Charismatic Leadership: Another Step to Understanding

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Social psychology views charisma as a tool that allows a person to control others. Translated from Greek, charisma means “divine grace, special gift.” In social psychology, the word charisma means magical, divine, exceptional qualities that a leader is endowed with by a group of led people. This property allows you to carry people along without using any instruments of power. Such a person inspires trust, awe and admiration. Followers of charismatic leaders do not notice their flaws and obey them unconditionally.

Definition

The charismatic theory of leadership is that followers emulate the personality traits of the leader. A leader has the ability to influence thinking by modeling a system of perceived values. His behavior is perceived as an example. The main features of charisma is the ability to modify the perception of reality and the behavior pattern of a driven group of people.

People are more likely to be influenced by those who can inspire admiration for their actions, extraordinary appearance, and outlook on life. This state of affairs means that leadership and charisma are qualities given to a person by nature: he is able to understand the desires of certain people, adapt to them, model his behavior and even develop the necessary character traits.

Features

A charismatic leader is well aware of the power of his influence on others. Everything he says is taken at face value, even if this judgment is absurd. He is confident in his strength and steadfastness. His self-esteem is inflated. Such a leader sees prospects where there are none.

His main quality is the ability to captivate others. His dedication to his idea and cause instills confidence in his followers. This is a person who inspires admiration, he never runs away from difficulties and is not afraid to take responsibility.

Another quality is the leader’s extraordinary behavior, which is not characteristic of a particular society and is not acceptable in the culture. Among the main qualities characteristic of a charismatic leader is his ability to charge those around him with his energy, regardless of whether he says something or takes any action.

A charismatic leader is like an actor. He makes those around him experience all the sensations that are beneficial to him. Vivid examples are presented below.

1. Adolf Gitler.
2. Coco Chanel.
3. Napoleon Bonaparte.
4. Mussolini.
5. Fidel Castro.

Charismatic leaders need and strive for power. Need gives motivation to be a leader. These qualities help develop certain behavior patterns:

• role modeling;
• simplification of the goal;
• emphasizing high expectations.

The disadvantage of the behavioral model of a charismatic leader is usurpation and high concentration on one’s self. The positive aspect is the desire to share power. A charismatic leader sees solutions beyond conventional standards and knows how to reduce his conclusions to a level understandable to followers.

Ignore public morality

People who have achieved inner freedom are more likely to succeed in life, since the path to success is not only about overcoming external obstacles. This often involves overcoming internal barriers. One of these barriers is public morality. This does not mean that a charismatic leader lacks morality. However, the morality of charismatics is not so much imposed by society and the environment, but is born as an internal motivation of the leader and is linked to his internal motives. Charismatics are skeptical about generally accepted principles and commandments.

Basic Concepts

There are 6 concepts of charismatic leadership.

1. The first is that led people attribute certain abilities to the leader in the process of assessing the situation, initiation into strategy, through the formation of extraordinary decisions and demonstrating opportunities to become an example.
2. Consists in the separation of personalized and socialized forms of charismatic government. The first form is characterized by intemperance, a strong desire to seize power and its unauthorized use, and the pursuit of one’s own selfish goals. The second form is characterized by the desire to instill one’s concepts and train followers.
3. It lies in the perception by followers of the leader in the image of a father, when there is a demonstration of heroism, stability and foresight. Typically, followers who find themselves in a difficult situation, highly suggestible, and emotionally unstable become more susceptible. This state of affairs can dramatically change the leader's self-perception and increase his desire to dominate his followers.
4. Considers the behavioral characteristics of followers and the leader at the time of crisis. Followers, being in a critical situation, strive even more for the leader, perceiving him as family. The leader receives even more power.
5. Represents charismatic leadership as a kind of engine of progress in a certain circle of people. Sometimes this form of government helps preserve cultural values ​​or adopt new ones when a stalemate arises and followers cannot stop being ambivalent about it.
6. The final concept is that charisma is a characteristic of the relationship between a leader and his followers.

Learn public speaking

Although charismatic people have completely different personalities with their own individual styles, they have one unifying factor - mastery of communication. Part of this skill is a small but growing competitive advantage. By increasing their visibility and influence, they have more opportunities to speak out and meet other people. As a result, they are able to communicate more effectively and competently, while being in the spotlight.

