What Is Charisma?
'Charisma is hard to pin down,' said Professor Richard Wiseman at the launch of FameLab. 'We all have a sense of someone having it but it is difficult to explain why.' So we asked journalist Mike Gerber to do just that.
How do you explain a concept like charisma? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? The nuns in
The Sound of Music didn't quite put it that way, but charisma is every bit as hard to pin down as Maria, the governess Julie Andrews played in the film.
Defining charisma
Somehow dictionaries and encyclopaedias don't quite capture its entire essence. Charisma, says the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, derives from the Greek
charis – meaning 'grace' – and
charizesthai – 'to show favour' – and is an 'attribute of astonishing power and capacity ascribed to the person and personality of extraordinarily magnetic leaders. Such leaders may be political and secular as well as religious. They challenge the traditional order, for either good or ill.'
In most people's minds however, charisma can also mean something less grandiose than that: a person with a magnetic aura; that someone who walks in the room at a party, say, and the effect is as if an electric light has been flicked on in the presence of moths.
Charisma thus defined has nothing to do with leadership, per se, though it may have everything to do with a latent power for leadership. What is unarguable is that those who have chosen to exercise this power have dominated our traditional history books and religious texts.
Charisma hall of fame
The long list of historic charismatics – be they X-factor talents, X-certificate tyrants or exceptional humanitarians – would include the likes of Moses and Christ, Mohamed and Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Karl and Groucho Marx, Hitler and Stalin, Ghandi and Mrs Ghandi, Lennon and McCartney, and that other John Paul, the last Pope.
Looks and physical stature can be important factors – Elvis, Brando, Marilyn Monroe excite us with their physical presence – but our historic list could include countless figures deficient in both departments, whose personality, drive and vision were overriding qualities.
Religious gurus by definition are charismatic, and their influence can span millennia. Osama bin Laden, a modern day charismatic, invokes the name of Mohammed for his actions, to the horror it must be said of many Muslims; Mother Teresa acted in the name of Jesus but so did Torquemada, the monk who persecuted Jews and burned thousands of 'heretics' during the Spanish Inquisition. America's Bible Belt is notorious for religious charlatans who have charmed the coins out of their gullible congregations' pockets.
In the case of political leaders, charisma is generally a useful personal asset but not always. John Major as Prime Minister was 'Mr Grey', but the Tory factions that united to choose him as their leader were probably partly reacting to a hangover from a surfeit of charismatic leadership during the Thatcher years. Nye Bevan was probably the most charismatic parliamentarian that the Labour party ever had, a match for Churchill in Commons' debates. But his fiercely proclaimed left-wing views meant he was never entrusted with the Labour leadership that had at one time seemed his destiny.
