Charm and Charisma

 I found this article by Ian Leslie on his Substack site "The Ruffian" interesting in how it made me start considering my teaching style and writing style. Leslie writes:

In a new book, Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics, the sociologist Julia Sonnevend argues that charm has superseded charisma to become the dominant political style of the twenty-first century. Charm thrives on proximity; on a sense that the politician would be at ease with the voter in person. Bill Clinton, who felt your pain and played the sax, had bags of charm. Charisma depends on distance - on the leader being ‘up there’, gazing down at us. De Gaulle was the archetypal charismatic leader. He believed that a leader must never be ordinary, but wreathed in mystique and larger than life.

The comedian Jimmy Carr has also given this question some thought (standup is as much about developing an onstage persona as it is about jokes), and he offers a succinct definition of the difference. Charm is I come to you; charisma is You come to me. Jennifer Aniston is charming; Angelina Jolie is charismatic. Charismatic people don’t care what you have to say; charming people really do. The essential thing, Carr says, is to know which type you are and inhabit it. (He defines his own persona as charismatic, on the basis that nobody could find him charming.)

My sense is that I lean more in the direction of charisma rather than charm, although my students might offer "neither" as a viable alternative. I suspect this is why blogging is better for me than, say, hosting a podcast, or if I did host a podcast it would likely have a format that was just me talking about something rather than an interview show. (I've sometimes thought I'd like to do a podcast that is just me talking about a play or book for 30 minutes, which really is a lecture, isn't it?)