CHAPTER FOUR

Meet the Charmer

The acid test of anyone’s professional reputation is often what others say about them behind their backs. “I don’t know how he (or she) does it!” is a refrain we often hear when people are describing a Charmer. Whether they have managed to land a client no one else in the firm could close, come from behind to get a coveted promotion, or even get their start-up company on the radar screen of big investors, an aura of intimidating mystery surrounds Charmers. It’s not just how often they win the game that fascinates us, it’s that they have an uncanny ability to redefine the rules of the game to suit themselves that leaves other types on the grid shaking their heads in wonder.

Because the emotional intensity that Charmers exude compels our attention, participants in our workshops often cite celebrities when discussing people who exhibit this power style. Sports celebrity Darryl Strawberry is one of the people frequently mentioned as exemplifying the power style of a Charmer. Other Charmers noted as much for their personal drama as their professional success include Angelina Jolie, Ivan Boesky, and Frank Sinatra.

Approximately 25 percent of the people sent to us for coaching from Fortune 500 companies consider themselves Charmers. These individuals are often highly successful rainmakers in their organizations.

Strengths of the Charmer

As we shall see, Charmers tend to be consummate strategists who get what they want—even when the odds appear to be against them. They are determined, influential, and powerful change agents.

Charmers Have a Keen Sense of How to Influence Others

We don’t call them “Charmers” for nothing. Many Charmers became masters of persuasion early in their childhoods. The creative methods Charmers use to impress their superiors can make Pleasers and Commanders envious. This is because Pleasers and Commanders, who have been conditioned to know their place in the pecking order and stay there, simply don’t feel entitled to the attention of those in charge the way Charmers do. That said, when the Charmer manages to land a golf date with the boss or get the firm’s top client to meet them for lunch, such bold moves often spark widespread admiration. Who hasn’t read The Prince by Machiavelli (the überCharmer) and fantasized about being an expert at the art of influence?

Starting early in childhood, where they often learned how to play one parent against the other, Charmers have cultivated the art of using private interactions to get what they want. Sadly, young Charmers often feel forced to become consummate strategists early-on to survive emotionally.

Later in life, people who have been conditioned to operate as Charmers often have an uncanny ability to seduce their superiors, and sometimes even their clients, into giving them what they want. Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, Charmers are able to get the boss to think of them as the heir apparent they always longed for, or an important client to feel like their “best friend.” Their talent for fostering the illusion of a “special” emotional connection with people in charge gives Charmers the power to close deals and get promotions that can elude Pleasers and Commanders.

Charmers Can Produce Results in Whatever Incentive System You Create

No matter how complex the maze, Charmers have power genes that compel them to find the cheese, find it first, and run off with the biggest hunk they can carry. Put them on commission, and they will close deals on a scale you couldn’t have imagined possible. Take away their commission, and they will find a way to get promoted to a position where they can grab a chunk of equity in the firm. While they may not always have the most formal authority in their organizations, they tend to take home the largest paychecks.

Whatever the industry and however compensation is decided, Charmers are notoriously successful rainmakers. This is because they are able to balance a keen insight into what sways others emotionally with their own logical detachment. While the Pleaser is attuned to the needs of others on the job, often at their own expense, the Charmer is able to keep their own interests in mind while hitting it out of the park for their organizations.

In the business of professional sports, Darryl Strawberry’s rapport with the crowd kept fans buying tickets for years. In his popular autobiography, Straw: Finding My Way, Strawberry describes how his instincts around what would pack stadiums helped him rise to the top in the competitive world of pro baseball: “Go up to bat, they’re booing—pow. Hit my first one off the scoreboard. The place erupts. Now they’re all up on their feet cheering. I go around the bases all nonchalant, like I don’t even hear them. Get back into the dugout, and instead of coming out for a curtain call, I go down the tunnel for a smoke. You were booing me a minute ago, now you want me to come out? Nuh-uh . . . Next time I come out to bat they’re like statues all around the park. They have to pee . . . they hold it . . . Boom, I slam another one over the left field wall. The place erupts.”¹

Whether they’re working in the theater or on a trading floor, Charmers have a natural instinct for keeping one eye on what drives revenue and the other eye on what fuels passion. They also tend to be keenly aware of the value they are bringing to those around them. Thus, while Charmers can be challenging to manage, they are often well worth the effort.

