Leadership Theories and Styles for Charismatic Leadership

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 Leadership

Leadership Theories and Styles for Charismatic Leadership

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I. INTRODUCTION

Historically, the discussion on the leaders that they are born or made has lead the researchers to go in minute details of the subject in which they reached at the conclusions that leaders, whether born or made, do follow the same theories of leadership which are reflected from their leadership styles. But the leadership theories also make it evident that one single leadership style may not be feasible for all the scenarios and the circumstances of the leader allow or disallow him to choose a specific leadership style.

Background Information

Antonakis, House (2002) confer that in choosing the leadership theory to layout leadership style, the biggest point to keep in mind is the relationship between the leader and the followers and on the basis of which theories this relationship has to carry on. When the leadership is discussed from a broader perspective then the leaders first take the followers according to the theories of leadership but when the leaders are followed extensively due to their success, then the followers become a powerful factor of the leader’s choice of the leadership style. In case of the employment and organization, the leaders do lead on the nature of their responsibilities in that organization and their relation with the subordinates.

Thesis statement

Leadership styles are the basics of becoming the best leaders by understanding the requirements of the cause, project or objective depending upon the provided resources and the circumstances. Leaders emphasize on the theme of listening to the followers and then responding to their wishes with the focus on the cause with the alignment of the leader’s qualities and followers’ hard-work and believe in their leader to gain what they collectively planned. Leadership style persuades the followers of the leader to execute the planning in an effective and efficient manner by not an inward pressure on the followers but a passion for the cause and the mission of the leader whether in an organization or any environment where it fits in.

DISCUSSION

Article 1 Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: A Critical Review of the Theoretical and Empirical Literature and Suggestions for Future Research

Supporting Ideas

Devoted employees who work in a way that they are not the employees of the organization but they are citizens of that workplace environment has changed the meanings of working for a wage rate or a salary. The organizations are known by their products and services but these products and services have a delicacy of people associated with that organization. The fine quality products or high standards of services are made possible due to the artistic passion of the human resource working for these organizations.

Obtaining a certain level of high quality productivity is an attribute of certain employees who work by exceeding the expectations of an organization’s management. This productivity is higher in value than the systematic rewards proposed to keep the employees motivated for their work. Because the behavior exhibited by these employees is not a compulsion on them by the organization so there are no set standards to measure the extraordinary devotion and delicacy of their performance so it is not possible either to recognize that through any intrinsic or extrinsic rewards. This work behavior is entirely an employee’s own chosen way of working and completing the tasks. Employees working for almost all types of organization have showed the organizational citizenship behavior which happened in more organized pattern in the mid-nineties when the subject was not in its current developed shape.

While researching the organization citizenship behavior, it is notable that the real causes and factors of the behavior are yet to be inquired in detail and the researchers have created an ambiguity by deviating from the actual topic. Employees working in different natures of organizations shows different natures of organizational citizenship behavior and these different natures are of different intensities and levels. These differences are of prime nature as the concept of the organization citizenship behavior varies from organization to organization and culture to culture but the main theme of the OCB remains intact. It is necessary that the real concept of these differences is understood by going in the depth of the causes of these differences rather just mixing up the differences due to the relative novelty and complexity of the subject.

Researchers have done extensive work to inquire and make these differences recognizable for better implementation of this concept because the performance of employees has been improved drastically when an employee shows interest in an organizational environment and culture to work by owning the job responsibilities to accomplish the goals and objectives of the organization.

Article 2 Introduction: The Problems and Promise of Contemporary Leadership Theories

1. Supporting Ideas

Leaders have become more effective in their leadership styles due to their relationship with their followers rather sticking to the hard and fast rules and demands of the leadership theories. All leadership theories which have been emerged in the recent decades such as the authentic leadership, character-based leadership, spiritual leadership etc. have the common factor the way leaders treat their followers on the basis of moral grounds and highly regarded values of character exhibited by the leaders.

In an environment of organization, when the following of a leader is mentioned, it is not the following of a leader a person but the leader has already reached at a stage of her career that she does not speak, act or do other than the goals and objectives of the organization so following the leader means following the organization in broader meaning of the word. The leader in an organization will always motivate and inspire her subordinates to work and perform not for the wage rate or the salary but to consider the organization as their home and family at the first place, then as a person work with the passion and devotion to fulfil the needs of his home by living in a harmonized manner with the other family members, likewise, an employee must take the organization as his home which will ultimately impact his career progression positively for the long term better living standard and prosperity.

The devotion of the employees is injected by their leader which allow them to perform not with the fear of job insecurity if not performed well, but an internal connection with their leader to work to achieve the desired objectives guided by that leader. Now it is up to the leader that how she uses the followers’ skills and expertise on the moral values to focus on the organizational objectives and the careful use of power the leader has.

