A Model of Charismatic Leadership
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According to Sandberg and Moreman (2011) leadership is an attribution that people make about other individuals. A lot of literature on leadership has been developed. Available literature on this subject has focused on the personal traits that characterize leadership, the relationship between leaders and followers and the conditions that positively impact on leadership. This paper focuses on charismatic leadership.
Leadership
Leadership research has a range of definitions. Krech and Cruthcield (1948) defines leadership as the focus of group processes. This definition positions a leader as the nucleus for integrating group activity. This central position allows a leader to coordinate all the activities that occur in an organizational setting.
Leadership is also viewed as a personality and its effects. Following this definition a leader could viewed as a person who is more than ordinarily efficient in carrying psychosocial stimuli to others. The third school of thought tends to view leadership as an art of inducing compliance. Following this dentition, a leader should be able to induce a subordinate to behave in a desired manner. Leadership is also defined in terms of power relationships among members of a group. Power is regarded as a form of influence relationship. In my view leadership, is vital in deciding what is done and influencing others to do it. Leadership is also a process whereby an individual is able to influence others to achieve a common goal.
A lot of leadership-related theories have been developed. One of the earliest theories ever developed in the great man theory. The theory asserts that leaders are born with certain traits where a trait is defined as a generalized and a focalized neuro-psychic system. The great man theory later gave way to the Trait theory. Just like the great man theory, the trait theory contends that there is a finite set of personality characteristics that distinguish effective leaders from ineffective leaders. According to Sandberg and Moreman, (2011) research on trait theory began in 1904. The trait approach has inspired many studies. In such one study Sandberg and Moreman, (2011) found out that several traits are associated with leadership. In the study Ghiselli further found out that the outstanding traits are: intelligence, supervisory traits, initiative, self-assurance and individuality (). The perception that leadership is an innate ability and as such it cannot be taught has attracted the interest of researchers. In regard, to charismatic leadership, Sandberg and Moreman, (2011)are of the view that, charismatic qualities can be acquired through leadership training.
Charismatic leadership
Translated in Greek, charisma means “gift of grace” (Sandberg, & Moreman, 2011). The term charismatic was first introduced by the sociologist Max Weber and is described as the non-rational form of authority. On the other hand, Weber described charisma as the supernatural trait that emerges in natural leaders during times of distress (Sandberg, & Moreman, 2011). Charismatic leadership represents the ‘new leadership genre.’ In theology, charismatic leadership is defined as the endowment with the gift of divine grace. The Weberian model of charisma contains five elements: a charismatic leader has extraordinary qualities, charismatic leadership occurs during times of desperation and distress, a charismatic leader has a radical vision that offers a solution to the crisis, charismatic leadership cannot be productive without followers who are attracted to the leader and come to believe in his or her exceptional powers and radical vision, and there must be a validation of the leader’s extraordinary gifts by repeated processes. Charismatic leadership is prevalent whether in the business or the political world.
There exist three different interpretations on charismatic leadership: sociological, religious and modern interpretation. The religious interpretation is based on the idea charisma is derived from a divine power. The sociological interpretation is based on the Weber’s theories while the modern interpretation regards charismatic leaders as having intelligent, innovative, persuasive and magnetic qualities. According to the Post-Weberian or the modern interpretation, these qualities emerge in situations where people are socially, economically and politically oppressed. This paper will use the model below to look at the concepts of charismatic leadership.
40957567945Personality traits
Honesty, self-confidence,
Personality traits
Honesty, self-confidence,
4191000107950Perceptions and feelings of followers base don subjective shared interpretative schemes
Leads to:
Arosusal of follower
Commitment to leader
Acceptance of follower
Enhanced follower self-concep
Enhanced performance expectations
Perceptions and feelings of followers base don subjective shared interpretative schemes
Leads to:
Arosusal of follower
Commitment to leader
Acceptance of follower
Enhanced follower self-concep
Enhanced performance expectations
409575118745Vision and goal articulation by leader
Vision and goal articulation by leader
218122590805Favorable perceptions by follower
Favorable perceptions by follower
40957573025Personal image building by leader
Personal image building by leader
32385057150Leader motive aroual behavior
Leader motive aroual behavior
361950249555Leader communication of high performance expectations and confidence in followers
Leader communication of high performance expectations and confidence in followers
leader communication of
36195091440Reinforce leader perfomance
Reinforce leader perfomance
3314700277495Consequences of behaviour: effective follower performance if aroused behaviour is appropariate
Consequences of behaviour: effective follower performance if aroused behaviour is appropariate
238125144780Behaviour of follower: emulation of leaders value sssystem by
Behaviour of follower: emulation of leaders value sssystem by
1495425128905Follower characteristics
Follower characteristics
23812525400Task and environmental variables
Task and environmental variables
2228850234950Task and environmental variables
Task and environmental variables
3381375313690Reinforced follower perfomance
Reinforced follower perfomance
47625077470Leader role modelling of value systems and coaching
Leader role modelling of value systems and coaching
Diagram 1: adopted from Hunt, Baliga, Dachler, and Schriesheim (2004)
Key components of charismatic leadership
Cognitive abilities
Cognitive abilities are made up of creative reasoning abilities, and complex problem-solving skills. The various studies that have been conducted have established a positive relationship between cognitive ability and managerial performance, general intelligence and organizational performance, general intelligence and team decision accuracy, and leader intelligence and subordinate ratings . In regard to charismatic leadership, researchers have found a positive correlation between assessment-center measures of cognitive ability and charismatic leadership.
