Charisma And Transformational Leadership Essay

Charisma and Transformational Leadership Since Bass’s (1981) discussion of transformational leadership in Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership, considerable data have accumulated regarding the factors that comprise transformational leadership, some of its effects on follower effort and performance, and certain developmental antecedents that instill leaders with transformational qualities. While these are discussed by Bass and by other chapter authors in this volume, it is important to note that charismatic leadership is central to the transformational process and accounts for the largest percentage of common variance in transformational leadership ratings. Followers want to emulate their charismatic leader, they place a great deal of trust in

Kegan and Lahey suggest that development is a function of the way people make meaning out of their experiences, regard-less of their age, People at the same point in their life spans may experience events differently based on their interpretation of those events. The interpretation of an event is dependent upon an individual’s life construct and his or her cognitive development level. Basing their discussion on Piagetian stages of cognitive development, Kegan and Lahey view leadership development as a function of “the qualitative change in the meaning system which occurs as one’s cognitive complexity level in-creases” (Kegan and Lahey, 1984, p. 202), The meaning system employed by an individual to interpret events, in turn, is tied to his or her prior experiences and how those experiences were interpreted. Kegan and Lahey refer to three cognitive stages or levels of adult development to explain three developmental phases of leadership – interpersonal, institutional, and

As suggested by the psychoanalytical view, the leader is more inner-directed and therefore more able to transcend the interests of the moment. This inner-directedness provides a transformational view as an unusual energy for pursuing goals, missions, and, ultimately, the leader’s vision. The leader’s enthusiasm for an objective can become infectious. The sense of inner-direction, if translated properly by the leader, will attract followers who agree with the leader’s end values. How effectively those end values are communicated and the degree to which followers identify with the leader’s end values both result in what House (1977) described as charismatic leadership. The values of the leader and their expression become the foundation for higher-order change in followers (Bass, 1985; Waldman, Bass, and Einstein, 1987). The dark Side of Charisma The charismatic approach has a “dark” side. A list of famous charismatic leaders would include Adolph Hitler, Charles Manson, and David Koresh. There is an old saying “Failure is hard to handle, but success is even harder.” For the successful charismatic leader, it would be easy to slip into a totalitarian, exploitive, and self-aggrandizing