Researchers who study charisma have found it isn't a fixed trait some people are simply born with, training people in a specific set of verbal and nonverbal tactics — vivid metaphors, rhetorical questions, deliberate pauses — measurably increased how charismatic they were rated by others afterward.

Here’s the short version first: charisma can be taught. Researchers ran controlled experiments to test that claim directly, training working managers and MBA students in a specific list of verbal and nonverbal habits, then having independent raters, people with no idea any training had happened, score how charismatic and leader-like each person came across.

The trained groups scored measurably higher, both right after training and months later, which rules out the possibility that people were simply on their best behavior for a single afternoon.

What follows is what was actually taught, broken down into habits that can be practiced on their own rather than as a package deal.

Where this claim actually comes from

The research behind this is John Antonakis and Marika Fenley’s work at the University of Lausanne, published in the Academy of Management Learning & Education in 2011. One study randomly assigned 34 middle managers to a training group or a control group and measured them with 360-degree ratings from more than 300 colleagues, before training and three months after.

A second study had MBA students deliver speeches before and six weeks after training, scored blind by outside assessors who had never met them and had nothing to go on except the recording. Random assignment in both studies is what allows the researchers to call this a causal result rather than a correlation between people who are already confident and people who happen to seem confident on camera.

The combined effect across both studies was substantial by the standards of workplace psychology research, and it held up months after the training program ended rather than fading once the novelty of being coached wore off.

The verbal habits worth practicing

Reach for a comparison instead of a description

Metaphors, similes, and analogies showed up as one of the strongest tactics in the training. Antonakis has explained why plainly: “Metaphors simplify, aid in recall and provide a visual.” Saying an idea is dead weight lands differently than saying it isn’t working, mostly because the listener’s brain has an actual picture to hold onto instead of an abstraction.

Ask instead of stating

Swapping a flat statement for a question changes how an audience processes it. As Antonakis put it, rhetorical questions work because they create “a puzzle, an intrigue to be solved.” A listener who’s briefly asked to guess an answer pays closer attention than one who’s just handed a conclusion, if only because a question leaves a small gap open in the listener’s mind that the next sentence gets to fill.

Say it in threes

Grouping a point into three examples instead of two or four is one of the oldest tricks in rhetoric, and it tested out as a real, learnable habit rather than a stylistic flourish. In Antonakis’s phrasing, three “is indicative of a pattern, suggests completeness and sounds nice.” Two items reads as a coincidence. Four starts to feel like a list someone forgot to edit down.

Say what you actually believe, not just what’s true

Moral conviction, stating the values behind a position rather than only the facts of it, was one of the tactics Antonakis singled out by name, describing it as a way of signaling “one’s values” and effectively making “a contract on which one is to be judged.” It’s a higher-risk habit than the others, since it only works when the conviction is real. Faked moral conviction tends to read as exactly that.

The nonverbal habits worth practicing

Let some animation into your voice

A flat, even delivery reads as competent but not compelling. The training specifically targeted vocal variety, changes of pace, changes of volume, and pauses placed where a point needs room to land, treating tone as one of three nonverbal tactics tested alongside the verbal ones rather than something people either naturally have or don’t. A pause dropped right before the key word in a sentence does a surprising amount of the work a whole extra sentence would otherwise have to do.

Let your face carry part of the message

Facial expression was measured as its own category, separate from tone of voice, and it moved the needle independently of it. A sentence about enthusiasm lands as an actual sentence about enthusiasm when the face saying it matches the claim, and lands as something closer to a rehearsed line when it doesn’t. This is one of the harder habits to fake convincingly, which is probably part of why it carries real weight when it’s genuine.

Use gesture like punctuation, not decoration

The gestures that showed up in the training weren’t broad theatrical arm-waving. They were smaller, timed to land on the specific word or phrase doing the work in a sentence, functioning closer to punctuation than performance. A hand that opens on the word “everyone” or chops down on the word “stop” reinforces the sentence instead of competing with it, which is a different skill than simply moving more while talking.

What this doesn’t mean

None of this turns a list of tactics into a substitute for having something worth saying. The training measured how charismatic and leader-like people were rated, not whether they were more likeable as people or more honest, and a tactic like moral conviction stops working the moment an audience senses it’s hollow.

It’s also worth being honest about the limits of any single body of research. This is one research program, run mostly with managers and business students across a handful of studies, and broader replication across other professions, cultures, and settings is still ongoing work rather than a settled question.

Becoming magnetic overnight by memorizing four tricks is asking more of this research than it claims to deliver. What the studies actually support is narrower and more useful: a handful of specific, practicable habits that nudge how people come across, and unlike a personality trait someone either has or doesn’t, a habit is something anyone can rehearse.