We tend to think that charisma is something you're born with and the charismatic people were able to captivate crowds and connect with individuals since they were kids; not true.
"Charisma is simply the result of learned behaviors," says Olivia Fox Cobane, author of "The Charisma Myth."
If given the right role models, people can learn those behaviors early. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. grew up with a father who was a preacher and a social activist.
But others need a little more cultivation for charisma to bloom.
Steve Jobs "came across as bashful and awkward in his earliest presentations," Cobane says. "Jobs painstakingly worked to increase his level of charisma over the years, and you can see the gradual improvement in his public appearances."
Since being charismatic is an in-road to getting promoted, winning negotiations, and otherwise killing it in business, here are a few science-backed behaviors that will make you more charismatic:
Charismatic people express their feelings.
"Charismatic individuals express their feelings spontaneously and genuinely," Claremont McKenna College psychologist Ronald E. Riggio says. "This allows them to affect the moods and emotions of others."
It's called emotional contagion, or "the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person's, and consequentially, to converge emotionally."
In other words, charisma is largely a matter of strongly expressing your emotions so that they can then "transfer" to the person or people with whom you're speaking.
Charismatic people use words that people can relate to.
In his book "Why Presidents Succeed," University of California at Davis psychologist Dean Keith Simonton argues that one thing that separates successful presidents from inconsequential ones is the language they use to connect with people.