00:00Translator: Cecilia Hu
Reviewer: Samuel Lagier
00:17Take a look at this guy.
00:18And by show of hands,
00:20and everyone please participate,
00:22who thinks he wanted to be
an economist when he grew up?
00:30A heavy metal bassist?
00:34We think a face tells a lot.
Does it?
00:36It's not Bon Jovi in the picture.
00:41A misguided, indiscreet, 17 year old
00:43who initially wanted to be
00:48But now I study psychology.
00:49I also study faces,
you'll see why in a minute,
00:53I grew up in South Africa
00:55which cultivated my interest in charisma.
00:57I saw my dad as a community leader
00:59running for about a dozen elections
01:00and winning most of them.
01:02I saw my mum managing her shop
01:03and getting the most out of her staff.
01:05I saw South Africa transition peacefully
01:07from aparteid to democracy
01:09mostly because of one great leader.
01:12So, I have often wondered,
what is charisma?
01:16Can it be developed?
01:17I became a professor in the Faculty
01:18of Business and Economics
01:20at the university of Lausanne.
01:21But at times,
I felt like a particle physicist
01:24studying the Higgs field.
01:26Charisma is hard to define,
01:29but its effects are evident to see.
01:31Like the Higgs field charisma gives mass,
01:35not to particles, but to social movements.
01:37Just when I thought I was beginning
to make a bit of progress,
01:40in 2005 my world was turned upside down.
01:43A study published in the journal Science
01:46by Alex Todorov's lab
at Princeton University,
01:48showed that naive subjects
were able to predict
01:52the results of congressional elections
01:54merely by rating the faces
01:56of the winner and runner up.
01:59What? I thought when I heard it.
02:05Would this work in Europe?
02:07So you can better understand what they did
02:10take a look at these two guys.
02:12By show of hands, who of the two
02:15seems more competent?
02:20Who thinks the guy on the right?
02:22Ok. A couple of hands there.
02:24The guy on the left?
02:25Ok. Evident majority
02:27and the majority got it right!
02:29Now, you don't know them.
02:31These two guys
ran for the Wisconsin senate seat.
02:33On the right, is Timothy Michels,
02:37On the left is Russell Feingold,
02:40Who actually went on to win.
02:43Whether a pro- or anti- whatever,
02:45pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-God, anti-God,
02:50in a couple of seconds,
a room of a couple of hundred people
02:54predicted the voting outcomes
of a couple of million
02:57who had a lot more information
than you did.
02:59Is there something in politician's faces
03:01that signals their competence,
03:03or do we carry some evolutionary baggage
03:06that biases our judgement
towards more beautiful, more symmetric
03:09and healthy looking faces?
03:12I repeated the experiments here.
03:14Suprisingly, Swiss subjects
03:16were able to predict the results
03:17of French parliamentary run off elections.
03:22To entertain the evolutionary argument
03:24I re-ran the experiments with young,
03:27very young children from 5 to 13 years.
03:30Now, such young children don't know
03:32competence, intelligence or leadership,
03:35but they do know what a boat captain is.
03:37So we asked them to play a boat game
03:40and they had to select the boat captain
03:42from among the pairs of faces
of the French elections.
03:49The kids were as accurate as the adults.
03:53A 71% hit rate at the individual level,
03:56and 85% hit rate
when we averaged the results.
04:00A kid of 5 or 65 "voted" in the same way.
04:04Come, let's try it here
04:06with some election races
from my experiments.
04:10Who thinks the guy on the right
04:12would make a better boat captain?
04:16I don't even need to go to the left.
04:18Let's try the next one.
04:20Who says the guy on the right?
04:23The guy on the left?
04:25Ok you guys are doing amazing!
04:28This is a test to see how normal you are.
04:33They haven't chosen their faces, ok.
04:35Who says the guy on the right?
04:38The guy on the left?
04:40Alright, evident majority.
04:42Who says the lady on the right?
04:44Ok, majority already.
04:45Fantastic! Well done.
04:47You guys did excellent. 5 out of 5.
04:49You are normal,
just like the 5 five year olds!
04:51Give yourselves a round of applause.
04:53Come on. Yeah, yeah you passed the test.
04:59That's how I felt when I actually
published these results
05:03in the journal Science.
05:05I was rocking. I was the man.
05:07On top of the world!
05:08But, in private, faced, yeah, faced
05:13with this result, I wondered,
05:15what am I suppose to teach?
05:19What am I supposed to teach
05:21if one's ability to succeed as a leader
05:23depends on one's face?
05:24How could I justify my professorship?