Attitudes and values
From my own understanding, a charismatic leader is supposed to inspire others and as such he or she should display positive traits that encourage followers to achieve a particular goal (diagram 1). This also means a charismatic leader should have positive attitudes and values that other followers could borrow from. The available literature on this subject indicates that charismatic leadership is negatively to cynical attitudes towards organizational change. In contrast, there exists a positive correlation between charismatic leadership and attitudes such as organizational commitment, and perceived psychological empowerment. When it comes to values, charismatic leadership is positively related to traditional collectivistic, self-transcendent and self-enhancement values. The relationship between attitudes and values can be explained using the diagram below.
0199390Selftranscendent
Selftranscendent
3771900151765Followers’
Extra effort
Followers’
Extra effort
4562475276860Managerial perfomance
Managerial perfomance
2362200220980Charismatic leadership
Charismatic leadership
0220980selfenhancement
selfenhancement
4019550146050Followers’
OCB
Followers’
OCB
95250250825collectivistic
collectivistic
95250-308610Traditional values
Traditional values
Diagram 2
From diagram 2, one can see that all traditional, self-transcendent, collectivistic, and self-enhancing values define charismatic leadership. In turn, charismatic leadership influences the followers to enhance managerial performance. The self transcendent values influences the leaders to put aside his or her ambitions and pursue interests that resonate with the followers. From diagram 1 you will see that one important component is the leader’s ability to arouse the followers’ behavior. The self-sacrificing attitude is able to stimulate this behavior. At the same time, the collectivistic values enable a leader to pursue a cause that reflects the wishes of the followers. This is an important component of the charismatic leadership as illustrated in diagram 2.
Personality traits
Trait refers to a neuropscyhic structure that has the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to generate and control equivalent forms of adaptive and expressive behavior. In other words, traits refer to a collection of personal characteristics that foster a consistent pattern of leadership performance across a variety of situations or settings. The charismatic leaders require a leader to create a vision (see diagram one) and then follow through with this vision until it is actualized. However, the perceptions of the leader by followers is imperative in order to attain the necessary support. The individual traits that are associated with charismatic leadership are discussed individually in the next few chapters.
Insightful
Envisioning is an important component of charismatic leadership. Charismatic leaders are required to formulate a vision and communicate the same to the followers. The vision captures the ideal goals of the organization and the values that attract the followers. In most cases, the vision challenges the status quo and as such charismatic leaders could also be referred to as transformative. Indeed, according to Somani and Krishnan (2007) the vision is not only discrepant from the status quo but it also articulates the ideological goals of the followers.
Besides communicating to the followers the right mission, other conditions are necessary for charismatic leadership to be productive. Firstly, charisma has to be institutionalized. In that case, an administrative apparatus has to be developed in order actualize the leader’s vision. Secondly, the vision of the leader must be incorporated into oral and written traditions. Thirdly, a leader should transfer charisma through rites and ceremonies. Fourthly, there should be a continued identification by organizational members with the leader’s vision. Finally, the successor should resemble the charismatic leader and he or she should continue pursuing the founder’s mission.
Self-esteem
It is widely acknowledged that people who possess a postivie self – concept have emotional stability. Emotional stability makes such individuals to believe in their self-worth. Such individuals also develop a high generalized self-efficacy besides having an internal locus of control. From the examples of Martin Luther and Nelson Mandela I can also rightly say that charismatic leaders are persons who have overcome an inner conflict to realize their full potential. In Somani and Krishnan’s ()view, a charismatic leadership has a positive impact on the feeling of reverence, a sense of collective identity and the perceptions of group task performance.
Empathy
As you can see, in order for charismatic leadership to work, the leader must win the the followers by being honest and empathetic. A charismatic leader is always empathetic of others. This trait requires a leader to develop insight into the needs, values and hopes of followers.
