Leadership Styles in U.S. Politics and Governance

Introduction: Three Leadership Styles and the U.S. Case

In many ways the United States offers an ideal case study for examining different leadership styles, because its particular process of election and governance presents opportunities for each leadership style to flourish. While the election itself favors a charismatic leadership style, the success of the executive branch depends on a transformational leadership style, and the interactions between the executive and the legislature can only be characterized as transactional. This dynamic is partially due to the structure of the United States itself, as well as cultural and traditional standards that have developed over time. By examining how the different types of leadership are favored at different times and places in the governance of the United States, one can understand not only how organizations actually encourage and shape certain leadership styles, but also how certain leadership strategies intended to generate change actually work to perpetuate the same structures and standards.

Defining Charismatic, Transformational, and Transactional Leadership

It is worthwhile to briefly outline the three main leadership styles under discussion before examining how they are actually expressed in the governance of the United States. The first style is charismatic leadership, which refers to leadership oriented around a charismatic leader — one who inspires devotion, commitment, and sometimes servility from his or her subordinates. Of all the leadership styles, charismatic leadership is often the most volatile, because by definition it depends on the personality and charisma of the leader, two things which may be completely unrelated to the leader's actual intelligence, ability, or ethics. As Howell and Avolio (1992) note, "charisma can lead to blind fanaticism in the service of megalomaniacs and dangerous values, or to heroic self-sacrifice in the service of a beneficial cause" (p. 44). While ethical and unethical charismatic leaders ultimately gain and use their power in slightly different ways, they share the same underlying basis for their success: a charismatic personality that allows them to gain people's trust and support, regardless of the content of their ideas or values.

Like charismatic leadership, transformational leadership depends upon the relationship between the leader and his or her subordinates, but with a slightly different focus. While charismatic leadership depends upon the personality and charisma of the leader, transformational leadership depends upon the subordinate's own identification with both the organization and the tasks at hand. The transformational leader attempts to "assist followers to grow and develop into leaders by responding to individual followers' needs, by empowering them, and aligning the goals of the individual followers" (Green & Roberts, 2012, p. 16). Thus, while a successful transformational leader will likely need to be charismatic, transformational leadership has less to do with the leader's particular personality and more to do with his or her ability to get followers to invest — both literally and figuratively — in the task at hand.

In contrast to charismatic and transformational leadership, the transactional leadership style eschews charisma and identification in favor of fairly straightforward, pragmatic reinforcement, both positive and negative. Rather than attempting to win followers with an attractive personality or by wedding their individual interests to those of the organization, transactional leadership attempts to achieve goals by encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors through clear-cut rewards and punishments. The relationship between leader and follower is thus less dependent on personality or trust and more dependent on relatively quantifiable calculations regarding benefit and cost (Trottier, Wart, & Wang, 2008, p. 320). While transactional leadership might come across as cold or unfeeling, it can in fact be quite beneficial, particularly in instances where individuals have competing goals but must nevertheless work together. Furthermore, because it is less dependent on personality and charisma, transactional leadership can actually remove some of the nebulous indeterminacies of interpersonal communication that can ultimately hinder the completion of cooperative tasks.

Of course, no leader sticks to one style exclusively, because different situations call for different approaches, and no one style has a clear advantage over any other. For example, while charismatic leadership may allow one to gain a large number of devoted followers fairly quickly, those followers may not be critical enough to provide the honest feedback necessary for organizational success. Similarly, while transactional leadership allows for clear-cut standards of reward and punishment, this almost mercenary approach to leadership runs the risk of followers abandoning ship at the first sign of a more attractive offer. Transformational leadership could help alleviate this potential loyalty issue, but it also brings with it the risk of indeterminate metrics of follower evaluation, to the point that the leader loses some control over his or her followers. To better understand the strengths and weaknesses of these leadership styles, it is useful to examine the governance of the United States itself.

