Who gets to be charismatic?
How to land the Space Shuttle — and own the room
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In his tell-all book on Senator John Edwards, Andrew Young recounts the following story:
One of the most illuminating duties I performed while in Washington involved driving Senator Edwards, Senator Chris Dodd, and a couple of other Democrats to a meeting with [Bill] Clinton where he allowed them to pick his brain. I waited outside, and when my charges returned and we got back on the road, they all sat in stunned silence. Clinton had been so impressive that they didn’t know what to say. Finally Dodd muttered: “I don’t care how long I live. I’ll never be that good.”
What I love most about those last five words is who said them. A three-term representative, Connecticut’s longest-serving senator and a man who put his name to the Dodd-Frank Act that overhauled financial regulation in the United States — Dodd was neither a political novice nor someone averse to drawing attention to himself. It reminds me of when A-list celebrities get excited at the prospect of meeting Meryl Streep.
Of course, what made Clinton stand out as a generational talent was his sheer multitude of strengths. The ability to tell compelling stories (or obfuscate), to connect with people of all backgrounds (or perform empathy) and his unrivalled command of the issues (hard to argue with this one). But ultimately, Clinton had what all leaders crave: charisma.
It is not a quality reserved for one wing of politics. Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Giorgia Meloni have it, but so too do Angela Rayner, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Emmanuel Macron. In this age of short-form content cynicism and climate nihilism, it shouldn’t work. Yet many of us still yearn to be swept off our feet by political entrepreneurs.
Charisma is less about profession or subject matter and more about presence — how it makes people feel. In that spirit, I want to talk about the Space Shuttle. Specifically, this presentation by Bret Copeland called “How to Land the Space Shuttle... from Space”. And I know what you’re thinking — another newsletter about aviation. But you’d be wrong. I have no interest in the Space Shuttle! (Or really anything taking place between, say, 45,000 feet and 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.)
What I am interested in is charisma, in all its forms. And Copeland has that by the payload. Just take a moment to watch at least the first few minutes of the video below. But be warned: maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sometime soon you will feel compelled to revisit it, like Love Actually at Christmas.
“We can't go in the atmosphere backwards! First off, we would look ridiculous.”
Am I right? His words are so well memorised they feel improvised. His diction so crisp it could be tagged under ASMR. His body language so clearly radiating warmth you wonder whether he might be able to make all your doubts disappear. Sorry if this borders on the obsessive. It’s just that I really do like the video.
Think about a time you have been subjected to opposite behaviour. Not just the PowerPoint presentation groaning under the weight of bullet points or the party conference speech written by committee, but when you have been in the presence of a performer who actively makes you feel anxious.
For me, it was when I saw a play in which the lead actor stumbled on a couple of lines in the first 15 minutes. He did not do it again, but I spent the rest of the performance a little stressed, my nervous system preparing me for the possibility he might do it again and the secondhand embarrassment I (and I alone) would surely feel. It was exhausting.
Like any new technology or finite resource, charisma can be used for good, evil or simple distraction. Part of the problem is that we often don’t recognise we have been captured by such a person until the fever passes, at which point we may already have handed over our money or removed multiple items of clothing.
But if you find yourself watching a video on a subject you don’t much care about — or even in a language you don’t understand — and can’t bring yourself to hit ‘skip’, it is a pretty good indication you are in the presence of charisma.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll never be that good either. But at least you’ll know it when you see it.
Reminds me of an old management training exercise. We had to decide if our shuttle would explode or launch safely based on the nerd engineers advice. We said go for it. Whoops …
Fascinating. It also illustrated how it is possible to load a presentation with facts and figures, while remaining engaging—because they were concise, relevant, and supported with simple graphics.