Introduction: unravelling charisma
‘The minute you walked in the joint, I could see you were a man of distinction. A real big spender.’ This lyric, famously belted out by diva Shirley Bassey, is a musical reminder that people judge us in an eye blink. It stems directly from charisma, or lack of it.
The purest form of charisma occurs with larger-than-life characters like Ghandi, ex-president Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Mohammed Ali, Churchill, Mother Teresa and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Nor can we entirely ignore the negative version. Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Mao and Mugabe all mobilized it with lethal results. Charisma and ‘good’ do not always coincide.
We are so used to the word ...
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