5 Charismatic:Transformational Leadership PDF PDF

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5 Charismatic/Transformational Leadership Leadership Styles in the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire Laissez-Faire Leaders Definition: Leave followers to make decisions and act in a ‘hands off’ way. - Prefer to let everything happen as they’re going to. Transactional Leadership Transactional Leaders Definition: Guide or motivate their followers in the direction of established goals by clarifying role and task requirements and by providing rewards. - Usually requires leaders to offer some kind of reward in return for effort. • First theory to address leadership as a relationship. • It is not just one person involved. • Followers are not just the passive recipients involved, they make decisions, they have something to offer in return and can choose whether or not to. • Based on Adams’ equity theory. • Economic transaction puts both parties as equal. • If you assume a leader and follower are equal in status, is it likely? • Leaders often have a lot more power and ability to reward or punish so it questions the extent to which this is an equal exchange. • Are the exchanges of equal value? Components of Transactional Leadership Contingent Reward • The leader provides rewards if, the followers try hard enough or perform adequately. Management by Exception • The leader does not change the existing working methods of subordinates so long as performance goals are met. • He or she intervenes only if something is wrong. • This can be active, where the leader monitors the situation to anticipate problems. • Or passive, where the leader does nothing until a problem or mistake has actually occurred. Transformational Leadership Definition: Inspire followers to transcend their own self-interests for the goods of the organisation. - Focuses on the exchanges that occur between leaders and their followers. - Eg. Exchanges - Surpassing goals = promotion. - Inspirational and raise our expectations of ourselves. - Share a vision of transcending our own interest to focus on a vision for common good. Transformational Leader • The leader is attentive to the needs and motives of followers and tries to help followers reach their fullest potential. • Engaging with others to create a connection that increases motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower. • Not going to benefit yourself but the leader is there influencing, encouraging them to do it not because you get anything in return but because it is the right thing to do. • Changing the expectations/aspirations of your followers as a leader. • Try to create a connection with your followers on a personal level, you have to persuade them you are looking out for their interests, this is the moral thing to do and they have to be motivated to do this in some way.

• Not to change things because its in the interest of the leader or the follower but because they believe they have been persuaded by the leader that this is the right thing. Components of Transformational Leadership: 4 I’s Individualised Consideration • The leader treats each follower on his or her merits and seeks to develop followers through delegation of projects and coaching and mentoring. • Recognising their individual needs and wants being important. Intellectual Simulation • The leader encourages free thinking and emphasises reasoning before any action is taken. • Encouraging people to think differently about issues and consider them from an alternative perspective. Inspirational Motivation • The leader creates an optimistic, clear and attainable vision of the future and so encouraging others to raise their expectations. • Motivating people they can achieve their aspirations. • If they focused their efforts they could work and contribute something meaningful to the vision and achieve it. Idealised Influence or Charisma • The leader makes personal sacrifices, takes responsibility for his or her actions, shares any glory and shows great determination. • A role model for the vision they are trying to represent. • Collective vision we need to contribute to achieve. • Embody moral status they represent, something we believe in and hold to be true or right in some way. Why do we choose to follow leaders? • What motivates us to work for someone else? • Why do we need someone to follow a vision? • The assumption is that people follow for instrumental reasons like money or prestige but we may follow because: - We are doing something we feel is right. - Pursuit of creativity. - Friends and relationships in our lives. - Doing something true to ourselves. - Not about exchange - if I do what they say, I’ll get something in return. Charisma • Gives people a particular kind of authority. - Distinct from traditional authority (hierarchy) and rational-legal authority (status from bureaucracy at the top of an organisation). - A particular quality that we associate with people that make them out to be exceptionally heroic in nature. - Way of behaving that causes other people to treat them like exceptional individuals. - This is a very particular way of having authority. - Charismatic authority comes along at times of crisis. - When traditional structures breakdown in society. - Eg. 1980s-90s = Economic crisis, when bureaucratic structure is not effective opens up the space for charismatic authority someone who can lead from just their personality that sets them apart from ordinary people.

Components of Everyday Charisma Influence • Do you have stage presence? - When you walk into a room, do others notice? • Do you lead others effectively? - Do you find it difficult to speak up in front of others? • Are you persuasive? - Are you able to get your view across without being dominant? Affability - Do you smile and make eye contact regularly? - Do you get along with everyone? - Do other people enjoy your presence? - Are people comfortable talking to you? What is a Charismatic Leader? • If you are rated by others as charismatic you are more likely to be considered a leader. Attributes of Charismatic Leaders (Traits)

Behaviours of Charismatic Leaders (Style)

Dominant.

Good role models.

Strong desire to influence others.

Competence.

Self-confident.

Articulate ideological goals.

Strong sense of one’s own moral values.

Communicate high expectations.

More likley to emerge in stressful situations.

Confidence in ability of followers expectations.

