Hello Reader,

A shorter note this week. Instead of my usual roundup, I wanted to tell you about a book I keep coming back to in my own training, and one of the most fruitful podcast conversations I've had in a while. I learned so much about Chinese Canadian history!

The Book I Can't Stop Recommending

If you haven't read The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane, add it to your list. Her central argument is one I lean on constantly in my own work: charisma isn't something you're born with. It's a set of learnable behaviours - which means it can be taught, practiced, and improved, the same way we teach any other professional skill.

Cabane breaks charisma down into three elements that work together:

Presence - being fully with the person in front of you, not half-listening while your mind drifts to the next meeting or your phone. It sounds simple, but it's the one people notice fastest when it's missing.

Power - being perceived as someone capable of affecting the world around you. This isn't about title or volume. It's read through small, consistent signals: how prepared you are, how you carry yourself, how steady you stay under pressure.

Warmth - the signal that your power is being used for the other person, not at their expense. Power without warmth reads as cold or intimidating. Warmth without power reads as nice but forgettable. You need both, together, to actually land as trustworthy.

What I love most about her research is the reminder that charisma isn't performance - it's attention. The most charismatic people in a room usually aren't the loudest ones. They're the ones who make you feel like, for those few minutes, you were the only person that mattered to them.

That's the exact thing I train leaders and teams to do. Workplace etiquette, in my world, is really about whether the person across from you - a client, a colleague, a direct report - walks away feeling considered and respected. Cabane just gave me better language for something I've been teaching this whole time: presence, power, and warmth aren't personality traits. They're habits. And habits can be built.

New Podcast Episode: One Question, Three Generations of Chinese Canadian History

My conversation with Hilda Gan is officially live - HR leader, podcast host, and someone with a story I won't forget anytime soon. Hilda is a third-generation Canadian; her family has been here since the railroad era, and she grew up in a mostly non-Chinese neighbourhood, culturally in-between in a way she didn't have language for until she was a teenager.

We connected her story directly back to the GRACE framework - because the question "where are you from?" is never just small talk. It's a question about belonging.

How we ask it says as much about us as the answer says about the person we're asking.

That's it for this shorter note. Thanks for reading, and I'll be back with a full one soon.
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Warmly,

Trina Boos
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Founder & CEO
Boost Academy of Excellence
​boostacademyofexcellence.com​