political leaders nurture it, successful businesspeople cultivate
it, and famous entertainers exploit it. Nearly everyone
who deals with people can benefit from charm, and anyone
wanting to climb the ladder to success should develop it.
Anytime? Anywhere?
What if you were able to create that special feeling for others
anytime, anywhere? How valuable do you think that
gift might be in your personal life and your business
world? Absolutely priceless, believe me. When you have
the power to make people feel special, the rewards are usually
close behind.
The Power of Charm
Your Tools for Charming Others
Decide today that you are going to develop the power of
charm and practice it in your relationships with others.
This decision will open you to all the things you can do to
make other people feel wonderful about themselves.
Measure your current “charm quotient.” Give yourself a
grade from one to ten on how charming you believe you
are already, with ten being “excellent.” Then ask someone
you know to grade you as well. Whatever number that person
assigns to you is the true
measure.
Now you are ready to begin transforming yourself into a
genuinely and powerfully charming person.
CHAPTER 4
How to
Charm Anyone
They don’t care how much you know until
they know how much you care.
—LOU HOLTZ
Psychologists tell us that the core of personality is
self-esteem. This has best been defined as “how much
you like yourself.” Your self-esteem is the sum total of how
important and valuable you feel you are at any moment.
Human beings are intensely emotional. They make
decisions emotionally and then justify them logically.
People are powerfully affected by their emotional environment,
especially the behavior of other people toward them.
11
The Power of Charm
From infancy, you are conditioned to be hypersensitive
to the actions and reactions of your parents toward you.
Often, the dynamics of these early exchanges set you up for
life in your relationships with others.
Almost everything you do involving others is either to
bolster your self-esteem, your inner sense of well-being, or
to protect it from being diminished by other people or circumstances.
The Secret of Charm
The deepest craving of human nature is the need to feel
valued and valuable. The secret of charm is therefore simple:
make others feel important.
Five Ways to Be Charming
The more important you make people feel in your presence,
the more charming they will perceive you to be.
Fortunately, we know how to make people feel wonderful
about themselves. These key behaviors can be summarized
in the five As: acceptance, appreciation, approval, admiration,
and attention.
1.
Acceptance. The greatest gift that you can give other
people is the attitude of “unconditional positive regard.”
That is, you accept them in their entirety, without limitation.
You never criticize or find fault. You are totally accepting
of everything about them, as if they were a miracle of
nature. This is the starting point of being charming.
And how do you express complete acceptance? It is
simple. You smile! When you smile with happiness at seeing
people, their self-esteem jumps automatically. They feel
How to Charm Anyone
happy about themselves. They feel important and valuable.
And they like the person who is making them feel this
way. They find you to be charming, even before you open
your mouth.
2.
Appreciation. Whenever you express appreciation to
others for something they have done, small or large, their
self-esteem increases. They feel more valuable and important.
They feel more competent and capable. Their self-
image improves and their self-respect soars.
And how do you trigger this wonderful feeing in others?
It is simple. You say “thank you” on every occasion,
for any large or small reason. You make a habit of thanking
everyone in your world for everything they do. Thank
your secretary for her work. Thank your spouse for his
help. Thank your children for anything they do that you
appreciate.
Here is the double payoff: Whenever you smile or say
thank you to another person, not only does that person’s
self-esteem and feeling of importance jump, but so does
yours. You actually like yourself more every time you do or
say anything that causes other people to like themselves
more.
And the more you like yourself, the more you will genuinely
like and care about others. The more you like yourself,
the less concerned you will be about whether you are
making a good impression, and the more naturally charming
you will become.
3.
Approval. It is said that “babies cry for it, men die for
it.” Throughout life, all humans have a deep subconscious
need for approval of their actions and accomplishments.
No amount of approval ever satisfies for long. The need is
ongoing, like the need for food and rest. People who con
The Power of Charm
tinually seek opportunities to express approval are welcome
wherever they go.
Perhaps the best definition of approval is “praise.” This
subject is so important that we will come back to it later.
Just remember, whenever you praise other people for
something they have done, their self-esteem is elevated.
They feel wonderful about themselves. And they find you
to be more interesting, perceptive, highly likable, and
extremely charming.
4.
Admiration. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Everybody
likes a compliment.” When you give people a genuine, sincere
compliment about a trait, possession, or accomplishment,
they automatically feel better about themselves.
They feel acknowledged and recognized. They feel valuable
and important. They like themselves more, and they
like you more.
Compliment a person on an article of clothing.
Compliment someone on a trait, like punctuality or persistence.
Compliment the person on having won an award
or achieved a goal. Compliment for small things as well as
large. Always be looking for something to compliment, and
each time you find something, the other person will like
you more and find you to be charming.
5.
Attention. This is perhaps the most important quality
of all, and will be the subject of several subsequent chapters.
It is the most powerful behavior for building self-
esteem and is the key to instant charm. When you pay close
attention to other people, the more valuable and important
they will feel they are, and the more they will like you.
How to Charm Anyone
These are the five most powerful self-esteem building
tools ever discovered. As you master them through practice,
you will become one of the most charming and influential
people in your social and professional circle.