Charmers Are Master Problem Solvers

Charmers are strategic thinkers to the core. If you have a business problem you can’t solve, look for a Charmer. Their dispassionate ability to analyze situations can cut through the most tangled web of professional intrigue. What’s more, if you have a new idea for a business venture, you definitely want to run it past a Charmer before you put too many resources behind executing it. While the Charmer’s ability to become clinically unsentimental about the prospects for a business venture can be chilling, their thought process tends to be so thorough that it’s worth the drop in temperature.

Any member of management who has had the pleasure of being raked over the coals in a meeting by a talented Charmer in sales can testify to this. Whether they are working in the private sector or even as political operatives, Charmers can often tell you bluntly what will or won’t sell—and why. What’s more, they are often right. That’s why having some talented Charmers on your team can be critical to your firm’s success. Remember, if you can get your idea past a Charmer, you can probably sell it to anyone.

Charmers Can Be Powerful Change Agents

Your basic Charmer simply won’t believe what authority figures tell them “just because they said so.” Charmers question almost everything. They question authority. They question rules and structure. They question prevailing beliefs. Granted, this widespread questioning is often in pursuit of their own goals, but smart organizations recognize the larger potential in the Charmer’s questions.

The Charmer’s penchant for independent thinking stems from the fact that, in early childhood, he or she may have experienced a role reversal and felt the need to hold a caregiver accountable for immature behavior. One Charmer told me he tried to keep his mother’s checkbook in order for her, and another told me she used to hide her father’s cigarettes so he wouldn’t smoke himself to death. In the opening of his autobiography, Darryl Strawberry writes about having to restrain his alcoholic father to protect his mother.

While this type of role reversal is dysfunctional in many ways, an upside is that it empowers Charmers to address problems that Pleasers and Commanders may turn a blind eye to or overlook. This is because Pleasers and Commanders are less likely to question authority. The Pleaser is usually too busy trying to win the approval of those in charge to question the way the overall hierarchy functions, and the Commander is usually too busy trying to advance within the system to question the system itself. While Inspirers are willing to question the top brass, they are also predisposed to leave systems that don’t reflect their values rather than fighting to advance within them. Thus, without Charmers in our organizations, we would rarely have the change agents necessary to question what’s going on with a system when it has lost its way.

Frank Sinatra, who spent much of his childhood learning to grapple with both his short-tempered mother and the violent kids on the New Jersey streets, grew up to become a powerful Charmer and change agent in the entertainment industry. In an article for the Nation, journalist Jon Wiener chronicled the high price Sinatra paid for defending liberal ideas, such as racial integration, early in his career. Wiener writes, “The pundits called it “Frank’s big nosedive . . . Columbia records asked Sinatra to give back his advance, MGM released him from his film contract, he was fired from his radio show and his agent dropped him. His career, like those of so many other victims of Mc-Carthyism, was in ruins.”²

But never underestimate a Charmer’s ability to recover from a setback. Sinatra’s comeback in the entertainment industry was with his 1953 hit film From Here to Eternity. He also went on to return to politics as a Democrat. Frank Sinatra, like many powerful change agents, was someone who was going to make up his own mind about the “rules” rather than blindly obeying them.

Charmer Blind Spots

The Charmer’s drive is a double-edged sword. While their ambition fuels their rise to the top, this same determination can trip them up at critical moments in their careers. This is because the Charmer’s race for success is propelled by more than a zeal for outer accomplishments. They often dash from one achievement to the next because they are compelled by the need to distract themselves from uncomfortable feelings within.

Charmers Are Focused on Results—Not Process

This blind spot highlights one of the main ways in which Charmers differ from Pleasers. Pleasers, who are sensitive to others’ feelings, are all about the process and getting the best out of people while they get to the desired outcome. In contrast, Charmers apply their brainpower to the problem at hand and to producing results anyway they can.

