Management, Leadership and Charisma

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Management, Leadership and Charisma

• Peter Andras and George Erdos
• Behavioural Ecology Group Seminar
• Thursday, October 25th, 2001

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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.
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Leadership and management
Kotter (1990, What do leaders really do? Harvard
Business Review, 68, 103-111.) felt that
leadership and management are two distinctive a
complementary systems, each having its own
function and its own characteristic activities,
but both are necessary for the management of
complex organisations. According to Kotter,
management is about planning, controlling, and
putting appropriate structures and systems in
place, whereas leadership has more to do with
anticipating change, coping with change, and
adopting a visionary stance.
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Leaders and managers
Zaleznik (1986, Managers and leaders Are they
different? Harvard Business Review, May/June,
54) also perceives a difference between
management and leadership. Managers are seen as
fairly passive people-centred operators intent on
keeping the show on the road, whereas leaders
seem to be more solitary, proactive, intuitive,
emphatic, and are attracted to situations of high
risk where the rewards for success are great.
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Leadership
In light of the above management and leadership
could be defined as   Leadership is a force that
creates a capacity among a group of people to do
something that is different or better. This
could be reflected in a more creative outcome, or
a higher level of performance. In essence
leadership is an agency of change and could
entail inspiring others to do more than they
would otherwise have done, or were doing.
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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.
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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)
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The trait approach
Early research into leadership can be
characterized as a search for the great man.
Personal characteristics of leaders were
emphasized and the implicit idea was that leaders
are born rather than made. All leaders were
supposed to have certain stable characteristics
that made them into leaders. The focus was on
identifying and measuring traits that
distinguished leaders from non-leaders or
effective from ineffective leaders. There was
the hope that a profile of an ideal leader
could be derived from the above that could serve
as the basis for selection of future leaders.
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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
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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.   In this approach, effectiveness of
leaders is dependent on the exerted leadership
style. Whereas the trait approach focused on
stable personal characteristics, which were
usually thought to be largely innate, the style
approach implied that leadership is a behavioural
pattern, which can be learned.
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Leadership style - theories
Bipolar (Ohio State) Consideration vs
initiating structure   Tripartite
(Michigan) Task oriented behaviour Relationship
oriented behaviour Participative Leadership
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Leadership style - theories
Quadruple (Likert) Exploitive
authoritative Benevolent authoritative Consultat
ive Participative
Tripartite (Lewin) Autocratic Democratic Lais
sez-fair  
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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.   Fiedlers
model based on his Least preferred co-worker
(LPC) measure.
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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 self-interest 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.
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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.
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Charisma
Beginnings Greeks, religious context,
Weber. Charismatic skills influence leadership
style and effectiveness. Important for
transformational leadership. Hard to define and
measure.
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Charisma Formalization I.

• 4 I-s (transformational leadership Bass, 1993)
• Idealized influence
• Inspirational motivation
• Intellectually stimulating
• Individual consideration.

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Charisma Formalization II.

• 5 behavioural aspects (Conger Kanungo, 1998)
• Vision and articulation
• Sensitivity to the environment
• Sensitivity to member needs
• Personal risk taking
• Performing unconventional behaviour.

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Charisma Formalization III.

• Skills
• vision
• persuasive speaking
• dominant body language
• good listener
• trustworthy and esteemed
• good organizer and commander.

• Attitudes
• strong sense of responsibility
• strong self-confidence
• strong ethical beliefs
• ready to provide support
• willingness for sacrifice
• ready to challenge the rules

Experiences
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Environmental conditions

• Charismatic leader is effective in appropriate
  environment.
• Such conditions
• high risk
• high unpredictability
• rapid changes
• little institutionalisation.

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Early humans and charismatic leaders
Appropriate conditions for effective charismatic
leaders. Good charismatic leader advantage for
the group and advantage for the leader. If there
are innate charismatic skills they are likely to
provide evolutionary advantage.
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The dark side of the charisma
Over expression of charismatic skills
stigma. Lack of other leadership skills
possible catastrophe for the followers.
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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.