Secrets of Power Negotiating

Chapter 55Charismatic Power

The fifth element of personal power is Charismatic Power. It’s probably the hardest one to analyze and explain. What is charisma? We’ve all heard of charismatic religions, of course. In that sense, charisma means a gift from God of a special talent, such as the ability to heal, or to prophesize. In popular usage, charisma means this: A special quality that gives a person the ability to capture the imagination of another person, inspiring support and devotion.

German sociologist Max Weber was the first person to bring the term into modern day usage and present it as a learnable persuasion skill. He called it a form of authority. Until the turn of the century, we thought of authority as either law or tradition. Max Weber ...