As we’ll see, thanks to the survival skills they developed in childhood, Charmers don’t wait for instructions and road maps. Once they know what the goal is, they will map out what they think is the most efficient route and get moving. If they violate the process along the way, they’ll consider apologizing later. After they collect their bonus.

Ivan Boesky was a prominent figure on Wall Street whose flamboyant lifestyle and well-publicized philanthropy kept him in the headlines in the 1980s. Boesky’s relentless drive to achieve, combined with the stormy dynamics in his personal life, has prompted many of our participants to cite him as an example of a Charmer.

Boesky went from famous to infamous when he began bending the rules too far by using insider tips to make huge stock trades only a few days before the corporation he was trading announced a takeover. This practice caused the SEC to crack down on insider trading, and was so widely publicized in the 1980s that, well over a decade later, Brad Pitt’s character in the film Ocean’s Eleven referred to a confidence scheme involving insider information as a “Boesky.”

In their article on Boesky for Time magazine, journalists Stephen Koepp, Bill Johnson, and Frederick Ungeheur wrote, “No amount of money seemed to convince [Boesky] that he had finally arrived . . . He seemed determined to become richer than his father-in-law. His zealousness shocked the arbitrage business, which had become accustomed to small, cautious investments. Boesky frequently bet the ranch on single takeover bids.”³

In describing the types of trades Boesky pioneered, which took an unwary Wall Street by storm, these journalists were chronicling a Charmer who was inventing his own rules faster than his industry could regulate him. While few Charmers bend the rules so far that they break, Boesky serves as a reminder of what can happen when the drive to excel becomes so excessive that it eventually sows the seeds of a business leader’s demise.

Charmers Have a Tendency to Overextend Themselves

Charmers are so driven to best their colleagues and produce superior results that many of them will go to extremes to avoid looking within to analyze why they run as hard as they do. As we have noted, the fear that keeps some Charmers frantically avoiding feelings stems from their inability to trust one or both of their primary caregivers.

There’s a huge downside to being compulsively driven that can put the organizations that Charmers work for at risk. Charmers may create big, complex deals and start juggling way too many balls at once in an effort to accelerate their momentum. If they haven’t taken the time to create real collaborative relationships that will sustain them during the inevitable ups and downs of a tumultuous business environment, things can get messy and extremely expensive if the wrong balls hit the ground.

One Charmer told me that, in his opinion, “great salespeople never stop selling.” Charmers with this attitude often end up juggling so many balls that the line between their professional obligations and their personal life blurs. One Charmer I worked with, who was one of the most successful salespeople at her hedge fund, was constantly flying around the world to network with clients, throwing dinner parties to support her husband’s political career, and adopting multiple children to try to build the kind of caring family she never had as a child. The problem was that she had so much on her plate that she was rarely fully present for any of it. In our early coaching sessions, she would often burst into tears from the sheer physical exhaustion of keeping her image up in all facets of her life.

In his autobiography, Darryl Strawberry writes about not only the professional risks he exposed his sports franchise to, but the high personal cost he paid for overextending himself. His life changed dramatically when he became the number one draft pick in the nation his senior year in high school. While life looked like a fantasy on the outside, Strawberry was still unable to trust himself on the inside. Like many Charmers, he began to live a double life. In the sports industry, he was a revenue-producing asset to his franchise. On the inside, he was in full flight from the childhood trauma of battling with an abusive, alcoholic father. In extreme cases, the Charmers’ flight from disowned feelings can make them so focused on personal gain that their professional judgment becomes impaired. For Strawberry, who had a proclivity to indulge in drugs and dangerous behavior, this inner flight cost him much more than his baseball career—it came close to costing him his life.

Charmers Tend to Isolate Themselves

Because the risks they take are often larger than they’d even like to admit to themselves, Charmers may isolate themselves so they won’t be drawn into conversations that would require them to disclose how they go about producing the results that take them to the top. They rationalize taking big risks because many of them honestly believe they are smarter than the people they work for. After all, if you’ve convinced yourself that you are smarter than your parents as a child, how hard is it to believe later that you are smarter than your manager?

