Charismatic Leadership

Charismatic Leadership

This focus paper is to provide research on Charismatic Leadership to help gain a better understanding of it. Charismatic Leadership is seen as guidance given to a corporation/institution by individual(s) who are granted power to make drastic changes and final decisions and who is considered inspiring and/or heroes and obtain exceptional performance levels from its employees by utilizing charisma to lead others. It involves a relationship or interaction between the leader and its followers and uses, "impression management to deliberately cultivate a certain relationship with group members (Durbin, 2010, p. 68)." According to McLaurin and Amri (2012),

"Charismatic leaders can be defined as those who have high self-confidence, a clear vision, engage in unconventional behavior, and act as a change agent, while remaining realistic about environmental constraints. Their key behaviors include role modeling, image building, articulation of goals, showing confidence and arousing follower's motives (p. 15)." Charisma has three-(3) dimension effects: 1) referent power, desired traits and characteristics to influence others 2) expert power, specialized knowledge, abilities and skills to influence others, and 3) job involvement, ability to get individuals committed and excited about their work. Understanding these effects of charisma is to understand that leaders do often lose their power and position because they are perceived as not being charismatic enough to get followers to accomplish important goals (Durbin, 2010, p. 69-70),

This paper will also examine my personal aptitude for charismatic leadership and identify gaps that must be closed to help become more charismatic as well as recommendations for closing those gaps identified.

Types and Characteristics of Charismatic Leaders

There are at least five types of a charismatic leader: 1) socialized charismatic - uses their power to benefit others; 2) personalized charismatic-uses their power to serve own interest; 3) office-holder charismatic-- stems from the title the leader holds; 4) personal charismatic--power stems from the faith individuals have in the leader; and 5) divine charismatic -leader is endowed with a gift of divine grace (Durbin, 2010, p. 71).

Charismatic leaders usually have rare characteristics that they can tap into to help them to motivate, attract and lead others to meeting am corporations/institution goals. The first characteristic is that charismatic leaders are visionary--because they offer images of where the corporation/institution is heading and how to get there; 2) they have masterful communication skills by using language, metaphors and analogies in compelling ways to help others identify their message; 3) ability to inspire trust by building rapport, support and trust by being commitment to their followers and putting their needs over self-interest and by being fair and respectful; 4) are able to make group members feel capable by enabling them to achieve success, and praising them; 5) having energy and action orientation by being energetic and serving as role models for getting things done on time; 6) emotional expressiveness and warmth by being able to express their feelings openly; 7) romanticize risk by feeling empty in its balance; 8) unconventional strategies by formulating unusual strategies to achieve important goals; 9) self-promoting personality by frequently tooting their own horns to show others how important they are; 10) they challenge, prod, and poke by testing your courage and your self-confidence by asking questions; and