Self confidence
One of the upstanding traits of charismatic leaders is self-confidence. Self-confidence is a product of self-esteem and it helps the leader to maintain the loyalty from the followers.
Self determination
Somani and Krishnan (2007) believe that charismatic leaders possess, inner bearing, uniqueness, self-purpose for being exceptional. This trait allows the leader to focus on his personal vision as well as leading a group to accomplish a shared goal. Moreover, self determination leads to self-actualization. Leaders who are self-actualized are motivated to transfer this status to the followers hence raising them from one level to a higher level.
Social and emotional intelligence
There is no doubt that social intelligence resides at the heart of effective leadership. Social intelligence refers to one’s ability to understand the feelings and thoughts of others, including oneself and act according upon that understanding. Social intelligence encompasses four capacities: social awareness, social acumen, response reflection and response enactment.
In regard to charismatic leadership, social intelligence is enhanced through continued self-motoring. Self-monitoring helps a leader to detect social cues and control one’s expressive behavior. Self-motoring has also been associated with behavioral flexibility, a quality which is important in helping to adapt to the needs of the followers.
Besides social intelligence, emotional intelligence is a vital trait in charismatic leadership. Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to perceive, generate, and regulate emotions. There are four distinct emotional intelligence skills that a charismatic leader should have and they include: emotional identification, emotional use, emotion understanding and emotion management. Emotion identification refers to a set of skills that help a leader to identify and appraise his or her own feelings, as well as the emotional expression of others. Emotional use refers to a set of skills that helps a leader to use emotions to direct attention to important events and environmental cues. Emotional understanding refers to the ability to understand how emotions interact. Finally, emotion management to the ability to control negative feelings while managing different situations.
A lot of research on the role of moods and emotions. In this regard, Somani and Krishnan (2007) point out that positive moods and emotions strengthen charismatic leadership. This idea is supported that was conducted among 34 teams in an automotive company. The results of the study indicated that leaders’ self-reported positive mood was associated with charismatic behavior. Another study, found out that charismatic leaders are able to communicate positive emotions through verbal and non-verbal cues. Unlike positive feelings, negative feelings inhibit charismatic leaders. This is because negative feelings inhibit a leader’s ability to build trusting relations with followers.
The process of charismatic leadership
By now you must have realized that charismatic leadership requires three constituents: the leader, the follower and the social structure wherein the leader and the followers interact (Turner, 2003). When these elements coalesce,charismatic leadership is born. There are six phases of charismatic leadership.
Identification
During this stage , a person identifies the need for radical change. During this stage, the employees are in distress and the leader takes charge by articulating his or her vision. The people started realizing that the leader has a solution but they remain largely passive.
Activity arousal
During this stage, the leader utilizes the hold that he or she has on the passive identifiers. The passive identifiers are aroused to follow the vision with the encouragement of the leader. However, at this point the number of followers is still few as some of them prefer to wait and see the outcomes of the ongoing activities.
Commitment
During this stage, a leader practices role modelling to demonstrate to followers that he or she is committed to the cause. This stage distinguishes non-charismatic and charismatic leaders because unlike charismatic leaders, non-charismatic leaders are unlikely to participate in self-sacrificing activities. The selfless behavior of a charismatic leader encourages the followers to commit themselves too by transcending their self interests. At this point the charismatic leadership reaches its peak. In addition, at this point the collective behavior generated reduces the instability and distress that characterized the social situation before the charismatic leader appeared. As the concept of collective identity develops, some of the charismatic may try to take advantage by following their personal interests. Usually personalized charismatic leaders turn out to become authoritarian and exploitative. In contrast, socialized charismatic leaders are egalitarian, altruistic and non-exploitative.
Disenchantment
During this stage, the vision of the leader becomes routinized, the effects of which is that some of the followers defects.
Depersonalization
As the process becomes routinized, the leader may put in place a contingent reward system to motivate the followers and ensure they stick to their assigned tasks. Although this strategy is likely to attract some of the followers, some of them become discouraged by the bureaucratic regime and task standardization. As a result, some of the followers cease to be active participants. In sum, during this stage, the depersonalization of the cause occurs.
Alienation
By now the cause has been achieved and the members now devote the time to organizational needs such supervision and control. Another important event that occurs in this stage is that followers start doubting whether the organization is committed to the pursuit of the vision that had been identified at the onset. Those who feel that they can no longer continue working in such a situation abandon the organization and those who remain start expressing their displeasure. As a result, the distress and ambiguity that characterized the situation initially resurfaces. This process shows that charismatic leadership is short-lived or it evolves into a bureaucracy due to routinization.