Many Charmers have learned to have more faith in their own judgment than they did in their caregivers. Later in life, these Charmers may become conditioned to value their own intellect and opinion over the advice of their managers and/or the prevailing wisdom of their group. This attitude reinforces the Charmer’s tendency to operate as a lone wolf.

When they isolate themselves, Charmers may miss vital feedback from others that would clue them in that their behavior has led them into the danger zone. When the Charmer loses perspective in terms of how his or her behavior is being experienced by others in the system, the Pleasers and Commanders who may have been watching the Charmer’s ascent from the sidelines often take a step back and wait for the Charmer to self-destruct. Less benevolent colleagues may even try to help this process along.

Charmers See Emotional Vulnerability as a Weakness

Charmers are not flawed people, but they often operate with a flawed framework. Self-disclosure and soul-searching are challenging for the Charmer, because their childhood has made it difficult for them to feel emotionally safe in the presence of others.

Nobody fears being manipulated more than a master manipulator. Because of this, Charmers have difficulty trusting others, and when others sense this, they have difficulty trusting the Charmer in return. These trust issues are at the heart of why, in spite of their strategic talents, Charmers can sometimes find it difficult to achieve and maintain leadership positions in large organizations.

An example that illustrates this blind spot comes from a talented South Korean Charmer we worked with, Yoon, who did everything he could think of to establish himself as the pipeline to Asian wealth in the minds of his American firm’s board of directors. His blind spot came into play when he avoided discussing his plans with his subordinates and adopted a cold and withdrawn management style so that he wouldn’t be emotionally swayed by the American “cowboys” who reported to him.

When the board decided it was time to do some reshuffling at the senior management level, Yoon was delighted to discover that he was being considered as a successor for the firm’s current president. His hard work was finally paying off! Yoon longed for the public recognition that came with this type of high-profile position.

Sadly for him, when the grapevine got the news that the board was looking for a new president, top producers throughout the organization threatened to leave if Yoon was seriously considered for this post. It turned out that Yoon was only able to create his impressive revenue numbers by strategically downsizing and ruthlessly managing his department. Because he was so hesitant to allow his direct reports to have any influence over him, he went to the other extreme and treated them more like chess pieces than people. While he had been making money (at least on paper), he had been making enemies as well. His strategy backfired, and he not only got passed over for the top slot, he subsequently left the firm.

The inner world of Charmers is a complex place where they are anxiously sifting through the motives and skills of others to make sure they have mapped out the best strategy for themselves before they get manipulated by someone else. While they are largely driven by fear and have trouble trusting others, this in no way means they are bad people. They simply see life, and business, as a game where if they don’t win—they lose.

What’s more, like all of us, Charmers long to be liked. Don’t let a Charmer with an intimidating image fool you. They may seem unconcerned with what others think of them, but behind closed doors Charmers will brood over a perceived slight, fret about their image, and often become highly sentimental over seemingly trivial events. My work has taught me that the more intimidating the Charmer’s outer shell is, the more likely they are to be protecting a sensitive inner core.

A Charmer’s Family Background

A classic Charmer is a lone wolf who has often been raised in a system where people operate behind each other’s backs effortlessly, elegantly, and automatically. It’s second nature for them to triangulate. This back-door approach to amassing power is the result of a breakdown in the formal authority structure of the family system. Ideally, the authority figures in a family system are role models who support each other and provide a united front when it comes to power struggles with and among the children. However, for Charmers, it’s never been that simple. Due to divorce, parental illness, or simply the kind of emotional estrangement that weakens a marital bond rather than breaking it, the Charmer has learned that when parental authority is inconsistent, it can’t always be trusted.

Gerald Gardner, a clinical professor of child psychiatry at Columbia University, coined the term Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). In essence, PAS is a term Gardner developed to describe the destructive impact on a child of one parent’s alienation from the other. According to Gardner, the risk to the child of developing adult depression or a manipulative style of interpersonal behavior later in life intensifies to the degree that the child becomes a pawn in the rift between the parents.

