Exploring Charismatic Leadership

Charismatic leader build trust and establish credibility with their followers by self-monitoring. They gain trust from their follower through visible self-sacrifice and taking personal risks all in the name of their beliefs. They use empathy and warmth in their communication with others to establish trust. Charismatic leaders also establish trust and credibility by presenting a persona of unshakeable self-confidence, strong moral conviction and constant optimistic outlook. They show commitment to their followers and the goal, appearing to place followers’ needs above their own.

Furthermore, they build trust and credibility from their proven track record or created legacy. The charismatic leader inspires confidence by establishing a strong bond with their followers. The bond is so strong that the followers are enthusiastically inspired to be unconditionally loyal, devoted, obedient, and committed to the leader and to the cause the leader represents. By observing the leader display of self-confidence, followers develop self-confidence themselves. The followers are more likely to have greater confidence in their ability to contribute to achievement of the charismatic leaders goals.

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The relationship between the charismatic leader and followers is often very emotional. The emotional component involves feelings of satisfaction derived from the pursuit of a worthwhile goal and from optimistic beliefs and values about life. The relationship between the charismatic leader and the followers is comparable to that of a parent and child relationship of love, devotion, and commitment. The strong belief in the vision the charismatic leader communicates is the key factor in distinguishing charismatic leader’s followers from those of other types of leaders.

Exploring Charismatic Leadership in the Public Sector: Measurement and Consequences This report looks at four areas of charismatic leadership (1) energy and determination; (2) vision; (3) challenge and encouragement and (4) risk taking. The report traces the origins of charismatic leadership theory back to the work of Max Weber. This report understood Weber’s definition of “charisma” in terms of supernatural "gifts of the body and spirit" comprising special attributes and qualities.

The article defines the behaviors that charismatic leaders display as (1) articulation of a future vision; (2) building credibility and commitment to the vision; and (3) creating emotional challenges and encouragement for followers. The charismatic leaders communicate a picture perfect goal or vision they want the organization to accomplish over a period of time. The vision projects a set of values and beliefs that are similar to that of their followers. The followers are convinced to move beyond their self-interest and to focus on the broader and more meaningful organizational interests.

Appealing to the employees' personal values and beliefs and by promising an attractive payoff for their efforts spawns their basic motivation. Charismatic leaders uniqueness is their ability to convince followers to pursue objective that are worthy of their best efforts. They produce extraordinary results from their follows by challenging them and then convincing them of their abilities. These leaders create a connection between their vision and their followers’ personal challenges. This fosters a significant amount of intellectual and emotional energy and a high level of intrinsic motivation.

They appeal to their followers’ self-esteem by confidently telling them that they have high expectation from them and letting them know that they can achieve goal that has been set. Charismatic leaders have a high level of self-confidence and conviction in their vision. They are seen as effective communicator with powerful rhetorical skills, expressive body language and the ability to alter their speeches to the needs and values of their followers. Furthermore, they are persistent and willing to work diligently to see their goals accomplished.

They use high-levels of energy to develop enthusiasm and persistence to create organizational commitment to change the status quo. They have a strong tendency to seek change, take on high personal risk and engage in self-sacrifice. Charismatic leaders increase their follower’s self-esteem and self-worth for two reasons. First, the vision created by the charismatic leader is based on higher-level collective values. The association with a vision of high-level collective value increases the followers’ self-esteem.

The belief that the follower is helping to achieve an important goal without being concerned about individual payoff should enable high self-worth. Second, being associated with a leader who personifies higher-level values gives followers a higher self-image. Research states that working for a charismatic leader increases the subordinates' social and personal identity. Charismatic leaders express confidence in the subordinates’ abilities and communicate challenging expectations from them. This positive and reinforcing feedback helps to reinforce the subordinates' self-efficacy and results in stronger motivation.

The followers of a charismatic leader unquestionably trust the leader vision, capabilities, values, and motives. They tend to adore the leader, accept the leaders values wholeheartedly, are obedient and show strong affection towards the leader. It is also suggested that the followers' emotional attachment to the leader takes on a form of devotion, reverence, and sometimes blind faith. Researcher describes this as a complete emotional and cognitive identification with the leader. In conclusion, both laboratory and field settings produced consistent support for the performance-enhancing effects of charismatic leadership.

Charismatic leaders seem to have more success for their team and themselves comparable to other leaders or managers. There was no clear conclusion and very little evidence on how the effects of charismatic leadership may relate to performance in government units. Due to the impersonal nature of bureaucratic government organizations may have prohibited positive performance effects. Article concludes that Charismatic leadership will be associated with above-average performance of the units of public-sector managers.