Your Tools for Charming Others
The next time you meet your significant other or even
someone you work with, conduct this exercise: Imagine
that when you were young, you had a dear friend with
whom you shared many of the important emotional experiences
of your young life. But years passed and you lost
touch. You had no idea where your friend had gone.
One day, when you are walking down the street, or maybe
you are at a social function, suddenly there he is! You are
shocked, amazed, overwhelmed with a flood of memories
and affection. Your whole face lights up and all you can
think is, “It’s you!”
Wow! You are so happy to see this person. You feel excited
and delighted and grateful and emotional all at the same
time.
Now, the next time you meet a person or persons who are
important to you, especially loved ones or dear friends,
create this same feeling and act as if you are rediscovering
them after a too-long absence, as if you were declaring,
“There you are!” Treat these special people as if seeing
them makes you incredibly happy. Smile and beam at
them. Focus all your attention on them. Treat them as if
they were the most important person in the world at this
moment. No matter who they are, they will think that you
are an incredibly charming person.
CHAPTER 5
The Magic
of Listening
Rapt attention is the highest form of flattery.
—DALE CARNEGIE
Your ability to listen well in a social or business conversation
can help you as much as any other skill
you develop. One of the most important qualities of a
leader is the ability to gather information by asking questions
and listening closely to what people have to say.
Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, concluded
that your ability to connect emotionally with people,
your EQ, is as vital to your success, and perhaps even
more so, than your IQ. He defined the most important
16
The Magic of Listening
quality of EQ as “empathy,” or the ability to be aware of
and sensitive to what people say and what they really
mean.
Howard Gardner of Harvard University has defined
this quality as “social intelligence,” which, as we noted at
the outset of this book, is the highest paid and most
respected form of intelligence in our society. And fortunately,
it can be learned just by becoming a good listener.
Four Keys to Effective Listening
Every book, article, or course on this subject ultimately
comes to the same conclusion: There are four key elements
of effective listening. If you can master them, your “charm
quotient” will skyrocket immediately.
1.
Listen attentively. Listen without interrupting. Listen
in complete silence, as if there is nothing in the world that
is more important to you at this moment than what the
other person is saying.
If someone wants to talk to you, especially at home,
immediately discontinue all other activities and give that
person your complete attention.
Turn off the television, shut the book or newspaper, and
focus single-mindedly on what the other person is saying.
This behavior will be instantly recognized and appreciated,
and will give you tremendous emotional power in the conversation.
To listen as if you are transfixed by what the other person
is saying, imagine that your eyes are sunlamps and you
are giving the person’s face a tan.
The Power of Charm
When a person is intently listened to by another, he is
affected biochemically. His brain releases endorphins,
nature’s “happy drug,” which makes him feel good about
himself. His self-esteem goes up and he likes himself more.
Above all, he likes and trusts you more by virtue of your
listening attentively to him. The payoff is extraordinary.
2.
Pause before replying. Rather than jumping in as soon
as the other person takes a breath, pause for three to five
seconds. Allow a silence to exist. Just relax.
When you pause, three things happen, all of them
good. First, you avoid interrupting the other person if he is
just pausing to reorganize his thoughts before continuing.
Second, by pausing, you tell the person that what he said
was important and that you are considering it carefully.
This reinforces the personal value of the speaker and causes
him to see you as a more attractive and intelligent person.
Third, you actually hear the person, not only what he
said, but what he meant, at a deeper level of mind. Try it
once and see.
3.
Question for clarification. Never assume that you know
exactly what the person meant by what he said. Instead,
help him to expand on his most recent remark by asking,
“How do you mean?” or “What do you mean, exactly?”
Here is one of the most important rules of communication:
The person who asks questions has control.
The person answering the questions is controlled by the
person asking them. When a person is speaking in answer
to a question, fully 100 percent of his focus and attention is
on what he is saying; he cannot think of anything else. He
is totally controlled by the questioner.
The Magic of Listening
The trick to charming someone with this technique is to
ask your questions thoughtfully. All great communicators
know this and use it regularly.
4.
Feed it back; paraphrase it in your own words. This is the
acid test of effective listening, the proof that you were really
paying attention, instead of engaging in the “phony listening”
that is so common today.
When a person finishes speaking, you pause and say
something like, “So, you just did this, and then this happened,
and then you decided to do that, right?”
Only when the speaker confirms that’s what he said
and meant do you continue, either by asking another question
or commenting on what has just been said.
Why Women Are Wonderful Listeners
In general, women are excellent listeners already. When a
woman communicates, according to MRI scans, fully seven
centers of her brain are involved. In men, it is only two.
Men often listen halfheartedly to women, especially if
the television is on. That’s because men can only process
one sensory input at a time. They cannot, for example, both
watch television and listen to someone else speaking,
which women can do much more easily.
The worst sin a man can commit with the woman in his
life is not to listen to her when she is speaking. Every man
has heard the woman accuse, angrily, “You’re not listening to
me!”
The typical male response is to quickly say, “Yes, I am.”
Then she has you. She folds her arms and asks demandingly,
“All right, then. What did I just say?”
The Power of Charm
It is only if he can feed it back to her with some accuracy
that she knows for sure that he was really listening.
For you to become a completely charming person, you
must learn to master the techniques of listening—especially
if you are a man. Developing this key skill will take discipline
and determination at first, but it will become easy