Effects of charismatic leadership on followers
Empowerment
The available literature focuses on the effect of leadership on followers’ trust, confidence, loyalty, affection, and admiration for leaders. A theory by Potts (2009) hypothesizes that charismatic leaders are able to transform follower self-concepts through a number of ways. Firstly, leaders change followers’ perceptions of the nature of work itself. Secondly, they offer an appealing future vision. Thirdly, they develop a collective identity among followers. Finally, they heighten both individual and collective-self efficacy.
All these concepts are related to empowerment which is defined as the process that leads to enhanced perceptions of self-efficacy. From my own understanding, a charismatic leader is able to empower followers by identifying conditions that bring the sense of powerlessness and removing them through formal organizational practices and informal techniques. Charismatic leaders often use several strategies to foster the sense of empowerment. For one i have realized that they allocate followers, tasks and goals of increasing complexity. After followers gain initial success they become motivated to handle more complex tasks. Secondly, they use verbal persuasion and personal recognition to encourage their followers. These techniques enable the followers to gain more confidence in the abilities and hence mobilize a greater sustained effort. In addition, these techniques help followers to confirm their self-worth. Thirdly, charismatic leaders serve as a role model. Charismatic leaders could use their influential status to demonstrate to their followers on how different tasks are supposed to be handled. In experiencing vicarious success through their leader, the followers are able to gain more confidence.
Initiative oriented behavior
In the current business environment, employees are supposed to act in a proactive way. In addition, employees are required to anticipate and act upon dynamic environments in a self-directed way. The initiative oriented behavior involves continuous learning, participating in ongoing initiatives and volunteering for additional tasks and responsibilities. It is observed that failure by the employee to identify with the organization and its organizational goals may negatively impact on their initiative oriented behavior. However, leadership can be used to encourage initiative oriented behavior. For instance, followers of charismatic leaders have been found to engage in discretionary behavior. This is because they become stimulated to commit themselves to the tasks at hand without necessarily being supervised. Charismatic leadership has also been found to encourage organizational citizenship behavior through employee collective identification and group belongingness (Smith, 1998).
Crisis
As earlier indicated, there is supporting evidence that charismatic leadership is likely to occur under conditions of crisis. This is because during a crisis, followers feel helpless and as such become more prone to charisma. Some explanations for the effects of the crisis on charismatic leadership have been proposed. The first explanation is that during a period of crisis, the behavior of the complex social systems becomes unpredictable. In addition, during such times the relationship between goals and performance become ambiguous. Most importantly, the situation becomes unstable and as such requires exceptional effort. When such a psychologically weak situation occurs followers look for a leader who is engaged in sense making activities. In terms of suitability, charismatic leadership can be applied in collectivistic rather that individualistic work units.
Diagram 1:
From diagram 1 several things emerge:
Personality traits influence the leader’s motive behavior
The vision that is created at the start of the charismatic leadership process, the personal image of the leader creates a favorable perception of leader by followers.
The favorable perception of leader by followers enhances commitment to the leader. Commitment to the leader is by the way of trusting the leader, and being loyal and obedient to the leader. The favorable perception of leader by followers also leads to am arousal of follower needs, acceptance of follower of challenging goals, enhanced follower self-esteem and enhanced performance expectations on the part of the follower.
Ultimately the perceptions of the follower influence the behavior of the follower. Typically, positive reaction by the follower leads to higher performance
Conclusion
Charismatic leadership depends on many variables. The main variable is the personality of a person. The key personality traits of a charismatic leader are self-confidence, empathy, the ability to take risks, self-sacrificing attitude, and good communication skills. A charismamtci leader also has high levels of social and emotional intelligence. Charismatic leadership leadership thrives in situations there is crisis and is best suitable for collectivistic rather that individualistic work units.
References
Hunt, J., Baliga, R., Dachler, P., Schriesheim, C. (2004). Emerging leadership vistas. Lexington books
Potts, J. (2009). A History of Charisma. PalgraveMacMillan
Sandberg, Y., & Moreman, C., (2011). Common Threads among different forms of charismatic leadership. International Journal of Business and Social Science 2(9): 235- 240
Somani, A. & Krishnan, V. (2007). Impact of charismatic leadership and job involvement on corporate image building. Management and Labor studies 29(1), 7- 16
Smith, D. N (1998). Faith, Reason, and Charisma: Rudolf Sohm, Max Weber, and the Theology of Grace,” Sociological Inquiry, 68:1, 32-60,
Turner, S. (2003). Charisma Reconsidered. Journal of Classical Sociology, 3(5), 6.