Book of the Week: The Charisma Myth
12 Jan 2013
Olivia Fox Cabane gave a lecture about charisma at Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture Series. I read her book, The Charisma Myth. 
Definition of Charisma from Merriam-Webster
- a personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure
- a special magnetic or appeal
This book talks about the components of charisma and how to develop your own charisma by doing exercises. If you’ve watched or listened to the Thought Leaders podcast, it pretty much covers most of the book. The parts you need to know. The part that is missing from the talk that is in the book is using charisma. For the general public, I think they will be mostly concerned with developing charisma. It is only people who have charisma who care about how they are using it. The part about smiling reminded me of Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment talk about crow’s feet. The part about listening to people reminded me of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. The part about body language reminded me of Neil Strauss’ The Game, an account of the secret society of pick-up artist. One interesting thing I learned is that you can be a charismatic introvert. That is awesome news for anybody who is introverted and wants to be more charismatic. I think part of charisma is ability to make the ones around you feel good. Even though a lot of the information inside this book is available elsewhere, especially Olivia’s own recorded talk, it is nice to have it all in one place to refer to and put into practice. For now, having photocopies of the pages where she lists the “key takeaways” and exercises will do since I got the book from a place that let’s you borrow books for FREE. Please use your newfound charismatic powers for good. Purchase The Charisma Myth on Amazon.com or check it out from your local library.