The 2 behaviors that make you socially magnetic

our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed Charisma isn’t a fixed trait reserved for a lucky few — it’s a set of learnable behaviors. Mind and BehaviorLeadershipSocial PsychologySocial CapitalCharisma A few months ago, I was queuing for free tacos at my coworking space in London. And because nothing unites people like free food, half the building had shown up.

This gave me the opportunity to shamelessly eavesdrop on the group of guys in front of me. The first talked about himself a lot, jumping in on other people’s stories to tell his own slightly better version of whatever had just been said. His colleagues let him, but their faces had gone politely blank, the look people wear when they’re waiting for something to end.

The second was his opposite: warm and pleasant whenever someone spoke to him, but only when someone spoke to him. He gave brief answers, handed the floor straight back, and initiated nothing. It was the third who intrigued me the most, because he was the one the whole group kept reorienting toward.

What stood out was the way he moved attention around the group, asking questions and handing the floor to different people, while being just as comfortable taking it himself, telling his own stories without waiting to be asked. When he spoke, the same faces that had gone blank for the first guy came back to life. And even when someone else had asked the question, they would answer while looking at him.

He came across as the “leader” of the group, even though he seemed to be on a similar professional rank with his colleagues. > One monopolized attention, one avoided it, and one knew exactly when to step forward and when to step back. I found the dynamic fascinating, but not unfamiliar. I had played nearly every role in it myself.

What I was actually looking at, I realized, was three different social strategies: one monopolized attention, one avoided it, and one knew exactly when to step forward and when to step back. What I didn’t expect, when I was later doing research for my book on social magnetism, was how precisely that live demonstration maps onto what the research literature actually finds. A 2023 study by Michael Dufner and Sascha Krause captures what I watched play out in that queue.