Amy Baker, author of Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties That Bind, describes how seeking “adult” support from one’s children can distort the parenting process: “When children feel that their parents are more like friends than like parents, it may indicate that the alienating parent is sharing too much information with the child, is relying on the child for support and comfort, and may not be setting appropriate limits.”⁴

A lively debate is under way among mental health professionals as to whether PAS qualifies for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. What is not in question, however, is that almost all the Charmers I have worked with report an intense emotional entanglement with one of their caregivers. Some Charmers have described feeling as if they had to serve as a therapist for one of their parents. Others report being treated like a spousal substitute for an angry or alienated caregiver.

An ongoing need to emotionally soothe a troubled caregiver gradually erodes the child’s respect for formal authority. This lack of respect for authority is the foundation of the trust issues that emerge later in life when the Charmer enters the workforce. After all, since consistency and supportive behavior were never modeled for Charmers, they have come to the sad conclusion that many people are only out for themselves. Why shouldn’t they operate that way?

As happens with many Charmers, Darryl Strawberry’s trust issues with his father manifested in difficulty respecting authority figures in general. While he had already fallen into a pattern of violence and substance abuse by high school, Strawberry found a refuge in sports. He notes that his early coaches had their hands full with him because, as with many Charmers, his ego convinced him that he didn’t need anyone. That said, Strawberry gained some structure in his early years from a couple of coaches who refused to let him play when he was disrespectful or undisciplined.

When Charmers leave home and begin to establish an identity outside their family system, the survival skills that they developed to emotionally support a troubled parent tend to blossom into seductive talents. When this happens, Charmers begin to develop a taste for conditioning others to comply with them. Whether their strengths are intellectual, social, or even physical, once Charmers feel the rush of power over others—they want more.

Charmers tend to select their college and their major based on the reputation that these campuses and courses have for putting them on the “fast track” to wealth and power. They will look for schools that have a reputation for getting graduates into top firms, training students in cutting-edge technology, and attracting faculty with celebrity status.

Once Charmers start considering the job market, they tend to look for a work environment where they will be promoted fast and make as much money as possible. As a result, Charmers are often drawn to commission-driven jobs that status-conscious Commanders may view as too risky—as long as the payment system is clear to them. This is because, ironically, the Charmer isn’t as worried about financial security as people from other quadrants tend to be (the Charmer learned early in the game that nothing in life is too secure).

The Charmer in Transition

Job transitions often produce less anxiety for Charmers than they do for Pleasers and Commanders because, deep down, Charmers know that they have an edge when it comes to selling themselves. What’s more, since they have a tendency to always be on the lookout for a bigger and better deal, Charmers often have a list of fallback opportunities lined up long before they need them.

What Charmers have to bear in mind is the well-known adage “Be careful what you wish for.” Because they are consummate spin doctors, Charmers need to make sure that they don’t oversell themselves in the interview process.

Thanks to their impressive management skills, some Charmers are able to enthrall prospective employers who hire them on the spot for positions they aren’t fully qualified to perform. This rarely ends well. Once Charmers have been promoted beyond their skill level, they tend to focus on hiding their shortcomings rather than on accessing the training and feedback they need to rise to the challenge responsibly.

Edward, a frightened and sleep-deprived Charmer, confessed a tale of woe after an interview that went far better than it should have. A handsome young graduate from Oxford, Edward had been hired to manage money for a growing hedge fund. The only problem was that Edward knew virtually nothing about running money. He couldn’t even distinguish between value and growth as investment styles.

When I asked him how he secured the job, Edward explained that he had charmed the head of the firm into thinking of him as the son he never had. Unfortunately, since Edward was hesitant to admit what he didn’t know, he needed to quickly get the training required to do his job responsibly, or he risked losing a great deal of money for investors.

Most Charmers know their stuff. Before we write Edward off as a fraud, it’s important to bear in mind that there were some pretty important things he did know that landed him a job he was functionally unprepared for. For one thing, Edward knew what names to drop. What’s more, when things went better in his interview than he expected, Edward quickly realized what he needed to learn, and worked frantically to do so.

