Is ‘Rizz’ the Secret to Getting Ahead at Work?
Whether you call it charisma, charm or magnetism, some people seem like naturals. Good news: It can be learned.
Whether you call it charisma, charm or magnetism, some people seem like naturals. Good news: It can be learned.
Great leaders have it. Gen Z has a new word for it. Can the rest of us learn it?
Charisma—or rizz , as current teenage slang has anointed it—can feel like an ephemeral gift some are just born with. The chosen among us network and chitchat, exuding warmth as they effortlessly hold court. Then there’s everyone else, agonising over exclamation points in email drafts and internally replaying that joke they made in the meeting, wondering if it hit.
“Well, this is awkward,” Mike Rizzo, the head of a community for marketing operations professionals, says of rizz being crowned 2023 word of the year by the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s so close to his last name, but so far from how he sees himself. He sometimes gets sweaty palms before hosting webinars.
Who could blame us for obsessing over charisma, or lack thereof? It can lubricate social interactions, win us friends, and score promotions . It’s also possible to cultivate, assures Charles Duhigg, the author of a book about people he dubs super communicators.
At its heart, charisma isn’t about some grand performance. It’s a state we elicit in other people, Duhigg says. It’s about fostering connection and making our conversation partners feel they’re the charming—or interesting or funny—ones.
The key is to ask deeper, though not prying, questions that invite meaningful and revealing responses, Duhigg says. And match the other person’s vibes. Maybe they want to talk about emotions, the joy they felt watching their kid graduate from high school last weekend. Or maybe they’re just after straight-up logistics and want you to quickly tell them exactly how the team is going to turn around that presentation by tomorrow.
You might be hired into a company for your skill set, Duhigg says, but your ability to communicate and earn people’s trust propels you up the ladder: “That is leadership.”
In reporting this column, I was surprised to hear many executives and professionals I find breezily confident and pleasantly chatty confess it wasn’t something that came naturally. They had to work on it.
Dave MacLennan , who served as chief executive of agricultural giant Cargill for nearly a decade, started by leaning into a nickname: DMac, first bestowed upon him in a C-suite meeting where half the executives were named Dave.
He liked the informality of it. The further he ascended up the corporate hierarchy, the more he strove to be approachable and relatable.
Employees “need a reason to follow you,” he says. “One of the reasons they’re going to follow you is that they feel they know you.”
He makes a point to remember the details and dates of people’s lives, such as colleagues’ birthdays. After making his acquaintance, in a meeting years ago at The Wall Street Journal’s offices, I was shocked to receive an email from his address months later. Subject line: You , a heading so compelling I still recall it. He went on to say he remembered I was due with my first child any day now and just wanted to say good luck.
“So many people say, ‘Oh, I don’t have a good memory for that,’” he says. Prioritise remembering, making notes on your phone if you need, he says.
Now a board member and an executive coach, MacLennan sent hundreds of handwritten notes during his tenure. He’d reach out to midlevel managers who’d just gotten a promotion, or engineers who showed him around meat-processing plants. He’d pen words of thanks or congratulations. And he’d address the envelopes himself.
“Your handwriting is a very personal thing about you,” he says. “Think about it. Twenty seconds. It makes such an impact.”
Doling out your charm selectively will backfire, says Carla Harris , a Morgan Stanley executive. She chats up the woman cleaning the office, the receptionist at her doctor’s, the guy waiting alongside her for the elevator.
“Don’t be confused,” she tells young bankers. Executive assistants are often the most powerful people in the building, and you never know how someone can help—or hurt—you down the line.
Harris once spent a year mentoring a junior worker in another department, not expecting anything in return. One day, Harris randomly mentioned she faced an uphill battle in meeting with a new client. Oh!, the 24-year-old said. Turns out, the client was her friend. She made the call right there, setting up Harris for a work win.
In the office, stop staring at your phone, Harris advises, and notice the people around you. Ask for their names. Push yourself to start a conversation with three random people every day.
You can’t will yourself to be a bubbly extrovert, but you can find your own brand of charisma, says Vanessa Van Edwards, a communications trainer and author of a book about charismatic communication.
For introverted clients, she recommends using nonverbal cues. A slow triple nod shows people you’re listening. Placing your hands in the steeple position, together and facing up, denotes that you’re calm and present.
Try coming up with one question you’re known for. Not a canned, hokey ice-breaker, but something casual and simple that reflects your actual interests. One of her clients, a bookish executive struggling with uncomfortable, halting starts to his meetings, began kicking things off by asking “Reading anything good?”
Charisma starts with confidence. It’s not that captivating people don’t occasionally mispronounce a word or spill their coffee, says Henna Pryor, who wrote a book about embracing awkwardness at work. They just have a faster comeback rate than the rest of us. They call out the stumble instead of trying to hide it, make a small joke, and move on.
Being perfectly polished all the time is not only exhausting, it’s impossible. We know this, which is why appearing flawless can come off as fake. We like people who seem human, Pryor says.
