Works like a charm.

The following is taken from an article from the Toronto Star newspaper.

For those of you looking for a summary without wanting to read the whole thing, it essentially describes how you can win people's hearts by elevating yourself above them, making them want you, whether you have to be nice or mean to do that.



Works like a charm
Charm is as potent as it is elusive, whether you are a big leader or a little baby

It's the velvet glove over the iron fist of human relations


by JUDY GERSTEL

If charm were available by prescription, it would be the world's best-selling drug.

Alas, charm can't be prescribed. It can't be absorbed, imbibed or implanted. It can hardly even be described.

Like pornography, you know it when you see it. That's because, like pornography, charm is best defined by its effect.

It feels good. "Charm," a wise man once observed, "is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves."

Maybe that's one reason why incumbent politicians like George W. Bush so often get re-elected. People and politicians who make us feel good about ourselves, our choices and our lot in life are the ones we find charming and want to spend time with.

Charm may very well be the velvet glove over the iron fist of human relations ? and the glue that holds the social fabric together.

"One of the key insights of evolutionary psychology," suggests University of Texas psychologist and author David Buss, "is that humans have inherent conflicts of interest with other individuals, with members of their own family, with members of the opposite sex and members of their own sex."

While the animal world may be dog-eat-dog, human beings alone have developed the ability to charm each other as a way to smooth the interaction between predator and prey, between individuals with inherent conflicts of interest.

Charm is the etiquette we've evolved to make dog-eat-dog palatable.

This human, and humanizing, quality became a major issue in this week's U.S. election because Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was deemed to be sadly lacking in charm while Bush was credited with an appealing, boyish (but, some would say, suspect) charm.

Bush, says leadership guru and psychoanalyst Michael Maccoby, speaking by phone from Washington before the election, "gives the sense of caring about you ? though when you look at it, there's nothing there. But it's seductive."

Besides, adds Maccoby, "a lot of people think he's cute, appealing, like a child. There's a kind of boyish quality of seeming vulnerable in some way that people find charming."

But surely cuteness and charm ? E.T-like qualities that endear disruptive infants to exhausted parents ? aren't what it takes to be a world leader?

"Charm is one of those necessary but not sufficient conditions," says Susan Cramm, whose executive coaching firm, ValueDance, is based in San Clemente, Calif. For Bush's critics, she says, "his charm isn't enough because his credibility is in question."

That's the difference between charm and charisma, which both derive from the same Greek root word, karma.

"Charisma creates that sense of belief in the charismatic leaders, whether it's political or religious," Maccoby says.

Charisma includes charm but makes it seem superficial. Charisma is radiant sunlight compared with the flickering fluorescence of charm.

"People are ready to follow somebody (with charisma) because of their leadership and their vision," Maccoby says.

It can be part of what psychologists call transference, Maccoby says, the profound connection that occurs when an adult redirects childhood emotions towards a new figure in his life, typically a psychoanalyst but also, in some cases, a charismatic public figure.

That transference to a charismatic public figure can also be dangerous. Charisma, like its lesser component, charm, isn't necessarily linked to a positive force. Adolf Hitler was charismatic. More recently, one of the weapons of Slobodan Milosevic has been charm.

"Right up to his last hours as (Serbian) president, Milosevic remained a supreme political operator, employing a combination of guile and charm to deflect international efforts to bring about his demise," observed CNN News. (Milosevic's wife has been described as "Eva Peron without the charm.")

Only a few elected, benevolent leaders in recent decades ? John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Pierre Trudeau ? have been regarded as charismatic, and then not even unanimously. But almost everyone acknowledges their potent charm.

Trudeau's charm, Maccoby says, was "partly élan, his verve, his sense of being somebody who was out of the box and spontaneous, that spontaneity of a smile that's not totally programmed."

Maccoby finds Clinton's charm "much more innate" than that of Bush, for example, about whom he says, "I find something about his charm that's constructed. I think he's learned, his whole life, to be charming. If you look at history, his father, his grandfather, they all got ahead by being charming to men in power, flattering their vanity, seeming to be on their team."

Does this mean that we can all learn to charm powerful men ? or anyone else for that matter?

Definitely, says the founder and director of Robin Thompson Charm School in Illinois and author of Be The Best You Can Be, an etiquette and self-improvement guide for young adults.

Thompson has been teaching charm classes for the last 20 years and her franchise extends to Victoria, B.C., where Maria Manna runs a charm school based on Thompson's approach.

Thompson believes it's never too early or too late to learn to be charming.

Her youngest student was 5 years old and her oldest was 80.

Even though she believes charm comes "from within," Thompson insists you can learn to be your best both inwardly and outwardly.

The first lesson of charm (repeat this until it sinks in and works like, well, a charm): It's not about me, it's about you. It's not about me, it's about you. It's not....

"A charming person immediately puts the other person at ease," Thompson says, "and treats others with respect, decency and politeness."

Sure, that may be true in theory, and on paper, and at charm school, but on the ground, in the real world, we can be utterly charmed by rascals, rogues and even evildoers.

Scam artists, men who say they're going to call and never do, mass murderers ? they're often some of the most charming people on Earth.

"They can be appealing in a bad boy way," acknowledges Thompson. "And women like the bad boys: they're exciting, there's an element of danger."

Of course, killer charm isn't gender specific. Many men have been fleeced by charming women who take them for all they're worth.

As Oscar Wilde observed, "It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

As well, we always want what we can't have, and so "someone who's unattainable appears to have more charm," Thompson says.

Charm, explains Brampton-based consultant Gay Douglas Broerse, is about the ability to enchant, "to sing a song the way the mermaids would ? they knew the songs they sang would entice the sailors and lure them to their death."

"There's a kind of erotic quality in charm," acknowledges Maccoby, who trained as a psychoanalyst with Erich Fromm, "and I don't mean necessarily sexual. People who are narcissistic or erotic are more likely to be charming."

For example, says Washington, D.C., psychiatrist Justin Frank, the charm of bad boy TV character Tony Soprano "is very phallic" ? that is, virile and very aware of his sexuality

Women are charmed by this, Frank says, because it allows them to feel safe with their own sexuality. "They feel they can be completely uninhibited and sexual without holding back and not worry about being too aggressive or scaring him."

Frank believes charm is innate.

"I think charm has to do with seeing yourself in your mother's eyes," he says. You come by it naturally, he says, "when you're loved unconditionally." If not, you may develop the ability to be charming as "a way to entertain your mother or make her happy."

And sometimes, he says, "people become charming to compensate for inadequacy."

But the ability to be charming is usually developed at an early age, and Frank doubts a person can learn to be charming after about age 14.

"There are people who can learn, but they have to work at it, make an effort. It requires being un-self-conscious, and developing an acquired ability to read the other person instead of always feeling that you're being read by the other person."

If you are among those who have to learn how to charm, executive coach Cramm has advice.

"I'm a big believer in `Fake it till you make it,'" she says. "Make people feel comfortable, make them feel they're important, make them feel good about themselves."

And never, never, ever be tedious or boring.