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| Charismatic Leadership
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| Introduction |
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Charismatic leadership is leadership based on the leader's ability to communicate and behave in ways that reach followers on a basic, emotional way, to inspire and motivate.
It's difficult to identify the characteristics that make a leader "charismatic", but they certainly include the ability to communicate on a very powerful emotional level, and probably include some personality traits.Developing "charisma" is difficult, if not impossible for many people, but luckily charismatic leadership is not essential to be an effective leader.
• "Charisima, to me is almost a phony thing. It's what those TV evangelists have." Jim Barksdale
There appear to be four stages in the development of charismatic leadership
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| Stage 1: Sensing opportunity and formulating a vision |
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these leaders seem to sense their constitutents needs as well as see the deficiencies of the existing sitaution and untapped opportunities. The combination of these leads to an idealized vision of the future. These visions at least in organizations seem to fall along one of four major types: an innovative product or service; a contribution to society; a transformation of the organization; or a contribution to the workforce
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| Stage 2: Articulating the Vision |
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these leaders seem to have a great sense of strategic vision and a capacity to convey the essence and viability of that to a broad group of people
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| Stage 3: Building Trust in the Vision |
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subordinates must desire and support the goals of the leader and this is likely to be accomplished by more than coercion; rather the leader builds trust in the leader and the viaiblilty of the goals; this is likely to be done through personal risk taking, unconventional expertise, and self-sacrifice
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| Stage 4: • Achieving the Vision |
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these leaders use personal example and role modeling, reliance on unconventional tactics and their use of empowerment practices to demonstrate how the vision can be achieved and how motivation can be sustained
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