Over at the excellent BPS Research Digest there’s a great review of research on charisma.
Is it something that can be learned? Yes:
Managers who underwent training saw their charisma ratings significantly grow, relative to those who didn’t.
What are the techniques that make someone more charismatic?
- -framing through metaphor
- -stories and anecdotes
- -demonstrating moral conviction
- -sharing the sentiments of the collective
- -setting high expectations
- -communicating confidence
- -using rhetorical devices such as contrasts, lists, and rhetorical questions together with non-verbal tactics such as body gesture, facial expression, and animated voice tone.
But be careful; as always with something as subtle as charisma, training and practice are important in order to achieve proper execution:
The authors emphasise there are no quick fixes – the training involved a real commitment of time – and that inexperienced overuse of CLTs can lead to self-parody, with pantomime hand gesture and excruciating metaphor. But as the study demonstrates, charisma is at least partly the result of adopting tactics that are transferable and learnable.
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