Charisma: who has it, and how to get it

From The Telegraph:

Until I encountered Olivia Fox Cabane, whom US executives at firms like Google, Deloitte and Citigroup pay up to $100,000 a year to help boost their X-factor, I’d have naively believed charisma was an intangible, magical aura. The word comes from the Greek “gift”, befitting the notion that allure is something you’re born with, and can’t earn. It’s the “It” that differentiated Baroness Thatcher from John Major, George W Bush from John Kerry, Lady Gaga at the O2 from her hundreds of imitators performing to tiny audiences in bar back rooms. But, as Fox Cabane points out in her new book The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, it was also the difference between Marilyn Monroe and her alter-ego Norma Jean Baker. In 1955, the film star rode the New York subway, unnoticed by her fellow passengers because, she explained, she had chosen to adopt “Baker” mode. But when she emerged onto the city pavements, she asked an accompanying journalist: “Do you want to see her?” She fluffed her hair, struck a pose.

Suddenly, onlookers reported, magic seemed to flow from her. “That shows that charisma isn’t innate, it can be controlled at will,” Fox Cabane says.

More here.