The Connoisseurs of Charismatic Leadership

By Mohsin Ayub

Among the five different styles of leadership that exists, Charismatic leadership comes under the category of transformational leadership which depends highly on the skills and excellence in communication of the leader which influence the followers to achieve the goals. If considered within a work environment, the leader’s previous credentials, performance and credibility in line with his or her excellent communication skills encourages and motivates the employees to work beyond their scope or skill set and enhance productivity and efficiency through inspiration of the charismatic leader. For a charismatic leadership environment, the leader is set to focus on the broader picture and inculcate the same into followers who then delegate the tasks towards completion.

A Charismatic leader is very effective when some creative and out of the box thinking and goals are required to be achieved, because a these kinds of leaders become a source of inspiration for the followers and whether or not if the leaders are in front of the followers or away, the level of inspiration does not affect the productivity and helps to cultivate a culture where followers intend to become a similar person to their leaders.

Charismatic Leadership is sometimes also categorized within authoritative leadership, because the authority on the followers is derived from the charisma and persona of the leaders. A leader who would have exemplary character with exceptional sanctity and heroism would only be eligible to become a charismatic leader. Out of the work environment, various examples of Charismatic Leaders are also seen in the history where political leaders and revolutionists have exhibit these traits of achieving unexpected results through their exceptional communication skills and persona that is transferred within the minds of followers.

Because Charismatic Leaders possess exceptional communication skills, so when they communicate with their followers, it is not only the conscious mind they communicate the message to, but also to the subconscious mind where the impact of the message is more powerful and results of the performance from the followers are more exceptional. Impressions management is social psychology refers to the influence that is created within the minds and hearts of the people usually by a leader to their followers to perceive enhanced image and a personality which is admirable to the followers after which a strong motivational force encourages followers to follow whatever the leader says. The active impression management is often utilizing by Charismatic Leaders which involves continuous influence at various levels through verbal and nonverbal medium which includes how the person walks, talks, thinks, or does other ordinary things in life which eventually becomes a fantasy for followers

Jack Welch is considered to be a perfect example of a charismatic leadership where he not only inculcated the vision of General Electric (GE) within its employees, but also made sure that the employees perform to their utmost potential by making them follow to his rules and vision. His leadership style is considered by some as authoritative and rough at times because of his decisions, but with the exceptional success of GE all around the globe, and with his persona in communication he was able to gain positive response for more than two decades

Charismatic Leaders are some people to whom the followers tend to believe and follow blindly, the reason why some times this kind of leadership has a thin line between the control aspect is a leader through his or her persona can ask followers to do whatever he would feel like doing which might eventually go only to his or her favor and followers might not be able to see it. Because the social psychology refers these kinds of leaders to communicate to subconscious mind, it sometimes reaches to a level where the followers are somewhat dodged to achieve the goal stated by their leader in every possible mean. Hence, to avert the abusive use of these kinds of leadership, it is important that communication of Charismatic leaders are monitored at every possible level so this double-edged sword does not cut out the entire picture into pieces, and the followers do not go astray from the vision that is eventually fruitful for them rather than their leader.