The lesson here for employers is to realize that the “rosy glow” they feel in an interview may not be their intuition telling them they’ve found the right candidate. That glow may be the rush that comes from the seductive tractor beam of a Charmer. On the other side of the desk, for the sake of their professional reputations, Charmers must be realistic about what they are willing to and able to provide a prospective employer.

A Charmer in Action

Amy is a Charmer who didn’t realize that her ambition was driven as much by a flight from her repressed feelings as by a genuine commitment to her work. What’s particularly compelling about Amy’s story is that it illustrates the way that, with guidance, Charmers can draw on their formidable capacity for control in order to manage their own ineffective behavior. Once Amy took the time to look within, she was able to channel the energy she had previously used to run away from her feelings into repairing key professional relationships.

Amy, a managing director in investment banking, is a high-energy go-getter who is absolutely charming to her higher-ups—and to anyone she thinks can get her something that she wants.

Amy’s experience in her family system left her with deep-seated trust issues. When Amy was a small child, her presence actually helped the family pull together. However, two things changed around the time that she became a teenager. Her father, John, who ran his own architectural firm, ended up working long hours when his firm fell on troubled times, and he wasn’t able to be home much of the time. Her mother, Sally, was an alcoholic who acted like a spoiled child when she was drunk.

Sally couldn’t bear sharing her husband with anyone—even her daughter. To make sure she was the center of attention, Sally began “inventing” things that Amy had done wrong, to monopolize her husband’s attention once he finally made it home. By driving a wedge between John and Amy, Sally managed to prevent him from doting too much on his daughter. These tragic incidents not only destroyed Amy’s faith in both her parents but, by extension, left her mistrustful of women in general.

When Amy finally got away to college, she emerged as a beautiful and charming, but very angry, young woman. Because she had felt so emotionally out of control as a child, Amy learned to control everything she could as a young woman, hoping she would finally feel safe. She obsessed about her grades and made top marks in her class. She controlled her peers and became somebody no one wanted to cross. To take control of her future, Amy did everything she could think of to become one of the most sought-after job candidates to graduate from her university.

Once she landed a good job on Wall Street, Amy never looked back. Her career was everything to her. When she decided she needed a partner to help her network her way to the top, she quickly met and married Nathan. Nathan was a docile young man who worked long hours as a chef and let Amy call most of the shots on the home front. He kept her fed; she kept him financed. Unfortunately, neither one of them put too much emotional effort into the marriage.

Like many Charmers, Amy put most of her energy into impressing management on the job. She was so focused on her male bosses that she could tell you where they liked to dine, what they did for recreation, and even what their favorite colors were. In contrast, one year she actually forgot her husband’s birthday.

When the senior managers at her firm began to show an interest in funding a diversity program, Amy seized the opportunity to be in the limelight as a point person. She convinced them that she should run the women’s network, and used the position to get face time with as many influential leaders as possible. The problem was that Amy could honestly not have cared any less about supporting other women. Her primary goal was to showcase herself.

There were a few subtle signs along the way that Amy’s interest in the women’s initiative wasn’t totally altruistic. For example, she tended to impatiently brush past young women eager to speak with her at public events, particularly when she spotted a senior male entering the room. She also dodged calls from young women on their way up the career ladder and tended to only meet with business celebrities. However, even though her track record as a mentor was spotty, she’d been so successful at getting senior management to fund lavish dinners and networking events that nobody was complaining.

People who work alongside Charmers can find them to be capricious and impulsive, and Amy was no exception. It was tough to fault her work because her clients loved her and she produced a spectacular revenue stream for the firm. The people who worked alongside her, however, were occasionally in for a bumpy ride. Sometimes she was preternaturally insightful and supported her peers. Other times, with little warning, the storm clouds would gather in Amy’s inner world, and she would become vindictive and judgmental over some imagined slight. Her colleagues often complained that they never knew whether they would be dealing with the superstar or the spoiled child.

Charmers are often plagued with unresolved feelings because they were never really able to be children emotionally during childhood. One Charmer actually told me that he felt he was born a “short adult.” Thus, the suppressed emotions often simmer just beneath the surface of the Charmer’s carefully crafted professional image. These hidden feelings, which many Charmers strive to suppress through achievement and nonstop business, can bubble up unexpectedly whenever the Charmer feels threatened.