So what can you do to improve your communication skills? Start by working on your daily communication. First, always be careful about who you are talking to. Connect with your audience, speak their language. Make it clear in advance what the purpose of your appeal is. This is one of the most difficult skills, since it completely contradicts what was instilled in us from school: introduction-climax-conclusion. Finally, always give examples when you talk about something. People love true life stories because they inspire and inspire. An indifferent story sounds like a simple instruction for assembling furniture - they are unlikely to listen to you. Before you practice public speaking, start with your letters—write them differently. Start with a conclusion and write down the reasons below, this is quite complex but will definitely influence the development of your thinking and put you on the path to being a successful speaker.

Charisma Development

The charismatic type of leadership is developed in two directions:

• internal;
• external

Internal direction means developing one’s qualities: creating a certain image that will attract others. External direction means building connections with people you follow.

Charismatic leadership is not only an extraordinary appearance and the ability to speak and behave beautifully. This is a search for non-standard variations of solutions to certain problems that others need.

To do this, you must first find a problem that can be criticized from one side. After this, a charismatic leader needs to develop the ability to see ways to resolve such problems and analyze them. The path to solving the problem must include innovative ideas that have never been used by anyone. This will give the impression that such a leader's approach will help resolve the situation instantly.

An equally important point in the concept of charismatic leadership is the leader’s ability to make his thoughts public, present them in such a way that followers understand and accept them. In addition, you must learn to understand the problems and aspirations of your followers. An important aspect in the concept of charismatic leadership should be the desire to rally the team around oneself. The leader in question must be able to correctly present not only his ideas, but also himself, so that followers imitate and look up to him. To do this, you need to develop qualities that will help inspire trust:

• good knowledge of business;
• the ability to achieve success by any means;
• ability to take risks;
• taking extraordinary actions to achieve your goal.

To get people on board, a leader must teach them how to achieve their goals by using his problem-solving vision. Then he gradually delegates some of the responsibilities to close followers.

Following certain technologies and modeling your behavior allows you to learn the mechanisms of charismatic leadership. But this will be a short-term result, because the leader uses only external attributes of influencing people through pressure on their weaknesses, pity and needs. This variation is called false leadership. It is suitable for resolving temporary problems that require team unity.

Strive for inner freedom and independence

Charismatics not only see the world in their own way, but also free themselves from many of the restrictions that other people obediently accept. A charismatic leader allows himself to invent his own goals, ways of thinking and acting, rather than accepting those imposed by society. Quite often, charismatic leaders are idea generators. What usually prevents people from coming up with new ideas is not a lack of intelligence or professional experience, but an internal prohibition against challenging the status quo.

For a charismatic person, thanks to his inner freedom, this prohibition is easier to overcome. Therefore, charismatic individuals are often able to foresee the future. Or, at least, they consider themselves visionaries, whose brains easily cope with large-scale pictures of the future; they believe that they can see ahead not just a day or two, but several years or several decades.

Characteristics of Charismatic Leaders

The theory of charismatic leadership says that true charisma is manifested in the ability to subtly sense needs, take part in processes that are interesting to a group of led people, develop their abilities, lead to progress, modify the perception of values ​​and model a certain line of behavior. Such a leader may lead his group to progress, try to harm the followers themselves, or through their actions ruin the lives of others. Based on the goals of influence, there are 2 types of leaders:

• dark;
• light.

In addition, distant and immediate representatives are determined. They never meet with the distant ones, but simply follow their instructions. They have perseverance, always achieve their goals, are good speakers, and do not succumb to pressure. The direct representative prefers personal contacts. This person is very sociable, experienced in many things, attractive and creative.

Find a special hobby

The leader’s hobbies add a lot to charisma. But they add it only if these are strange, unusual hobbies that few people can think of. It is no coincidence that people with great ambitions, coming to a new place of work, consider it their duty to convey to everyone around them a list of their unusual hobbies. They strive to immediately cement in the minds of their colleagues what unusual people fate brings them together.

Charismatic hobbies may include a passion for an unusual, unique sport, especially if this sport is associated with risk.

Content

• 1 Characteristics 1.1 Charisma
• 1.2 Authority
• 1.3 Routine charisma