Effective leadership is the backbone of a successful organization. Whether it is achieved by a formal or informal leadership style, or by charismatic and transformational leadership styles, good leaders drive growth, development, and innovation are all driven by effective leadership. Thus, allowing organizations to excel through leaders that take their roles seriously.
Most importantly, leadership is not only about the official authority or status. Instead, leadership in its true sense would refer to a much more meaningful and profound phenomena – a position within a group of people that is respectfully earned and worked for.
What is Leadership?
The dictionary simply refers to leadership as the act of leading a group of people towards a certain goal. However, it is much more profound than that. There are different types of leadership, such as charismatic and transformational leadership.
Leaders are important through every level of an organization, and their quality is not only important for the overall success of the business, but crucial. A true leader would be able to execute the company’s vision in a way that is both effective and appealing to team members, or even redefining the vision in ways to suit the corporate culture of the organization.
Leaders are always looking for opportunities to improve. This means they are constantly planning for the future, securing resources, and are well-aware of their own shortcomings. When leaders are able to do their jobs properly, their team should be motivated and driven to work together, cooperate with one another, and be willing to achieve their goals.
Though the end results of good leadership all look pretty much the same, there are many styles that leaders adapt to in order to suit the situation or their own personal preference for achieving these desired results. This is where a significant leadership classification comes into question: charismatic and transformational leadership.
Charismatic Leadership
If you have ever spoken to somebody who instantly sounded interesting and appealing, you have met a charismatic individual. Charisma can be referred to as a personal skill – one that can be interchangeably used with charm – and includes other traits such as strong communication skills, sharpness, empathy, passion, intelligence, and drive.
In most cases, charismatic leaders have strong viewpoints regarding certain ideas. They are confident about their own perspective and tend to believe that their followers must be in line with these ideas. This brings us to the biggest downside of such charismatic leadership: the possibility of becoming manipulative, and spreading negative leadership.
In the pursuit of attempting to sell their own ideas through their powerful charm, charismatic leaders may become manipulative and force their followers into believing in the said ideas. When it comes to the charismatic leadership style, followers tend to play an important role in deciphering the true intentions of the leader and understanding whether their ideas serve a truly positive purpose or not.
However, not all charismatic leaders are manipulative schemers who allure people through their charm. Instead, many charismatic leaders are able to bring forth positive change if they use their charismatic skills to make better decisions. In an ideal team, followers would be able to decide on their own charismatic leader based upon the ideas that align with the ideas of the entire team.
In a work environment, however, subordinates do not usually have a say in who their leader would be, thus meaning that charisma alone would not be an effective method to lead and motivate an entire team of people.
Charismatic Leadership: The Advantages
Creates an Emotional Appeal
With charismatic leaders, people are usually inspired and drawn towards them naturally, as they’re making them feel like everything’s possible. By leveraging their charisma, these leaders are creating strong emotional connections between them and their followers. As a result, strong loyalties can be formed to a charismatic leader who is determined to lead a group towards achieving their goals.
Allows a Wider Perspective
Typically, charismatic leaders are known to have a vision that extends beyond the thought-process of a normal individual. When these ideas are shared with a team, it provides people a chance to think about a certain matter in new ways and consider bigger plans that now seem achievable. While it may be risky to follow a charismatic leader, the message provided by such leaders is usually so strong that people are willing to take the risk.
Decreases Turnover Rates
Team members tend to feel more connected to charismatic leaders, creating a work environment that is both friendly, welcoming, and bubbling with energy. With happier, more motivated, and more energized employees, who come to work driven by passion due to the charm of the charismatic leader, turnover ratios are significantly lower in the organization.
Charismatic Leadership: The Disadvantages
Dependent On the Leader
Charismatic leadership rests upon the shoulders of the energy levels portrayed by the leader. Constantly encouraging people to follow a vision and motivating them to do better can be extremely exhausting, and even the most charismatic of leaders can have days with low energy levels. When the charisma begins to wear down, the entire group of people becomes affected and demotivated instantly.
Selfish Intentions
Once charismatic leaders understand that their followers would be willing to listen to them in most situations, these ‘leaders’ could begin to exploit the situation, and use their enhanced interpersonal sensitivity for the wrong purposes. Instead of focusing on achieving the overall goals of the organization or entire team, the charismatic leader may become solely focused upon himself and begin only seeking his own personal gains.
Transformational Leadership
Well, here’s the truth: not everybody is born with natural charisma that could charm people into following them. For people who are well-knowledgeable regarding their work but lack the charisma required to make people follow them, transformational leadership is a true savior.
In transformational leadership, the leader makes an effort to include all team members in the decision-making process. A collective vision shared by the entire group can be identified, and all members could work together to achieve it. While the art of transformational leadership could be more complicated than being born with charisma, the end results are well worth the effort put into mastery.
Perhaps the most appreciated part of transformational leadership is the layer of transparency between the leader and followers. Since these leaders have worked hard to gain the respect of their followers, they intend to continue maintaining that reputation by listening to their subordinates carefully, even by demonstrating biblical servant leadership.
Instead of only being an authoritative figure who dictates the ideas to be worked towards, transformational leaders take a more dynamic approach towards understanding the individual strengths and goals of each team member and using them collectively to achieve a larger goal.
Transformational Leadership: The Pros
Promotes Unity Amongst Team
Transformational leaders are able to evaluate the current situation and devise an appropriate plan for improvement and growth in the future. When the leader communicates this newfound vision to the entire team, suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.
In this way, followers are highly motivated to follow the guidance of the transformational leader as the work experience is ‘transformed’ into one that makes them feel united in working towards a common cause, and since they have been a more active part of the decision-making process they have a stronger sense of ownership over the process and work.
Bring Transformational Change
Companies can only truly evolve and grow if they are willing to take the risk of changing the way things work. However, this can be extremely complicated in work situations where employees are reluctant to change – especially since they think it would impact the entire corporate culture of the organization.
Transformational leaders are able to sell the benefits of change to followers. By focusing members upon the positive impact and the greater good, these leaders are able to effectively motivate followers to embrace and welcome change willingly.
Transformational Leadership: The Cons
Could Become Overwhelming
One of the biggest weaknesses of this leadership style is how it rests mainly upon concepts and lacks practicality. Many followers tend to rely on leaders for guidance regarding the specific duties that must be done by them, and many times transformational leaders are unable to provide for this need.
In fact, oftentimes many transformational leaders are reluctant to get into details of things and choose to only focus on the bigger picture.
Employee Burnout
While transformational leaders can be motivating for many followers, others may feel too pressurized under them. Since this form of leadership requires constant feedback from followers with an added emphasis on authenticity and corporate culture, followers may begin to feel as if the transformational leader is giving them more work than they are already assigned to.
Additionally, the constant pressure to achieve a bigger goal can lead to demotivation for many employees, and making them feel like they are not important; especially if they feel that they are expected to provide a better performance each day.
The Bottom-Line
In conclusion, there is never a right or wrong leadership style, each style can be effective and generate a massive momentum that will extract the best out of each individual of the team. While we can compare many different styles in regard to their pros and cons, the truth is that each leader has their own unique leadership traits that they follow, and each organization has a unique corporate culture to go along with it.
Interestingly, most organizations tend to have more than one leader in order to effectively combine the qualities from different leadership styles and make the most of their people’s talents. This hybrid approach to leadership would result in multiple advantages, especially if the charisma of a charismatic leader and the mastery of a transformational leader are combined together to work towards a common goal.