Amy felt threatened the day she found out that her firm was hiring Cindy, an investment banker with a successful track record, from one of their key competitors. Since Amy was the most senior woman in the division, and Cindy was being groomed to be a rising star, it seemed natural for Amy to mentor her. After all, Amy was devoted to supporting the careers of other women, right?

Amy, who genuinely wanted to be liked and to get ahead, was blindsided when Cindy’s presence began to trigger the buried rage she felt toward women that stemmed from her history with her mother. Amy had repressed these powerful feelings so deeply that even she was unaware of them.

While Amy was smiling on the surface when she and Cindy were in meetings together, she was seething underneath. Everything Cindy did seemed to enrage Amy, whose internal dialogue was firing off statements like, If she thinks she’s going to outshine me, she’s got another think coming!

Amy found herself on the hot seat fast when her resentful feelings began to overshadow her professionalism. Things came to a head after an important marketing meeting, when the client called her boss and told him that Amy’s passive-aggressive demeanor toward Cindy had made him uncomfortable.

The reaction to this incident was so strong that it made Amy’s head spin. Her boss not only called her on the carpet privately, he insisted that she formally apologize to the client and to Cindy. He also told her that Cindy would be replacing her as the head of the firm’s diversity committee in the coming year. Clearly, by putting Cindy in her crosshairs, Amy had picked the wrong target.

Finding herself in a professional nosedive, Amy hired a coach to help her figure out what had gone wrong.

The first thing Amy had to do was slow down. The suppressed emotional intensity that fuels the ambition of Charmers sometimes drives them to rush nonstop from accomplishment to accomplishment. Obsessed with their current goal, they don’t take the time to reflect. As she began to make room for self-reflective work, Amy realized that she had come a long way in life without acknowledging and understanding that her ambition was fueled by disowned anger.

In part by studying the power styles of other types on the grid, Amy was also able to learn new tools to help her rebuild her strained relationships with colleagues. The more she learned about Pleasers, the more horrified Amy was to realize that, on a bad day, she would blow off steam at the expense of her subordinates. While she had also proved to be a supportive mentor to employees she felt showed genuine promise, Amy’s emotional inconsistency had left many members of her team feeling off balance. Amy was relieved to find that once she started expressing more consistent appreciation toward her group and practicing patience under pressure, most of her staff were more than willing to support her.

Reflecting on the power style of the Inspirer gave Amy a more sincere appreciation for the importance of her firm’s diversity program. The old Amy would have simply dropped all involvement in this initiative if it wasn’t going to get her “extra credit” with senior managers. Amy surprised everyone when she volunteered to work on several committees behind the scenes to support women’s advancement in the firm, even though Cindy had replaced her as the program head.

To Amy’s credit, once she began to take an objective look at how her anger at her mother was driving some of her reactions, she courageously did the difficult work required to recover her professional momentum. Within a couple of months, Amy was able to put her reactions into perspective and apologize to Cindy. Within six months, Amy started behaving more consistently and considerately with everyone else—from her staff to her husband.

One of the most admirable qualities about Charmers is that if it takes changing behavior to keep moving forward, then this is precisely what the results-oriented Charmer will do. While the drive and ambition that takes them to the top can also be the source of their setbacks, when a Charmer decides to change something—look out! Change is coming. This also applies to the Charmer’s ability to change themselves.

Conclusion

Some of the most compelling figures on the world stage are Charmers. Dazzled by the emotional intensity they are able to project, Pleasers and Commanders in particular may feel envious when the Charmer seems to bend the rules and jump to the head of the class. However, when we take the time to look beneath the image they project, we start to understand that Charmers aren’t just rushing toward personal gain in the outer world. Frequently, they are also running away from painful feelings in their inner world.

When Charmers stop rushing around long enough to recognize the source of their ambition, they often become extraordinary change agents. A Charmer who has learned to use his or her sway and strategic insight for more than personal gain is a force to be reckoned with. Make no mistake about it: we need Charmers in our organizations, and we all need to learn to master the strengths of the Charmer if we want to get ahead.