I agree with you that phrases like "magnetic personality" are almost meaningless. The thing is, people struggle to describe charisma, because they don't see the elements of it.
Most of us can tell that a basketball player jumped higher than the other players. Hardly any of us can see all the steps (literally) that went right to create the perfect jump.
pg focuses on how Bill Clinton worked a crowd. But one-on-one was where he really shone.
Clinton, a tall, attractive, invariably smiling, and politically powerful white male, will already elicit a kind of unconscious deference.
But he used that power aura to focus completely on one person at a time, with the kind of intensity and mirroring that most people can't even achieve with their spouses. Posture, eye contact, adjusting his facial expression and vocal volume to match the speaker. Then, apart from body language, he had an incredible ability to remember details about people, to appear to value their opinion highly, and to articulate their thoughts and beliefs, maybe better than they could.
This was said of him many times: that he could make anyone feel like they were the most important person in the world.
>He made deep eye contact with you. Once President Clinton’s eyes locked onto yours, they didn’t leave until the interaction was complete. In all my years of talking to celebrities, from sports icons and Hollywood starlets to business moguls and politicians, few have used this technique with such finesse. Most of these ego-monsters can’t hold the connection more than a few seconds before they start scanning the room for someone more important to talk to than the person right in front of them. Yuck!
> [...]
> Sometimes I affectionately refer to President Clinton’s gift of connecting to those who don’t like him as “the carwash phenomenon.” Dignitaries and their families — specifically the ones who were skeptical and unfriendly toward him — would enter the White House through the East Wing gates, often with expressions of disdain. They would take a tour of all the public areas and then work their way over to the president’s office in the West Wing, to meet with him. A few hours later, when they exited the White House through the West Wing gates, they looked completely different. It was as if President Clinton, like a cosmic car wash, had magically washed away their scowls and replaced them with expressions of pure relaxation. Absolutely remarkable!
http://www.philgerbyshak.com/connection-from-president-bill-...