The Role of Charisma in Leadership

Charismatic Leaders and Servant Leaders

Charismatic leaders are those that motivate their followers to get things done and motivate them to improve how they do things. These leaders are eloquent and have good communication skills and are eager to achieve the objectives they set. They have the ability to detect and decipher inefficiencies within the organization.

Servant leaders, on the other hand, are those that interact with others with an aim of getting authority rather than power, once the authority is achieved, it is used for the wellbeing of those around them.

The Benefits and Detriments of Emotional Attachment to Charismatic Leaders

Having emotional attachment to a charismatic leader can be beneficial and detrimental at the same time to the followers. Since followers tend to have high trust levels on these leaders and the decisions they make they choose the charismatic leader any day over any other leader as they believe their leadership skills are the best. Maintaining good performing charismatic leaders leads to the success of an organization. Followers do not question the leaders that they are loyal to. Therefore they do not change their leaders even when they are wrong. It is for this reason that an organization can go through disasters due to the maintenance of poorly performing charismatic leaders.

Charismatic and Transformational Leaders with Eloquence

Charismatic and transformational leaders with eloquence enjoy their ability to freely convey their messages, convincing their audience. Good communication skills are in two ways; it is both listening and speaking. For a leader to gain followers, he has to convey a clear message on what his objectives are. It is through communication that he earns trust and the leadership position to implement his objectives. A charismatic leader needs this skill to inspire and motivate his followers.

Servant Leadership and the Traits Required

Servant leadership focuses on identifying and meeting the needs of others rather than focusing on self-achievements such as power, fame, and wealth. To be a servant leader, skills such as empathy, good listening skills, healing, awareness, conceptualization, commitment to other people’s growth and building the community. In my opinion, therefore, servant leadership is contradictory and impossible for everybody to perform such duties as most people are leaders to serve their interests. These skills are not easy to acquire since servant leadership is from the emotional part of a person.

This type of leadership focuses on meeting the interests of the followers before those of the leader. For individuals with features described above, the achievement of servant leadership is attainable. Those that lack these traits and focus more on their own success, fame, and wealth (which is the predominant factor) may find it difficult to practice this kind of leadership.

Capability and Characteristics of a Servant Leader

According to me, it is not everyone that has the capability to become a servant leader since there are certain skills and characteristics that an individual has to possess to be categorized as a charismatic leader. These attributes include; patience, generosity, selflessness, good communication skills (the ability to speak one on one or in a group setting). Listen skills are also vital in their communication, the leaders should pay attention when people speak to them and they should not fidget or look aside when being spoken to but instead maintain eye contact. Compassion should also be a key skill that the leader should possess. All these requirements are hardly possessed by everyone but some of them are possessed by some people naturally.

A Personal Experience with a Charismatic Manager

During my part-time job in a certain store, I interacted with one manager whom I labeled as charismatic. Apart from understanding that he possessed certain characteristics that made him different from others he was humble and always worked on continually improving himself. Self-monitoring was one of his virtues and he did this as the followers such as I looked up to him for inspiration and guidance. He was both confident and humble and focused on delivering to his juniors among other things. He put our interest as his priority, a factor that motivated us always.