Evolution of Charisma • Query about whether it is in our genes to follow people who are charismatic. • Is it the way we have evolved to follow people who are strong in times of a crisis? • Rooted in the evolutionary processes which enable groups to adapt and survive. • Linked to the leader’s signalled ability to coordinate action in the event of a crisis. • Follow someone with a secured vision because in evolution it was necessary for survival. • If a leader can signal they can coordinate action in the event of a crisis, because they are identifiable in a crisis. Charisma as a Performance • Managing the impression you give to other people. • Not about looking a particular way, but how you frame your scenario where you are presenting yourself. Five Fundamental Practices Associated with Transformation • Charisma is a series of practices that we can enact over time. • Charisma may help with transformation, but to be a transformational leader, you need to engage in these five processes. 1. Model the way = Idealised influence. Eg. Ghandi - Campaigned for non-violent protest, inspired others to do the same. 2. Inspire a shared vision = Inspirational motivation. - Showing other people what the future should be like. - Eg. Elon Musk - Has a vision for the technological world to be different for humanity. 3. Challenge the process = Intellectual stimulation. - Encouraging free thinking and people to question and think different about things. - Eg. Suffragettes - Fighting for votes for women in a time where women were considered property.

4. Enable others to act = Help them participate. 5. Encourage the heart = Focus on how you make your followers feel, unite their emotions. - Focus on wanting people to be part of something. - Eg. Ariana Grande - One Love Manchester concert after the terrorist bombing at her concert. Criticisms of Transformational Leadership • If leaders start to believe they are different to others, they may believe they are subject to different rules. - This will lead to leaders ignore norms, rules and colleagues advice. • They believe their own hype and ignore the contribution of context to their success. - Damage and destabilise followers. - Leaders may believe they have the right to behave however they want, the right to change people’s views and mindsets. - They rely on followers irrational desires. - Therefore, you start playing to the emotions of your followers rather than reason and rationality. • Can lead to abuses of power. - Eg. Patisserie Valerie accounting fraud scandal caused the chain to overstate its cash position by £30m. • Leads us to the question of what keeps the transformation leaders in check? - What is it that helps us as a society contain them in a way that stops the leaders using their abilities to charismatically influence others. - How can we stop them manipulating followers so they serve the leaders own interest? Transformational Leadership has a Moral Component • Highly charismatic individuals who lead destructively cannot be transformational leaders. - Only leaders who create positive change and articulating for something better than the status quo can be said to enact transformational leadership. - This rules out charismatic but destructive leaders such as Adolf Hitler. Pseudo-Transformational Leadership Definition: When leaders use the 4 I’s to manipulate others into serving the leaders own interests. • These leaders don’t have a moral vision. - Their vision is about serving their own interests or increasing division and so take part in unethical practices. Charismatic leaders become so powerful their followers become silenced. • - Followers are either too afraid to speak out or they are so consumed in believing the leader, they cannot stop and question themselves and so are inhibited from challenging the vision. Risk that charismatic leaders can become narcissistic and that they are different from • others. - That leaves followers with a different role. - Followers adapt moral standards to stand up to leaders and draw attention to where the leader may be behaving wrongly. Strengths vs Weakness of Transformational Leadership

Strengths

Weaknesses

• Broadly researched. - Large scale studies including prominent leaders and CEOs of major firms. - Popular with scholars and practitioners with actual leaders because it is appealing to want to be influential and persuasive in this way.

• Lack of conceptual clarity. - On the one hand, 4 I’s, on the other 5 practices and idea of charisma. - There are lots of different models coming together so you don’t know if they can be combined. - Leaves us with a lot of confusion.

• Emphasises followers. - Emphasises their needs, values and morals. - Transformational leaders have to show individualised consideration so you have to show understanding of followers needs. - Recognition that leadership is a relationship but not much attention given to followers might have different mindsets and different views etc.

• This makes it difficult on how to measure this type of leadership. - Treats leadership more as a personality trait or predisposition than a behaviour that can be taught. - Not that different from the trait and the skills theory. - Still focusing on the idea that leadership is based in an individual. - Charisma is discussed as if it is just a trait and a predisposition and a tendency some of us have rather than something we can be taught. - Perceptions of how charismatic an individual is can vary between different followers. - Difficult to categorise people as being good at one element of the 4 I’s because it is subjective to how you are perceived. - Whether you are charismatic is how your followers review you in the context that you’re in.

• Effectiveness. - Evidence suggests it is an effective form of leadership. - Compared to other forms of leadership where there is not a lot of link between leadership and effectiveness.

• No casual link shown between transformational leaders and changes in followers or organisations. - If you are rated as charismatic you are more likely to be considered an effective leader but there is no evidence to suggest having a transformational leader in an organisation is better than having a transactional leader.

• Intuitive appeal. - Fits with our common sense social construction of leadership. - Appeals to our understanding of leadership of an individual that there is one leader out there who will provide structure and vision for us and that will keep us safe.

• Elitist and antidemocratic. - Because charisma is about someone’s specialness and difference, it embodies privilege, people who are beautiful, people who have certain lifestyles. - Difficult for everyday people to aspire to that kind of leadership. • Suffers from heroic leadership bias. - Idea of a leader being a hero who is somehow better than other people who has divine qualities and can rescue us by showing us the vision of what the future can be like. - Powerful social construction which is difficult for Western society to dislodge because we want security. - Leaders play into these insecurities by reaffirming the hero will save us and it will all be alright. - This prevents us acting for ourselves because we give up and trust and faith to someone else to act on our behalf so we deskill ourselves and prevent ourselves from acting in our own interest because we trust someone to do it. • Therefore, this leadership style has the potential to be abused. - If we give that leader our trust they could betray us. - The vision may turn out to be immoral and we will be following someone who is not ethically leading....