Stirring the Hearts of Followers: Charismatic Leadership as the Transferal of Affect This study focuses on the positive and negative affects charismatic leader have on their follower. The study recommends that charismatic leadership behaviors have a direct effect on the leader and subordinates’ effectiveness, effort, job satisfaction, and commitment. The authors theorized that leaders’ positive affect, positive expression, and aroused behavior will resolve conflict in leader follower relationship.

Field studies concluded that workers under the command of a charismatic officer were happier than those under the command of a non-charismatic office. Study also concluded that these relationships were mediated by the leader’s positive affect and a tendency to express positivity. This study proposes that the charismatic relationship is related to the positive followers’ affect as oppose to the negative followers’ affect. The study focuses on three principal characteristics of charismatic leaders 1) leaders’ positive affect, 2) leaders’ positive expression, and 3) leaders’ aroused behavior.

Study also suggest that leaders’ charisma is associated with leaders’ positive affect and leaders’ positive expressiveness and that these characteristics in turn creates the passage of positive affect to followers. Furthermore, study suggests that charismatics tend to display aroused behaviors and this arousal is likely to be transferred to their followers. However, it is not clear whether the consequent arousal of followers will be translated to positive or negative affect, as there are reasons based on theory to hypothesize that either is possible.

This article suggests that charismatic leaders experience more positive emotions than do non-charismatic leaders. First, charismatics tend to possess several personality characteristics that are strongly related to positive emotionality. Charismatic leaders tend to have high self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem have been shown to have positive well-being and happiness across cultures. Research found that the average moods of participants high in self-esteem, recorded over a period of 2 weeks, were much more pleasant than those of participants low in self-esteem.

Charismatics leaders tend to be more outgoing and personable and less likely to have a personality of being depressed. Also, research suggests that positive emotionality is core to extraversion and that extraverts express and experience positive emotions. In contrast, at the core of neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions and neurotics tend to experience emotional distress. Due to their dispositions, charismatic leader often express more positive and less negative affect than do non-charismatics.

This article suggests that positive or negative effects may be transmitted from person to person through “emotional contagion” which is a process through which a person “catches” the emotions of others. Research was performed and concluded that leaders who expressed positive emotions positively influenced the effects of followers. Similarly, research hypothesizes that leaders in a positive affective state would transmit positive affect to other team members, while leaders in a negative affective state would transfer their negative affect.

For example, leaders were randomly selected and assigned to watch either a humorous video clip or a documentary depicting social injustice and aggression. They measured team members’ affects, had the leaders interact with other team members for 7 minutes, and then measured team members’ affects again. As predicted, after interacting with the leaders, those in the leader positive affect condition reported significantly more positive affect than did those in the leader negative affect condition.

Emotions are personal feelings that are accompanied by physiological conditions. In other words, all emotions are felt subjectively communicated through body language, facial expressions etc… (Somatic motor systems) and natural reactions or autonomic motor changes. Expression of emotions in the somatic motor system is usually manifested by very particular muscles that control facial and postural expressions. For example, a spontaneous smile, also known as a Duchenne smile, involves a contraction of the muscles that elevate the angles of the mouth (zygomaticus major).

However, it also involves a contraction of the muscles surrounding the eyes (obicularis oculi) that cannot be activated by the force of will. In contrast, a contrived smile involves only the muscles that elevate the angles of the mouth. Therefore, a Duchenne smile conveys the genuine experience of happiness, joy, and laughter, whereas the contrived smile does not convey these same emotions. The expression of emotions in the somatic motor system is therefore specific to particular emotions.

Accordingly, and as hypothesized above, the transfer of emotions from charismatic leaders to followers should also be specific and correspond to the particular expressed emotions of the leader. Changes in arousal involve alterations in the activity of the autonomic motor system that governs smooth muscles, cardiac muscles, and glands throughout the body. Arousal involves changes in heart rate, changes in blood flow, sweating, and changes in gastrointestinal activity, all of which can be enacted by many and various emotions.

Arousal is slow to go away and is non-specific to a particular emotion. Making arousal easily transferrable, (within oneself), subconsciously, from situation to situation and from one kind of emotion to the next. In conclusion, we can hypothesize that leaders indeed transfer their arousal to followers, it is less clear as to which specific emotions this transferred arousal will be translated to in followers but there is evidence that charismatic leader display more aroused behavior then non-charismatic leaders.

