Charisma, of Leaders

Knowledge of the nature and functions of charisma as a leadership process has increased within the last decade to the point that a simple description is most difficult. On a basic level, charisma may be defined as an interactive process through which a leader influences members of a group to adopt the vision and direction of that leader, but charisma is more than a process. Only a small percentage of leaders possess charisma, and those who are able to change an organization using those skills are successful only under certain conditions.

A leader with charisma usually has the ability to articulate a clear and demanding vision, to attract and inspire followers, to build trust, and to act in unconventional ways to demonstrate confidence in their vision for the group. Negatively, they may also exhibit a strong dominating personality that controls the group and inhibits the expression of alternative proposals from the followers.

To promote change through a charismatic process, leaders need cooperative followers and organizations that are in crisis or plan to make a significant shift in direction and purpose. Followers who accept the leader's vision for change place confidence in the wisdom and correctness of the vision and subordinate their priorities to those of the leader are the ones most likely to follow the direction of a charismatic leader.

The nature and condition of the organization will in part determine the effectiveness of charismatic leadership. Groups that are more flexible in structure and that are experiencing crises such as external threats to their existence are more open to charismatic leadership. Organizations that need to make a significant reorientation of goals and purposes also offer opportunities for a leader with charisma. Educational organizations such as public schools and institutions of higher education are not considered to be as open to influence by a leader with charisma because of their bureaucratic orientation.

Sociologist Max Weber was the first theoretician to propose a significant role for the use of charisma in governmental and industrial organizations. He believed that only a few individuals possessed this rare and divine gift and through their behavior, they could use it to bring change to a failing organization that was too inflexible to change. In his description of the influence of charisma, he did not recognize the [Page 115]importance of followers, structure of the organization, or the interaction patterns among these components, choosing instead to focus on ways to make charisma function as a routine element in the organization.

The work of documenting the complexity of charisma has been done by scholars who are primarily behaviorists and whose analyses have followed that intellectual orientation. Their discoveries have complemented each other with a minimum of serious disagreement. In response to increased societal and organizational desire for leaders with charisma, these researchers produced studies that clarified many issues about charisma and identified some conditions that facilitated its development.

The model of charismatic leadership developed in 1998 by Jay A. Conger and Rabindra N. Kanungo is one of the more comprehensive and has been partially confirmed by empirical research. One component summarizes the benefits of this kind of leadership. For the organization, one can expect a high degree of internal cohesion, consensus, and value congruence within the group, with low levels of internal conflict. In relation to the task, the group will experience a high level of empowerment, high task performance, and high levels of group cohesion.

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