Friday, February 19, 2021

Book Review: The Charisma Myth

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, by Olivia Fox Cabane, is a self-help style book on increasing your personal charisma.  This isn't a typical autism-related book, but since charisma factors into communication skills, I thought it might be an interesting read.  I wondered if there were tips that might help parents advocate for their children more effectively, and ideas that might help autistic people make ourselves heard and be truly listened to.  

As it turns out, this book does contain some things like that.  There is, in fact, a whole section just on body language.  Including a trick called mirroring, where you match your body language to the other person's, and then gradually shift towards more positive, open body language.  I'm less than fond of this particular trick, as it feels coercive.  But this wouldn't be the first place I've heard of it working.  

The book also helped explain some things about me, personally, though.  Like why I went through most of my childhood without much by way of friends or peer inclusion, but still received some kind of begrudging respect, even sometimes admiration and very thoroughly unwanted attention from some of the boys.  

There are, according to this book, three major pieces of charisma.  They are presence (which includes actively listening to and focusing on the conversation/person at hand), power (how wealthy, influential, intelligent, or socially important you seem), and warmth (how much goodwill and caring you seem to project).  

Now, most of my life has not gifted me with a whole lot of power.  Nor was I a terribly warm person when I was younger.  But presence?  I learned how to listen relatively young, from my mother.  A skilled listener herself, she counseled me that good listening included a genuine interest in the other person and what they had to say.  You don't merely wait until it's your turn to talk, but focus your attention entirely on the conversation and the other person.  And, as this book also mentioned, that people absolutely adore talking about themselves.  

It helps, I suspect, that I'm not really very good at managing two streams of words at once.  When words are being spoken near me, that's where my brain is stuck.  So while most people might be able to listen halfheartedly to someone talk about sports, and still be thinking about this new video game they're wanting to try, I'm pretty much just stuck hearing about sports.  

My personal oddness aside, much of this book involves a significant amount of mental reframing.  That is, changing how you view a situation, a person, or even yourself, using imagery or other techniques.  You do this so that your body language unconsciously changes to be more present, warm, and powerful.  

Maybe it's a bit cynical of me, but the emphasis on using your imagination to wave goodbye to your cares and feelings of responsibility so you can be your warmest, most present self... kind of worries me.  Really, any form of actively setting aside your view of reality so you can choose a magical dream world where people are grateful to you for being late to an important meeting (an actual example from the book) weirds me the heck out.  

The author works with a significant number of CEOs on this subject of charisma, as well as other upper management types, and in all honesty, I feel like those kinds of people need more reality, not less.  The author might say that such people should be getting the viewpoints of others by doing the listening portion of things... but in all honesty, this book is pretty much geared towards an egocentric viewpoint.  "Do this so you can be better, more successful, etc."

Maybe it's because I'm kind of leftist, but the constant "me me me" focus kind of wore on me over time.  I'm aware that everyone, myself included, thinks they're the most important human in the world most, if not all, of the time.  But I also have concerns for those around me, and most of this book only engages with other humans as obstacles or people to be influenced and wowed (because you're so awesome). There's no particular acknowledgment of other people as... well, other living humans, with dimensions and value beyond the superficial "what they can do for me."  The self-centered focus of the book just kind of left a bad taste in my mouth over time.

The book also has only mild concern for the ethics of using charisma to get your way.  There's a short section near the end, and that's about it.  It's framed more as "here's some pitfalls that might make your life harder, so keep this in mind," rather than, I don't know, doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do?  So I wasn't much impressed with that either.


Read This Book If

You want a guidebook to the subject of charisma, or have an interest in increasing your effectiveness as a communicator.  Fellow autistic people, parents, professionals, random others, pretty much anyone could potentially benefit from this book.  The writing is approachable and fairly clear and to the point.  I found some of the mental techniques suggested rather ethically questionable, and the book itself was stunningly egocentric.  But the information is overall good, and can give you a starting point to increasing your communication success rate after you've gotten past the basics of conversation.

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