first study we filmed EMBA students

giving a speech.

Then we trained them to use the tactics

and filmed them again.

Independent judges rated the speeches.

We found that the EMBA students were able

to double their use
of the charismatic leadership tactics.

Charisma could be taught

and the more charismatic
leadership tactics were in the talk,

the more the students were seen
as leader-like by others.

This study is important

because we controlled
for communication skills

and for the constant effects
due to the target person,

which includes their face,
what they look like.

The EMBA students were able to change

the price people put on their tags.

We found the same results

in a field experiment with managers.

We replicated this
using only women leaders.

The use of these tactics
is not the province of men.

With these tactics we can predict

who will become the President

of the United States of America

and this, controlling for incumbency

and for macro-economic effects.

Recently we've been interested to see
the impact of charisma

on worker performance.

We recruited 106 temporary workers,

to prepare postal mail
for a fundraising campaign

on behalf of a charity.

Unbeknown to the workers,

we randomised them

into one of three conditions.

In the first group, the baseline,

the workers had no bonuses and received

a standard motivational speech
given by an actor.

A rather normal looking kind of guy.

I guess you would agree.

We motivated the second group with bonuses

for good performance and they received

the same standard speech too.

The third group, had no bonuses

but received a charismatic
motivational speech.

(Laughter)

Relative to the baseline, both bonuses

and charisma, significantly increased
worker performance,

and their effects
were statistically indistinguishable.

This charisma result is crazy

because it's not well explained
by current economic theory.

We got increased performance,

basically for free.

(Laughter)

And, charisma significantly decreased

production costs.

We got increased performance

without paying economic incentives!

Finally, we know that charisma works

in the micro-blogosphere, Twitter,

where text is limited to 140 characters.

We tracked 30 politicians and 30 CEOs
for three months

and coded all their tweets,
about 3000 of them.

The more charismatic tactics tweets had,

the more they were retweeted
by the followers.

Going from zero to four tactics

increased retweets by over 450%.

I know you're wondering,

"What are these charismatic tactics?"

I'll let you in on a secret.

It's quite simple, really.

To connect, a leader must do three things.

First, frame to give the vision.

Paint a picture and focus attention

by using methaphor, stories

and other techniques.

I'll give you examples of these in a bit.

Second, provide substance
for the justification,

express the sentiments of the collective,

and give confidence in goals.

Third, deliver in an animated

and passionate way, using voice,

gestures and other tactics.

So let me show you an example

of how not to do it.

Cognitive psychology theory suggests

that when a target is described
on a configuration of traits,

whether clustered under an implicit
or explicit prototype,

perceivers speciously impute the target

with other traits that correlate
with the original traits

or with the prototype,

but which are not used
to describe the target.

What did I just say?

(Laughter)

Ok. Now maybe this kind of communication

is useful when speaking
to a cognitive psychologist,

or to Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.

(Laughter)

Isn't it more engaging to hear -

and I'm going to say the same thing
I just said a few seconds ago -

We all have a tag around our necks.

People size us up on how we look,

our face, height, whatever

and put a price on the tag.

If we look like a million dollars,

they fill in the blanks

and assume we have
lots of positive characteristics.

Now that was an example of using metaphor.

Metaphors simplify, aid in recall
and provide a visual.

In fact, charisma is all about

being able to get a vision across,
that sticks.

There are a variety of ways to do this.

Let me give you another example.

So you may be wondering,

"Can I learn charisma?"

"If I use the tactics,

will people notice
that I am using them?"

"Would using them
make my team more effective?"

I used the following combination:

Rhetorical questions,

which create a puzzle,

an intrigue to be solved.

A list of three. Why three?

Well, three is indicative of a pattern,

suggests completeness and sounds nice.

Did you notice?

Three reasons!

I also expressed the sentiments

of the collective,

to close the psychological gap between us.

How about the following combination?

We're not here to talk about
academic mumbo jumbo.

We're here to talk about

the practical realities of leadership

and it is your duty to exercise it

in a morally responsible
and effective way. Is it not?

I focused your attention using a contrast,

"We're not here to do this, but that,"

capturing the sentiments
of the collective too.

Hands up, who here wants to listen

to academic mumbo jumbo?

Ok. No one. I thought so!

Sometimes we have one or two
Sheldons in the room.

(Laughter)

I turned the contrast
into a three-part list

and I finished it off
with a rhetorical question.

I also used moral conviction,

one of the key tactics,

which signals one's values

and makes a contract

on which one is to be judged.

Now there are other tactics,

like telling captivating stories

which creates identification
with the protagonists,

aids in seeing the vision

and really recounting the moral message.

Of course, delivery is very important too.

Now, there might be some of you
in the audience still thinking,

"Yeah right, are you kidding me?"

"Are you telling me
that metaphors and stories

will make a difference?"

Yes they can.

Remember the experiment I showed you

with the actor?

Where we found
that charisma and bonuses

got the same
increase in performance?

Well, when I first proposed

that we use metaphors and stories

to motivate the workers
in the charismatic condition,

my co-authors, who are economists,

were very skeptical
that metaphors and stories

would make workers work harder.

So, they tried their best to convince me

to take the stuff out,
but I held firm and we kept it in,

because I truly believed
in the power of words.

Let me tell you what finally happened.

In one part of the actor's speech,

he was urging the workers to prepare

as many letters as possible

for the fundraising drive.

In the standard speech condition,

whether without bonuses or with bonuses,

we asked him to say something like this
to the workers,

and I'm very briefly summarising.

He told the workers to see

how many people were in the room.

And all the other people
we had hired to do this task.

That every extra letter they prepared

could potentially make
a life changing change

to a child who had cancer or whatever.

But in the charisma condition,

we told him to say the following:

So you might think,

"Well, I'll just do what I have to.

Will my extra effort help?"

Yes it will!

This reminds me of a story of an old man

who, while walking along the seashore,

saw a young girl picking up starfish

and throwing them into the sea.

The old man approached her saying,

"What are you doing?"

She replied, "I'm picking up starfish

and throwing them into the sea,

because the sun's coming up
and the starfish will die."

"But," said the man,

"there are thousands of starfish

the sun's already high
and the tide is going out.

How can you possibly make a difference?"

The girl bent down, picked up a starfish

threw it into the sea and said,

"Well, I made a difference to that one."

Now when you have time,

go back and see what tactics
I used throughout my presentation.

I'm sure you'll have fun

trying out these tactics
in your everyday lives.

Put the price you want, on your tags.

Then, go out there and make a difference!

So, what are you going to do?

Thank you,

and a big thanks to my co-authors
and to my family too,

who have taught me
so much about leadership.

Thanks. Thank you!
(Applause)