A motivational theory of charismatic leadership: envisioning, empathy, and empowerment. This article examines the motivational effects of charismatic leadership in greater detail. This study views envisioning, empathy, and empowerment as the three main core components of charismatic leadership. The follower need for achievement is influenced by the charismatic leaders’ behavior in accordance to his vision. The charismatic leader is extremely in tune and hisher emotions behavior arouses followers need for affiliation.

The charismatic leaders’ empowers his followers which enhances the followers need for power. The article also suggests that the behaviors of a charismatic leader and the enhanced followers' needs promote clearer role perceptions, improved task performance, greater job satisfaction, stronger collective identity and group cohesiveness, more organizational citizenship behaviors, and stronger self-leadership among the followers.

This study focuses on charismatic leadership behavior displayed and the charismatic leaders’ interactions with their followers. The study specifically focuses on socialized charismatic leadership, which is defined as being non-exploitative and as motivating followers to maximize the gains of the organization without regard for the leader's personal needs. Charismatic leaders differ from other leader because of their exceptionally high need for power.

Their charisma is positively related to the need for power and negatively related to the need for achievement and affiliation. Previous studies referenced to in this article concluded that individuals acquire need for achievement, the need for affiliation, and the need for power from the culture of their society by learning from the incidents that they experience, particularly in childhood. Author of article suggest that the followers' three needs are learned and stimulated in the process of interacting with charismatic leaders.

A high need for achievement is characterized by (1) a high interest in tasks which require a considerable level of skill and problem-solving ability, (2) a tendency to set moderately difficult goals, (3) a preference for concrete and quantitative feedback, and (4) a pursuit of satisfaction which is derived from the task itself and task performance. Charismatic leaders stimulate followers' need for achievement through envisioning behaviors. They create a vision that is a major difference then the status quo. The charismatic leader develops a ision that followers can emotionally connect to in order to obtain followers. Followers that work diligently with the leader creating a specific goal and achieving the goal stimulate the followers' need for achievement. A high need for affiliation is characterized by (1) a strong desire to like and be liked by others, (2) a strong desire for approval and reassurance from others, and (3) a tendency to be attracted to group tasks. Charismatic leaders' stimulates followers' need for affiliation by showing strong concern for his/her followers’ interests and showing that they care about their follower interest.

The charismatic leader connecting to their followers’ feeling also develops a desire from the followers to emulate leader. This common interest of emotions creates emotional connection between the charismatic leaders that their followers which increases followers need for affiliation with the leader. A high need for power is characterized by (1) a tendency to attempt to influence and control others, (2) a tendency to be verbally fluent, often talkative, sometimes argumentative, and (3) actions that have an emotional impact on others.

Charismatic leaders are skillful in reinforcing followers' self-efficacy. They provide feedback to their follower about their task effectiveness through speeches and personal recognition. Constantly reminding there followers of their individual and collective successes making the followers feel more capable of achieving success Furthermore, charismatic leaders provide followers with a observational learning experience , increasing their need for power.

Observing and interacting with the high-level self-confident leader makes the follow more likely to emulate their need for power. Charismatic leaders envisioning behavior improves followers’ role perceptions. Task performance and job satisfaction are considerably affected by their need for achievement. Followers with high need for achievement are motivated to by the pursuit of excellence. The goals set are specific and challenging which help to mobilize the followers’ efforts.

This gives the followers a sense of what they need to do to accomplish the mission. This creates a clear role perception for the follower and role identity based on their group membership that has a clear goal to pursue. Followers of charismatic leader are perceived as having high task performance. The envisioning behavior of a charismatic leader stimulates followers’ high need for achievement which can be credited to high task performance.

Finally, followers need to achieve has been stimulated by a charismatic leader showing high intrinsic motivation, place greater effort in task, and therefore they perform well. In conclusion, the successfulness of charismatic leadership may be improved by certain contextual factors and be decreased by others. The effect of charismatic leadership is more noticeable when displeasure with the status quo is prevalent in an organization. An organization uses three possible methods in order to control the behaviors of organizational members: market, bureaucracy, and clan.

In an organization with a clan culture, the charismatic leader may be more effective because of their ability to build alliances, promote common values and foster group cohesiveness. Furthermore, an organic structure is effective when employees are able to exercise decision-making power and have open, lateral communication with peers. Charismatic leadership is often restricted by the larger organizational system or environmental factors in terms of how much discretion the leader has. In conclusion, charismatic leadership was not effective in all situations.