Charismatic Leadership and the American Election

Charismatic leadership is easy to spot in the world of politics, because many of the world's most famous leaders have risen to prominence precisely because of their charisma and personality, for better or worse. As Howell and Avolio (1992) observe, "the label charismatic has been applied to very diverse leaders in politics," such as "Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, [and] Franklin Delano Roosevelt" (p. 43). In the case of the United States, charismatic leadership is most evident during election season, because at that point the candidates have no real power except that of their personality and charisma (setting aside the question of incumbents). Furthermore, their campaigns are largely made up of dedicated "true believers"; while policies and positions will ultimately draw in voters, it would be practically impossible to marshal the dedicated volunteers who form the backbone of American political campaigns without a fair amount of charismatic appeal. Charismatic leadership is ideal in the context of an election because the goal — winning — is almost entirely dependent on the excitement, dedication, and energy of one's supporters.

It is worth noting, however, that while charismatic leadership is the preferred style for the candidates themselves, their campaign managers more frequently must deploy a transformational style, channeling the excitement generated by the candidate's charisma into genuine investment and commitment on the part of followers (Green & Roberts, 2012, pp. 16–17).

Understanding how charismatic leadership flourishes during an election also helps illuminate its benefits and drawbacks, because success during a campaign does not necessarily translate to success in governance. In many ways elections are designed to favor charismatic leadership, while the structural and constitutional makeup of the United States largely precludes charismatic leadership alone from producing substantive results. While charisma is often enough to carry a campaign, governments built entirely upon it may struggle considerably, because governance requires a fundamentally different skill set. To understand why, one must consider the shift that occurs in the transition from campaigning to governing.

Transformational Leadership in the Executive Branch

During a campaign, the candidate leads an entirely different set of people than those he or she will lead if elected, and pursues a far more specific goal. Charismatic leadership is ideal for a campaign precisely because the people being led are those most susceptible to it, and the goal of winning can be achieved largely through the generalized efforts of dedicated, energetic followers. When governing, by contrast, the President is responsible for leading not just devoted supporters but a full spectrum of citizens — ranging from committed allies to outright political opponents. In the case of the latter, charismatic leadership simply cannot work, because the opposition will not be willing to legitimize the leader's authority on the basis of perceived charisma alone. Furthermore, even when dealing with subordinates in the executive branch rather than opposition figures in Congress, a President cannot rely on charisma, because the intricacies of maintaining the American bureaucracy require far more detailed decision-making at every level than charismatic leadership permits. In a sense, the American government is structured in such a way as to preclude the rise of a leader whose authority is based on charisma alone — a feature that, while it may sometimes produce less personally appealing candidates, also helps prevent any one person from gaining undue power.

Instead, the structure of the executive branch almost demands a kind of transformational leadership, and empirical data suggests that this is indeed the form of leadership most desired by federal employees. A 2008 study attempted to determine the range of leadership styles exhibited across departments of the federal government, and as part of that study the authors asked respondents about "the relative importance of transactional and transformational leadership" (Trottier, Wart, & Wang, 2008, p. 327). While transactional leadership methods were rated as important by federal workers, employees across the board placed the most emphasis on leadership traits associated with transformational leadership, including "idealized influence and inspirational motivation" (Trottier, Wart, & Wang, 2008, p. 328).

This makes sense when one considers the role of an employee working in a government agency. Having one's individual experience taken into account and effectively coordinated with the organization's broader effort becomes much more important when that individual is one among millions of employees working on everything from national defense to consumer standards. To effectively lead such a varied and extensive organization, a President almost has to deploy a transformational leadership strategy — particularly if he or she is to enact the perceived mandate of the election — because this is the only means of effectively mobilizing such a disparate group of people toward common goals.

Conclusion: Making Leadership Theory Explicit

Examining the different leadership styles on display in the United States allows one to not only understand the theory and practice of those styles, but also how certain situations and contexts encourage or discourage their use. Furthermore, by examining how different styles are more or less successful in different contexts, one can better understand how these different leadership styles are both the result and a continuing cause of many of the governance issues facing the United States today. Elections, by their nature, favor charismatic leadership, while the actual governance of the country favors transformational and transactional leadership, depending on whether the leader is dealing with subordinates, allies, or opponents. By making his or her leadership style and theoretical underpinnings clear from the outset, leaders could actually change the way different leadership styles are treated in the American political world — and that change could go a long way toward refining and heightening the quality of leader produced by the electoral process.