Transformational and Charismatic Leadership

Transformational Leader
Transformational and charismatic leadership has increasingly been shown to be valuable for organisations, especially with respect to empowering employees. Generally, transformational and charismatic leaders inspire and motivate their followers to achieve their maximum potential. They work together with their followers to formulate and execute the organisation’s vision, strategy, goals, and objectives. Transformational and charismatic leaders achieve this by communicating effectively as well as eliciting positive emotions and citizenship behaviours in their followers.
Effective communication is a particularly important characteristic of transformational and charismatic leaders. As explained by Latham (2009), effective leaders inspire their followers by appealing to their emotions. They communicate in a way that captures the imagination of their followers and portrays a sense of altruism. Such communication is vital for energising followers towards the organisation’s goals and objectives. With effective communication, employees gain a clear understanding of the organisation’s vision as well as their role in achieving the vision.
Conger (1991) further emphasises the significance of effective communication in leadership. He asserts that effective leaders have the ability to communicate with their followers – they possess the language of leadership. Transformational and charismatic leaders achieve effective communication by employing rhetorical techniques such as metaphors, analogies, as well as personal and organisational stories. They use ethos, pathos, and logos to captivate and motivate their audience (Antonakis, Fenley & Liechti, 2012). Such techniques, which involve both verbal and non-verbal communication, not only serve as an inspiration to followers, but also make whatever the leader’s message more understandable and relatable to their followers
Effective communication also involves communicating frequently using a wide variety of channels (Kotter, 2007). Transformational leaders do not communicate only during an annual meeting or a CEO presentation. Instead, they take advantage of other channels to engage their followers. They utilise both formal and informal channels to pass their message. These channels may include not only staff meetings and internal memos, but also employee discussion forums, team building activities, and lunch-hour talks. Communicating frequently and on an ongoing basis maintains the message alive, ultimately keeping followers focused on the vision of the organisation. More importantly, frequent communication brings out the leader as strongly committed to the vision.
Leaders who communicate effectively and appeal to the emotions of their followers are likely to generate positive citizenship behaviours such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, passion, morale, loyalty, trust, positive attitudes toward work, volunteerism, as well as compliance with organisational rules and procedures (Antonakis, Fenley & Liechti, 2012; Latham, 2009). Any organisation certainly desires employees with these behaviours. Organisations require employees whose behaviour goes “beyond the mere call of duty” (Bolino & Turnley, 2003, p. 60). Employees’ citizenship behaviours have important implications for employee productivity and performance, which can ultimately enhance organisational performance and competitiveness in the marketplace. A supportive leadership environment plays an instrumental role in cultivating citizenship behaviours. Transformational and charismatic leaders employ a variety of formal and informal techniques to cultivate such an environment. They create a culture of teamwork, collaboration, recognition, flexibility, self-sacrifice, and performance, with a view to inspiring their followers.
On the whole, transformational and charismatic leaders achieve effective leadership by communicating in a certain manner as well as activating certain group identities amongst their followers. Debatably, both abilities are equally important. A transformational and charismatic leader is likely to be ineffective if the leader can communicate effectively, but cannot generate citizenship behaviours. Equally, a transformational and charismatic leader is unlikely to be effective if the leader can activate citizenship behaviours, but cannot communicate effectively. An effective leader is one who can communicate effectively and elicit citizenship behaviours at the same time.


References
Antonakis, J., Fenley, M., & Liechti, S. (2012, June). Learning charisma: transforming yourself into the person others want to follow. Harvard Business Review.
Bolino, M., & Turnley, W. (2003). Going the extra mile: cultivating and managing employee citizenship behaviour. Academy of Management Executive, 17(3), 60-71.
Conger, C. (1991). Inspiring others: the language of leadership. Academy of Management Executive, 5(1), 31-45.
Kotter, J. (2007, January). Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review.
Latham, G. (2009). Making the science of management work for you. Boston: Davies Black.