Chris Williamson

There's a cool story about Jenny Jerome.

It's Winston Churchill's mother.

And she got to dine with Prime Minister William Gladstone and his rival Benjamin Disraeli on consecutive nights.

And when she left the dinner after sitting next to Gladstone, she said, I left feeling that he was the cleverest man in England.

And the following night, after sitting next to Disraeli, she said, I left feeling like I was the cleverest woman.

Nice.

That's perfect.

And it's this wonderful example of what Alain de Botton calls reverse charisma or inverse charisma.

Some people are interesting.

Some people make you feel interesting.

Right.

Why is it that around certain friends, we have lots to say.

Around other people...

we don't have so much.

Right.

And you go, well, no, it's how much they encourage us to dig deeper and to think about ourselves, how much of us they can tolerate, or they seem like they're willing to hold onto.

How prepared are they to open up about their experience that makes us feel like we have the headroom to be able to do it about ourselves.

And I think, yeah, a lot of people want to develop charisma.

They want to, me, me, me, look at how impressive I am.

They want that aura to be electric and the stories to be energizing and everyone in the room to walk in and just