Would you class Nelson Mandela as a charismatic leader? He transformed his country and bought racially divided groups closer together, yet his political speeches lasted for hours and were often incoherent.
How about Winston Churchill? This was a man who was able to bring the British people together to fight Nazism, yet was hardly ever seen in public, every speech he gave was extensively rehearsed, and he spent most of the day intoxicated through the excessive consumption of champagne, claret and brandy!
How about Robert Mugabe, he bought two tribal factions together to oust white rule and has followed a policy of redistributing land and wealth to veterans of the war of independence, yet has seen his country become one of the most poverty stricken on earth?
So who is the charismatic leader and how has this impacted the performance of his team?
The attraction of a Charismatic Leader
The research into transformational and charismatic leadership suggests a high level of attraction to charismatic leaders through an appeal of common values and ideals. Transformational leadership consists of four distinct dimensions:
• Idealised Influence (Charisma)
• Inspirational Motivation
• Intellectual Stimulation
• Individualised consideration
In this model charisma is only a component of transformational leadership whilst we can argue that they are either one in the same, or that charismatic leadership is the primary driver of successful leadership.
House (1976) model of charismatic leadership was based around four personality characteristics
• Dominant
• Desire to Influence
• Self-Confident
• Strong Moral Values
Within charismatic leaders these personality characteristics lead on to certain behaviours which then have an effect on followers.
Key amongst these displayed behaviours are acting as a strong role model of the values and beliefs they want to see their follower adopt, an air of competence, they articulate morale goals, they communicate high expectations of followers and display confidence that they will be achieved, and finally they arouse a task level motivation amongst their followers.
I would argue that it is this arousal within followers of a desire to deliver that makes charismatic leaders sought after by their followers.
The affective influence processes followed by charismatic leaders are based on creating positive emotions within both themselves and their followers, and therefore it is this emotional engagement that connects followers with their leaders. Charismatic leaders use powerful emotions to arouse similar feelings in their followers.
Does Charismatic Leadership equal improved performance?
The argument for improving performance through charismatic leadership is based on the idea of building an emotional contract of engagement that uses positive emotions to motivate followers into conducting work based tasks more effectively. Having a clearly communicated vision is a key aspect of charismatic leadership and the importance of this is echoed by Abel (2006) who links effective leadership with Strategy, an important component of which is a clear vision.
However, an argument around charismatic leadership is the collective will being placed above individual gain to achieve a common vision built by a charismatic leader, leading to higher performance.
This argument appears to be a contradiction to the work of Houghton & Yoho (2005) whose contingent model of leadership is based around self-leadership through psychological empowerment. Can you have self leadership and charismatic leadership side by side?
With charismatic leadership drawing its roots from personality, where is the consideration of what Hogan & Kaiser (2005) would refer to as the dark side or the consequence of this personality based approach to leadership. Whilst Ilies et al (2006) may be happy to dismiss some of the most hated dictators in history as pseudo-charismatic leaders, in it for themselves rather than real charismatic leaders who have a powerful morale core, I don’t buy the concept of selfless leaders in the commercial business world.
Whether it be ego, greed, pride, vanity, or the call of a greater good, leadership that strives to focus followers on a perhaps unquestioned delivery of a goal or purpose are replacing individual ownership of self performance with a personality based follower process that often, in the commercial world leads eventually to the moral corruption of a business, such as WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Maxwell group, Northern Rock etc.
Conclusion
I have always enjoyed working for a charismatic leader who provides a compelling sense of purpose and rallies the troops to a common cause. But modern leadership is surely about the inclusion of a flexible contribution from a diverse and talented group of individuals.
The nature of the relationship between organisation and employee has also moved from a relationship based psychological contract to a transactional based psychological contract, which again in my view undermines the effectiveness of charismatic leadership.
A final thought that comes to mind is if charismatic leadership was the secret to organisational performance, why do shareholders not demand this in their leaders of businesses? Are there not more grey suited accountants running businesses in the FTSE 100 than there are charismatic leaders?
Mandela, Churchill & Mugabe were all, I would suggest, Charismatic leaders, at least in the eyes of their followers, for as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, perhaps charisma is in the eye of the follower!
References
Abell, D.F. (2006) ‘The future of strategy is leadership’, Journal of Business Research 59 (3), pp. 310–314, Science Direct [Online]. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2005.09.003 (Accessed: 28th May 2010).
Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R.B. (2005) ‘What we know about leadership’, Review of General Psychology 9 (2), pp. 169–180, PsycArticles [Online]. DOI: 10.1037/1089-2680.9.2.169 (Accessed: 28th May 2010).
Houghton, J.D., & Yoho, S.K. (2005) ‘Toward a Contingency Model of Leadership and Psychological Empowerment: When Should Self-Leadership Be Encouraged?’, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 11 (4), pp. 65–83, Sage Journals [Online]. DOI: 10.1177/107179190501100406 (Accessed: 28th May 2010).
Ilies, R., Judge, T., & Wagner, D. (2006) ‘Making sense of motivational leadership: The trail from transformational leaders to motivated followers’, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 13 (1), pp. 1–22, Sage Journals [Online]. DOI: 10.1177/10717919070130010301 (Accessed: 28th Mat 2010).
Northouse, P.G. (2010) Leadership: Theory and practice 4th ed. London: Sage.
Pilbeam, S. & Corbridge, M. (2006) People Resourcing: Contemporary HRM In Practice. 3rd Edition. London. Prentice Hall International
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