Do you need charisma to be a great public speaker?

Harvard Business Review — 13 December 2019

As a speaker, we often yearn to be charismatic. We want people to be drawn to us and like us, but here’s the catch — your job as a speaker is not to get the audience to like you, but rather to get your message across. In fact, if the audience is too focused on you, they may actually miss your point. According to numerous studies, emotion is the basic currency for remembering content. A listener must connect emotionally to what they hear in order to remember what the speaker says. So charisma can actually douse our emotional response. This is where presence comes in to save the day. Presence enables the speaker to get out of their own head and connect directly to the people in the room.

Article by Sarah Gershman.