Is Charismatic Leadership the Guaranteed Pathway to Success?
Charismatic leadership is a quality or a power to command something mainly a group of people to achieve the desired results of a common effort. It is a way to regulate someone in order to comply with the rules and procedures planned to make the vision achievable. It also ensures that there must be unity and discipline in a particular team or management working on a particular assignment or goal. It is very important to understand that charismatic leadership comes from an individual’s mind.
Leaders evolve from the group of people, the person who possess the qualities of creativity, vision, values, charisma and intelligence. Trait theory of leadership also owns this concept. It is not compulsory that in every way leader must have a formal authority. It may be informal as a person who can command the things for other ones and can plan out the way or schedule to reach the destination is informally performing the role of a leader in that group.
Charismatic leadership is one among three leaderships described by Max Weber (1947). Other two are bureaucratic leadership and traditional leadership styles. Charismatic leadership is a style of leadership in which it is considered that charismatic leaders have supernatural powers and abilities which serve as magnet. Charismatic leader is considered as hero by its followers. They don’t possess any specific office, rather they gain power through social skills and by communicating and behaving in such a way that they inspire, motivate people in emotional way.
It is hard to recognize the characteristics that make a leader charismatic but some personality traits and communicating in such a way that emotional access can be gained is certain essential traits for charismatic leadership. Other than this self confidence is another essential trait.
Although a group under charismatic leadership view success in relation to their leader, but this success is centered on the leader only who does work of glue to hold group members together. If leader got transfer or step down, the group will scatter because of loss of enthusiasm by group members. So succession becomes another problem in organizations lead under charismatic leaders.
There are some situations in which use of charismatic leader can give fruitful results. In short term projects or for specific tasks which have to be completed in certain small period of time, charismatic leaders work wonder by working on emotional level to keep group members moral high. Charismatic leadership has also proved great for the projects in which energy and talent is essential requirement such as drama assignments, sports related tasks and art projects etc.
It would be problematic if a leader only relies on his skills of charismatic leadership to become a great leader. History showed that there have been several charismatic leaders like Hitler, Stalin and even a business leader named Enron, who due to lack of other leadership skills and characteristics, lead their followers towards horrible situation.
Charismatic leadership gives people hope by portraying a brighter future than today and make them realize that they have amazing opportunities in future. Charismatic leadership boosts morale of the people by addressing them at emotional level through effective communication to the mind. They share wisdom, embrace team spirits and keep them together. They are never lonely. The whole group is with them. If charismatic leadership is used in positive way it can lead to ultimate success.
"Is Charismatic Leadership the Guaranteed Pathway to Success?", was submitted 02/18/2012 under category Leadership.
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