Charismatic Leadership Theory

Hello, I’m Dr. Christian Harrison, and in this segment, we’ll be looking at charismatic leadership. What is charismatic leadership? A lot of scholars have said charisma is a very important component of leadership. And we’ll be looking at that in more detail.

Firstly, charismatic leadership is one of the modern theories on leadership, but if emerged from one of the traditional paradigms of leadership, and that is the trait perspective. If you can remember, with traditional paradigms of leadership. The focus was on traits, then, of course, it moved to behavior. And the major drawback of the trait approach was that leaders are born and not made. As a result of that, people started to say, let’s not look at the traits, let’s look at modern theories on leadership. However, some scholars have said that traits is having a comeback, because charisma should be an important component of leadership.

What is charisma in the first place? Charisma is a Greek word that means the gift of grace, it means divine power. Charismatic leaders are those people that have that gift of grace. Charismatic leaders are those ones that when they step into the room you know that there is a difference.

The main proponent to this approach is Max Weber, and he believes that you need leaders that have a radical vision. You need leaders that can emerge during the time of crisis. You need leaders that followers can be endeared to. And it’s those charismatic leaders that you need in that situation. So Max Weber is the major proponent to that approach. But beyond Max Weber, other people have started to examine charismatic leadership.

But before we continue with that perspective, I would like you to do an exercise today, based on what we have said about charismatic leaders. Can you think about someone, or think about your manager, do you think your manager or leader is charismatic? Do you think he or she has the gift of grace? Do you think that person has that radical vision that endears you to him or her? Then as you’re thinking about it, can you think about somebody that you believe that has charisma? Can you think of someone that you believe that has that gift of grace?

Good. Of course you would have come up with different thoughts. Some of you have written them down. Well you would notice that you could have said OK, my leader or my manager is not charismatic. You may have said he or she is charismatic. You may have come up with examples of people that are charismatic. So you can see when you look at leadership, most times we tend to look at charisma as an important component. But beyond what people have said, and beyond what Weber has said, other scholars have also looked at charisma.

One of them is Conger and Kanungo, they worked on the works of Weber, and they said that charismatic leaders should be able to identify opportunities. Charismatic leaders are not autocratic, but they get people to work with them, they endear people. For you to be a charismatic leader, you need to be able to influence others.

House goes beyond that by saying there is a list of traits required as a charismatic leader, traits like self-confidence. Charismatic leaders are usually very confident, they don’t lack confidence in any way. So charisma is a very important component of leadership, based on what scholars have said. And we will agree that this is a foundation when looking at leadership as a form of influence.

However, there are shortcomings towards the charismatic leadership theory. The first shortcoming, and it’s so clear, is based on the fact that there was a list of traits for charismatic leaders. We don’t know the traits required, how can we define what charisma is? It is a very, very vague concept. Although we call it divine grace, or divine power, or the gift of grace, how do we know the traits required to have that gift? How do we know when somebody has that gift?

And sometimes that gift could be negative or positive. Some people call it negative charisma, or some people call it positive charisma. We have leaders like Adolf Hitler that have been able to influence people to another level. Is that not negative charisma? And if charisma can be used to manipulate others, then is that leadership in the first place? Thirdly.

Charismatic leadership is always so important within organizations that are in crisis. Sometimes we don’t have crisis, and if we don’t have crisis is charismatic leadership the suitable form of leadership? And finally, if you can remember with the trait approach, the bane of the approach is that leaders are born and not made. And if most scholars have called against the trait approach, why are we going back to that form of approach? It means that people cannot be leaders if they’re not unique. It means that we cannot have people that will lead if they don’t have charisma. And if you look at the world today, we have a lot of people that don’t have charisma and they are leaders.

Regardless of everything I’ve said about the shortcomings, we will still have to agree that charisma brings us back to the fact that influence is an important component of leadership. In the next segment, we will be going beyond what we have learned on charisma and will be looking at another form of leadership called the transactional form of leadership. What is the transactional form of leadership? See you in the next segment.