Have you ever met someone who made you wonder:
How did this person get this job? Obviously this person has no idea what they are talking about. How did they make it this far?
I always work hard and consistently perform well. Why am I still at the same place I was five years ago, while this charlatan is rising up the career ranks?

Over the years I’ve worked at many different companies. One thing I can guarantee you is that you’re going to find charlatans often in high positions.
When I say charlatan I’m talking about someone who shouldn’t be in the position they are not, usually due to a lack of emotional intelligence and a lack of competence. In my opinion charlatans are under qualified people that made it far in business despite their little competence.

What are they doing better than most?

There are certain attributes and tricks that charlatans use to get ahead in life.
Generally speaking they just know how to market themselves and they know how to be seen for greater than what they actually are.

It’s not just about marketing yourself as competent and qualified, it also comes down to being likable.
It’s proven that we believe people more when we like them and that we would rather do business with someone we find nice.

To be honest there are many different things that charlatans do to make us believe them. They use many different tricks to become successful.
Below I listed four things that they are usually doing.

Common traits

1. Talent to persuade

2. Confidence

3. Likability

4. Promise big things

Talent to persuade:
Persuading people is key if you want things to go your way. Persuasion is the art of influencing people the way you want.

Persuasion is built on three pillars:
Ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), logos (logic)
Most charlatans use these three pillars at the same time to deceive us.
In the first step they establish credibility. Then they try to bring up emotions and lastly they finish with a takeaway that seems logical to us.
After they established credibility they always try to catch you emotionally (heart) and logically (mind).

By the way that’s exactly what con artists do when they try to trick someone in giving them money or giving an important signature.

Confidence:
Charlatans are extremely confident. Confidence displays competence and once we believe that someone is competent there is no turning back.

Simple tricks like using technical terms or mentioning important people and phrases is enough for our minds to believe that someone knows what they are talking about. It sounds simple but if you’re honest with yourself, you’ve definitely fell into that trap once.

Politicians are the best example. Most of the times they have no idea what they are talking about but by saying technical terms and not really answering direct questions that have been asked, we never know if they have a clue or not.
This phenom is called incompetence compensation competence or easily said:
Having a confident appearance when being absolutely clueless.

Likability:
Being likable is a skill. There are certain things you can do to make people like you. Without going too much into details, there are two easy things charlatans do constantly and that you can try next time when meeting someone.

Mirroring
The first things is mirroring. That is the technique of mimicking someone’s behavior and gestures with the intent of being liked.
The reason this works is because we subconsciously find people more likable if they behave similarly to us. It gives us a feeling that what we do is right and confirms that how we behave is a good thing.
iDon’t overdo it and try to mimic every move the person across from you is making.

Compliments
Very simple but effective is giving compliments.
If someone gives us a compliment we’ll like them more.
I don’t care what someone else is saying. However, we all love receiving a compliment here and there.
Charlatans take it to the next level by complimenting our insecurities.
To do that you have to find out what the other person’s insecurities are first.
Again you have to be careful. If you overdo it people are going to think that you’re being sarcastic.


Promise big things:
There is one thing I’ve witnessed with charlatans in high positions and that is that they promise things that are almost too good to be true.
No one wants to be faced with problems. Every leader wants solutions and results.
Charlatans use that to their advantage by promising big and fast results. Our first instinct is to believe them or at least that we want to believe the promised achievements.
If something doesn’t go as planned or they can’t match a promised deadline they do what all charlatans do. They blame it on outside circumstances and on other people.

Their goal is always to be seen as competent and failure will do the opposite.
Therefore, they try to prevent that at all costs.

In conclusion

Charlatans know how to market themselves and they know exactly what to say and what to do to come across as competent.
They use techniques like mirroring or compliments to be liked by other people.
Promising fast and big results is how they convince leaders and company owners to promote them to high ranking positions.

Being a charlatan might sound dishonest and crooked to most of you but if you have problems being taken seriously and you haven’t been promoted even though you have skills, taking some of their tactics into consideration might be beneficial.

Don’t downplay the work you do. Praise it.
Give people compliments and try to come across as more confident next time.

Thank you for reading.