Some researchers argue that the leadership styles based on the leadership theories cause an environment of working and performing not for the basic needs of individuals but their “wants” which is against the basics of management sciences.

Researchers like Michael D. Mumford and Yitzhak Fried are convinced with this idea that leadership theories cannot be implemented the way they have been told because it is completely dependent on the nature of the circumstances in which the leaders inspire and convince the followers to perform outstandingly. Moreover, inspiring the subordinates for work out of the way of an organizational culture will allow the firm’s overall performance to be improved but the employees will become habitual for that kind of behavior and if the situation subtracts a leader of certain kind of “supportive” behavior then the ultimate performance of the employees will have a decline and the overall performance of the organization may also be impacted negatively. Thus keeping things in routine of working under traditional reward systems is more appropriate rather expecting an organizational citizenship behavior from the employees by the inspirations of the leaders.

On the contrary and in defending the leadership theories, a number of researchers answer the abovementioned counterargument by adding up the contemporary theories of leadership: charismatic theory and transformational theory. These researchers believe that it is a better approach to inspire the employees for better performance rather imposing the annual objectives without caring for the subordinate that how and when they will be able to accomplish. This is a situation in which the leaders put their foot in the subordinate’s shoe and then design the nature of the objective and tasks which seems to be skipped in the only-management theories in which the managers assign the tasks forgetting the fact that they were also subordinates once thus creating the jobs stressful and a feeling of forceful performance arises.

Article 3 Can Charisma Be Taught? Tests of Two Interventions

1. Supporting Ideas

Leadership becomes effective leadership when the leader has charismatic characteristics in dealing with her followers. Some leaders are born with charisma but not all so for effective leadership, the charisma can be injected through training and working on the personal and professional skills of a leader. Leadership has become a topic of great significance in the recent years whether the leadership deals at the macro level or at the organizational and team level.

The importance of the leadership cannot be overlooked. This importance is directly connected with the leadership qualities of a leader and out of these characteristics, charisma is of the top priority. Charisma is an attribute which can learned and with due course of time a leader can become a charismatic leader to better inspire the subordinates. Charisma is a part of the transformational leadership style in which the training and learning play an important role in acquiring those skills in which a leader exhibit charismatic qualities of leadership. Leaders, whether of a society or an organization show outstanding level of abilities and skills which persuade or somewhat force their followers to believe in them that these are the genuine leaders who can change the societal or organizational environments to a positivity, thus it supports the leaders to exhibit the charismatic behavior. It is evident that the effective leadership is not a one way process but a two way in which the leader develops the believe and trust among the followers who in turn motivate the leader to take daring steps and decisions which point towards the success of the cause and objective.

Researchers like (Antonakis and House 2002) confer that the concept of charismatic leadership can be implemented to the organizational settings as well. The best situation comes in for the charisma exhibition of a leader when an organization undergoes a crises, before that crises a leader might not be charismatic by birth but managing to come out of that situation will surely transform her to a charismatic leader but it does not put a condition that charisma depends upon a crises situation. Charismatic leaders have the ability that they do not only possess the charisma in their way of talking but the whole personality revolves around the charismatic values of leadership. Charismatic leadership is actually caused by the whole pack of charisma presented by the leader.

CONCLUSION

Ina nutshell, there is a strong connection between the three articles discussed above or in fact there is a transition of the topic in all three articles. The first article, the devotion of an employee with her work and the organization in which she works has been mentioned which lays out the foundation of the broader perspective of the term which is the leadership and its characteristics mentioned in the other two articles, because if the charisma has to be taught and learned then this is not possible fortnightly. It is a transitional transformation of a person by undergoing several organizational procedures and practices and then one can expect the charismatic leadership attributes from that leader. In other words, the leadership attribute of charisma has the prerequisite of the basic leadership theories and styles which have their prerequisite of the organizational citizenship behavior of the employees. The leadership theories carve the leadership styles and these styles lead to the attribute of the leaders. One of these attributes is charisma. Several researchers conclude that the leadership as a whole is a learnable art and cannot be given up surrendering to the idea that leaders are only born.

REFERENCES Antonakis, J., & House, R. J. (2002). An analysis of the full-range leadership theory: The way forward. In B. J. Avolio, & F. J. Yammarino (Eds.), Transformational and charismatic leadership: The road ahead: 3–34. Amsterdam: JAI Press. Antonakis, J., Fenley, M., & Liechti, S. (2011). Can charisma be taught? Tests of two interventions. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 10(3), 374-396. Day, D. V. (2000). Leadership development: A review in context. Leadership Quarterly, 11(4): 581– 613 Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Paine, J. B., & Bachrach, D. G. (2000). Organizational citizenship behaviors: A critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature and suggestions for future research. Journal of Management, 26(3), 513-563. Spector, P. (2014). Introduction: The problems and promise of contemporary leadership theories. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(5), 597. doi:10.1002/job.1930