The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

by Olivia Fox Cabane

But gradually, as I started experimenting with the internal skills you learned in the previous chapters, I found that in addition to the intellectual connection, a strong emotional connection would form during coaching sessions. Sometimes, the emotional connection and the intellectual connection would combine into one superstrong connection. As one client described it, it was as if I were creating a force field around us, a cocoon, a container within which magic would often happen. And that’s when I started to notice a strange phenomenon. In the moment, the experience would feel magical, a real “high” for both my clients and myself. They’d do extraordinarily deep work, gaining profound insights and revelatory epiphanies. I’d often be surprised by how much they would reveal but thrilled that they progressed so much further than either of us had expected. And yet repeatedly, the very clients who’d spontaneously shared such personal revelations and expressed their awe and wonder in gaining such insights would then disappear from the face of the earth. I couldn’t understand why. Having reached such extraordinary depth and having made so much progress in just one session, I imagined they’d be eager to return. It wasn’t until I described this situation to a veteran executive coach that I understood where my error lay. My fellow coach, Eli, was a former Israeli Army officer with decades of experience. “Of course they disappear,” he told me. “They’re recoiling in shame. During the...