05:26Should I change career
05:28and become a plastic surgeon?
05:32I have found similar "face effects"
05:34in a variety of situations.
05:35In politics, in academia
05:38and the business world.
05:39Some expert I was on leadership.
05:44But one thing I knew for sure,
05:46is that we have a tag around our necks.
05:48People size us up on how we look;
05:49our face, height, whatever
05:51and put a price on the tag.
05:53If we look like a million dollars,
05:55they fill in the blanks
05:57and assume we have
lots of positive characteristics.
05:59If we don't look like a million dollars,
06:01well, then we have a problem.
06:04So I set out on a mission.
06:06How can we change the price
people put on our tag?
06:16The answer - with charisma.
06:18Charisma is symbolic influence
06:21rooted in values and emotions.
06:24By symbolic I mean, represents something.
06:26Stands for something.
06:27Something that can be seen,
06:29touched and smelled.
06:30Let me show you the results of six studies
06:33my co-authors and I have undertaken
06:34all focusing on that alchemic ability
to connect.
06:38We narrowed charisma down to several
06:40charismatic leadership tactics,
06:41which I will describe in a bit.
06:43In the first study we filmed EMBA students
06:48Then we trained them to use the tactics
06:50and filmed them again.
06:51Independent judges rated the speeches.
06:54We found that the EMBA students were able
06:56to double their use
of the charismatic leadership tactics.
06:59Charisma could be taught
07:01and the more charismatic
leadership tactics were in the talk,
07:04the more the students were seen
as leader-like by others.
07:07This study is important
07:08because we controlled
for communication skills
07:10and for the constant effects
due to the target person,
07:13which includes their face,
what they look like.
07:16The EMBA students were able to change
07:18the price people put on their tags.
07:21We found the same results
07:22in a field experiment with managers.
07:25We replicated this
using only women leaders.
07:28The use of these tactics
is not the province of men.
07:31With these tactics we can predict
07:33who will become the President
07:35of the United States of America
07:37and this, controlling for incumbency
07:40and for macro-economic effects.
07:43Recently we've been interested to see
the impact of charisma
07:46on worker performance.
07:48We recruited 106 temporary workers,
07:50to prepare postal mail
for a fundraising campaign
07:53on behalf of a charity.
07:55Unbeknown to the workers,
07:58into one of three conditions.
08:00In the first group, the baseline,
08:02the workers had no bonuses and received
08:05a standard motivational speech
given by an actor.
08:07A rather normal looking kind of guy.
08:10I guess you would agree.
08:12We motivated the second group with bonuses
08:15for good performance and they received
08:18the same standard speech too.
08:21The third group, had no bonuses
08:23but received a charismatic
motivational speech.
08:28Relative to the baseline, both bonuses
08:31and charisma, significantly increased
worker performance,
08:36and their effects
were statistically indistinguishable.
08:39This charisma result is crazy
08:41because it's not well explained
by current economic theory.
08:44We got increased performance,
08:49And, charisma significantly decreased
08:53We got increased performance
08:55without paying economic incentives!
08:58Finally, we know that charisma works
09:00in the micro-blogosphere, Twitter,
09:03where text is limited to 140 characters.
09:07We tracked 30 politicians and 30 CEOs
for three months
09:11and coded all their tweets,
about 3000 of them.
09:14The more charismatic tactics tweets had,
09:19the more they were retweeted
by the followers.
09:22Going from zero to four tactics
09:24increased retweets by over 450%.
09:29I know you're wondering,
09:31"What are these charismatic tactics?"
09:34I'll let you in on a secret.
09:36It's quite simple, really.
09:37To connect, a leader must do three things.
09:43First, frame to give the vision.
09:46Paint a picture and focus attention
09:49by using methaphor, stories
09:51and other techniques.
09:54I'll give you examples of these in a bit.
09:57Second, provide substance
for the justification,
09:59express the sentiments of the collective,
10:02and give confidence in goals.
10:04Third, deliver in an animated
10:06and passionate way, using voice,
10:08gestures and other tactics.
10:11So let me show you an example
10:13of how not to do it.
10:19Cognitive psychology theory suggests
10:21that when a target is described
on a configuration of traits,
10:24whether clustered under an implicit
or explicit prototype,
10:27perceivers speciously impute the target
10:29with other traits that correlate
with the original traits
10:31or with the prototype,
10:33but which are not used
to describe the target.
10:36What did I just say?
10:38Ok. Now maybe this kind of communication
10:41is useful when speaking
to a cognitive psychologist,
10:44or to Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.
