Professional Documents
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Management, Leadership and Charisma
Management, Leadership and Charisma
Charisma
Peter Andras and George Erdos
Behavioural Ecology Group
Seminar
Thursday, October 25th, 2001
Leaders
Some researchers who have studied leadership in
organised settings tend to state that people endowed
with authority are leaders. Therefore, supervisors
and managers within organisations can be called
leaders. Many theories of leadership are concerned
with managerial influence and the terms leadership
and management are sometimes used
interchangeably. However, some scholars can see
differences between management and leadership.
Leadership
In light of the above management and leadership could be
defined as:
Management
By contrast, management is a force more preoccupied
with planning, co-ordinating, supervising, and
controlling routine activity, which of course can be done
in an inspired way. Managerial leadership could be
viewed as an integral part of the managerial role, and
its significance grows in importance as one moves up
the organisational hierarchy.
Leadership theories
The study of leadership is not new. As Bass writes:
The study of leadership rivals in age the emergence
of civilization, which shaped its leaders as much as it
was shaped by them. From its infancy, the study of
history has been the study of leaders what they did
and why they did it. (1990, Bass and Stogdills
Handbook of Leadership. 3rd Ed. p.3)
Personal characteristics
Physical features
height, physique, appearance and age
Ability
intelligence, knowledge, and fluency of speech
Personality
dominance,
emotional control and expressiveness,
and introversion-extraversion
Leadership style
Disillusionment followed the lack of empirical evidence for the
existence of a leadership trait profile. This in turn led to a
new emphasis on studying leadership style meaning what
leaders actually do.
Tripartite: (Michigan)
Task oriented behaviour
Relationship oriented behaviour
Participative Leadership
Quadruple: (Likert)
Autocratic
Exploitive authoritative
Democratic
Benevolent authoritative
Laissez-fair
Consultative
Participative
Contingency approaches
The main proposition in contingency approaches is that
the effectiveness of a given leadership style is
contingent on the situation, implying that certain leader
behaviours will be effective in some situations but not in
others.
Transformational leadership
In transformational leadership the emphasis is on people of
vision, who are creative, innovative, and capable of getting
others to share their dreams while playing down selfinterest and who are able to co-operate with others in
reshaping the strategies and tactics of the organisation. To
these qualities could be added the pursuit of high
standards, taking calculated risks, challenging and
changing the existing company structure, with even the
potential for the display (when considered appropriate) of
directive tendencies.
Transactional leadership
Transactional and transformational leadership should not be
viewed as opposing approaches to getting things done.
Transformational leadership is built on top of transactional
leadership; it produces levels of effort and performance on the
part of subordinates that go beyond that associated with a
transactional approach and is something more than charisma.
The transformational leader will attempt to cultivate in
subordinates the ability and determination to challenge not
only established views but to question the leaders opinions as
well.
Charisma
Beginnings: Greeks, religious context, Weber.
Charisma Formalization I.
4 I-s (transformational leadership; Bass, 1993) :
Idealized influence;
Inspirational motivation;
Intellectually stimulating;
Individual consideration.
Attitudes:
vision;
persuasive speaking;
strong self-confidence;
+ Experiences
Environmental conditions
Charismatic leader is effective in appropriate environment.
Such conditions:
high risk;
high unpredictability;
rapid changes;
little institutionalisation.
Conclusions
1. Charismatic skills are important for effective leadership.
2. Other management and leadership skills are important too,
and their lack can be catastrophic for the leader and the
followers.
3. If there are innate charismatic skills they are likely to give
evolutionary advantage to their holders.
4. In the case of the existence of innate leadership skills,
management training should focus on cultivation of these
skills together with other skills in those who have them, and
compensation of the lack of such skills in those who do not
have them.