Our most admired colleagues are often the ones who are good at their jobs and can laugh at themselves too, who occasionally trip or flub just like us.
“It creates this little moment of warmth,” she says, “that we actually find almost like a relief.”
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Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann has made it clear the company, which makes some of the fastest cars in the world, would not speed into the era of electrification.
“Our first steps in that (electrification) direction will be plug-in hybrids throughout the lineup,” he said in a 2022 interview with Penta. “This is all very easily welcomed at Lamborghini. The equations are easy. We always promise more performance than the generation before for all our cars, and we will do so while maintaining sustainability. By 2025, we will be able to cut our overall emissions by 50% with all of the hybrid models added.”
Proving Lamborghini and Winkelmann are as good as their collective word, the time of watts and volts arrived in Bologna, Italy, with the debut of the 2025 Lamborghini Urus SE. The first hybrid super-SUV from the proud Italian firm, which starts at $275,000 marries the familiar internal combustion specs of its growling engines with battery power looking not so much to save the planet as to propel vehicles across it with more alacrity.
The Urus SE is the first hybrid plug-in version of Lamborghini’s SUV, and it’s aimed to outperform its all-internal combustion rivals, such as the Aston Martin DBX707 and the Bentley Bentayga. The PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) Urus SE relies on an 800 CV hybrid powertrain, surpassing any previous Lamborghini SUV model in torque and power numbers.
The machine’s twin-turbo 4.0-litre V-8 engine is reengineered and partnered with an electric powertrain to produce 620 CV. For the uninitiated, CV is the abbreviation of Chevaux-Vapeur and is similar to horsepower. Usually, HP converts to just a little less than CV—at least allowing the automotive enthusiasts from the U.S. and Europe to get a traditional sense of vehicle power for gas-powered or hybrid vehicles without needing a conversion calculator.
To make a long engineering story as quick as the Urus SE, if you add together the internal contrition power plant and the e-motor, the final output is 800 CV. The result is a Lamborghini that cuts its emissions by 80% without sacrificing performance, comfort, or driving excitement.
The thinking process on when and how to release this plug-in hybrid began before the company’s 2021 pledge to cut CO2 emissions, says Stefano Cossalter, the Urus model line director.
“This plan gave momentum to a profound and constant research of opportunities and challenges involved in the transition to electrification,” Cossalter says. “The plan started in 2023 with the launch of the Revuelto [sold out into 2026], our first HPEV (high performance electrified vehicle), and continues with the launch of the hybrid version of our Super SUV Urus SE.”
Cossalter lays out that the slow and steady march to electrification will continue next year with the release of the Temerario, described by Lamborghini as the successor to the popular Huracan and “the first super sports car in the history of the … brand to be equipped with a V-8 twin-turbo engine paired with three electric motors.” Then, the automaker will look to the horizon for its introduction of the Lanzador, the company’s first BEV (battery electric vehicle) in 2028.
The hybrid version offers improved performance over the 100% gas Urus. A magnet synchronous electric motor located inside the SE’s eight-speed automatic transmission tied into the four-wheel-drive system can boost the V-8 engine, offering additional acceleration. Meanwhile, that motor can provide enough power to transform the Urus SE into a totally electric vehicle with a range of about 35 miles in EV mode.
With the new drive system noted, Lamborghini’s engineers could turn to performance specs. They built in a new, centrally located longitudinal electric torque vectoring system with an electro-hydraulic multi-plate clutch. That’s a lot of fancy tech talk to say the vehicle can throw power and grip back and forth between the front and rear axles wherever the onboard system senses it’s needed. A new electronic limited-slip differential on the rear axle helps give the Urus SE oversteering when needed. The end result is an SUV that packs the feel of a Huracan on the road.
That supercar feel in an SUV is the experience Lamborghini refuses to abandon in the Urus SE, Cossalter says.
“We didn’t come to compromises in the hybridisation process,” he says. “We wanted the Urus SE to preserve the DNA of the original project and enhance the experience for the driver. For those reasons, we decided not to downsize. We kept a V-8 engine with its strong character and voice, and then added some spice to the dynamic behavior by changing the all-wheel-drive architecture. The result is we have more power, more torque, more speed, more fun.”
As for external styling on the Urus, Lamborghini takes after its competition at Aston Martin or Ferrari by trying to make an SUV that looks as little like an SUV as possible. The profile is lowered, and the lines sweeping and tapering from nose to tail, as though Lambo’s in-house designers want to hide the size and functionality of an SUV inside the shape of the familiar Lamborghini supercars of the past.
However, driving the Urus does not feel much like a traditional Lamborghini supercar simply because the driving position is higher and more upright compared to, say, an Avantador that puts the driver’s backside close to pavement. Regardless of where one sits, the acceleration, noise, and tight handling lives in a Urus as happily as it does in any other Lambo.
As its first volume consumer step into the hybrid world, the Urus SE tells Italian supercar enthusiasts to keep the faith.
“The Urus SE points to the future with electrification while keeping its heritage intact,” Cossalter says.
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Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.