10:47Isn't it more engaging to hear -
10:50and I'm going to say the same thing
I just said a few seconds ago -
10:53We all have a tag around our necks.
10:55People size us up on how we look,
10:56our face, height, whatever
10:58and put a price on the tag.
10:59If we look like a million dollars,
11:01they fill in the blanks
11:02and assume we have
lots of positive characteristics.
11:05Now that was an example of using metaphor.
11:07Metaphors simplify, aid in recall
and provide a visual.
11:13In fact, charisma is all about
11:15being able to get a vision across,
that sticks.
11:17There are a variety of ways to do this.
11:20Let me give you another example.
11:22So you may be wondering,
11:24"Can I learn charisma?"
11:27"If I use the tactics,
11:28will people notice
that I am using them?"
11:30"Would using them
make my team more effective?"
11:34I used the following combination:
11:36Rhetorical questions,
11:38which create a puzzle,
11:39an intrigue to be solved.
11:41A list of three. Why three?
11:44Well, three is indicative of a pattern,
11:47suggests completeness and sounds nice.
11:53I also expressed the sentiments
11:57to close the psychological gap between us.
12:01How about the following combination?
12:04We're not here to talk about
academic mumbo jumbo.
12:08We're here to talk about
12:09the practical realities of leadership
12:11and it is your duty to exercise it
12:13in a morally responsible
and effective way. Is it not?
12:17I focused your attention using a contrast,
12:19"We're not here to do this, but that,"
12:22capturing the sentiments
of the collective too.
12:26Hands up, who here wants to listen
12:28to academic mumbo jumbo?
12:31Ok. No one. I thought so!
12:33Sometimes we have one or two
Sheldons in the room.
12:37I turned the contrast
into a three-part list
12:41and I finished it off
with a rhetorical question.
12:46I also used moral conviction,
12:50one of the key tactics,
12:51which signals one's values
12:54and makes a contract
12:55on which one is to be judged.
12:57Now there are other tactics,
12:59like telling captivating stories
13:02which creates identification
with the protagonists,
13:05aids in seeing the vision
13:07and really recounting the moral message.
13:10Of course, delivery is very important too.
13:14Now, there might be some of you
in the audience still thinking,
13:18"Yeah right, are you kidding me?"
13:20"Are you telling me
that metaphors and stories
13:23will make a difference?"
13:28Remember the experiment I showed you
13:34Where we found
that charisma and bonuses
13:37got the same
increase in performance?
13:40Well, when I first proposed
13:42that we use metaphors and stories
13:44to motivate the workers
in the charismatic condition,
13:47my co-authors, who are economists,
13:49were very skeptical
that metaphors and stories
13:51would make workers work harder.
13:53So, they tried their best to convince me
13:55to take the stuff out,
but I held firm and we kept it in,
13:58because I truly believed
in the power of words.
14:00Let me tell you what finally happened.
14:03In one part of the actor's speech,
14:04he was urging the workers to prepare
14:06as many letters as possible
14:08for the fundraising drive.
14:09In the standard speech condition,
14:11whether without bonuses or with bonuses,
14:14we asked him to say something like this
to the workers,
14:17and I'm very briefly summarising.
14:19He told the workers to see
14:21how many people were in the room.
14:23And all the other people
we had hired to do this task.
14:25That every extra letter they prepared
14:28could potentially make
a life changing change
14:31to a child who had cancer or whatever.
14:35But in the charisma condition,
14:37we told him to say the following:
14:42"Well, I'll just do what I have to.
14:44Will my extra effort help?"
14:49This reminds me of a story of an old man
14:51who, while walking along the seashore,
14:53saw a young girl picking up starfish
14:55and throwing them into the sea.
14:57The old man approached her saying,
14:59"What are you doing?"
15:00She replied, "I'm picking up starfish
15:03and throwing them into the sea,
15:04because the sun's coming up
and the starfish will die."
15:07"But," said the man,
15:09"there are thousands of starfish
15:11the sun's already high
and the tide is going out.
15:14How can you possibly make a difference?"
15:17The girl bent down, picked up a starfish
15:19threw it into the sea and said,
15:21"Well, I made a difference to that one."
15:25Now when you have time,
15:26go back and see what tactics
I used throughout my presentation.
15:30I'm sure you'll have fun
15:32trying out these tactics
in your everyday lives.
15:34Put the price you want, on your tags.
15:39Then, go out there and make a difference!
15:43So, what are you going to do?
15:49and a big thanks to my co-authors
and to my family too,
15:52who have taught me
so much about leadership.
15:54Thanks. Thank you!
(Applause)
