Leadership – Charismatic Individuals or Contingent Characteristics

leading magnetic Individuals or Contingent Characteristics? A brief analytic thinking of personal appealtic and driveuational drawing cards, drawing cardship and entitles. Linesh Palayadan, Cass Business School, metropolis university London, UK. Men make hi paper and non the other way around. In periods where there is no loss leading, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, talented attractors seize the fortune to win e genuinelyplace things for the give way Harry S. Tru hu spells It goes with go forth saying that mankind beings couldnt run by and through progress tod what they hand achieved if they had non treated in groups.Teamwork is probably one(a) of the well-nigh most-valuable inventions of mankind which does not move explicitly mentioned when one refers or so(predicate) the tools and phylogeny of gentle beings from the pre-historic times. None of the magnificent creations of human beings we see today could kick in been mayhap a chieved without humans coming in police squads and functional for a jet goal. Teams by themselves slewnot be succeederful if they do not defy a clear direction or peck. The police squad is demarcation to fail in achieving the results if there is no coordination, synchronisation and colloquy amid team members.The concept of team itself comes into existence only beca call of the arising of a want or a goal that would upbeat the society, and the means to achieve it derrierenot be employ by an idiosyncratic, however able and skilful he or she may be. Members of the team commode be of utmost(a)ly diametric personalities, skills and characteristics and e real member has his/her own ideas on how to achieve the common goal. It is precisely at this point that the need for a attraction a hold ups.What is ask is a leader who mint channel the necessary skills from the team members to state of contendds the common goal and main(prenominal)tain the harmony and coordinatio n between them at the same time. Numerous theories shoot been postulated on how a leader should be and what the characteristics of the leader should be. Some theories hypothesised that leaders cannot be made save ar born(p) and those personalities or so cal take traits cannot be civilized in a person who is not already a born leader while others strongly appriseed that given the proper circumstances, leaders emerge based on situations and contingencies.Organisations put for state of ward certain requirements for interviewing candidates for its keystone posts. We all buzz off come crossways requirements in Job advertisements like sober communications, effectualness in groups, taking initiative, pie-eyed under pressure etc. (S Fineman, Y Gabriel, D Sims, 2011). Are these the only qualities of leaders? Can a person with those qualities be no-hit as a leader? Do these qualities exist as noninheritable traits in a person? Or can these qualities be inculcated in a person t hrough training and suppuration? What argon the diametrical kinds of leaders?What makes a leader outstanding from others? These atomic number 18 whatsoever of the questions that we bequeath pass judgment to analyse with the athletic supporter of some specific theories which have been proposed before. dickens main theories that propose the idea that the qualities required for leading are inborn in the person or are traits of an individual are the mark scheme and magnetic leading scheme. While the trace theory has its origins in the early 20th century, charismatic lead theory is more(prenominal) recent and is more or less(prenominal) a return to trait theory.The Trait leaders concept was proposed in doubting Thomas Carlyles blanket(a) man theory where he proposed that The history of the humans is still the biography of great men(Carlyle, 1907). He believed that leaders have certain immutable traits which cannot be developed in others. funny developments in do ingsal sciences since have light-emitting diode to the decline in favour for the great man theory (David L Cawthon, 1996). The charismatic leadership theory states that the leaders have an innate sit of abilities or charisma which cannot be explained (Conger & Kanungo, 1988).These leaders first try to understand the opportunities, possibilities and constrains as well as the preferences and unavoidably of the team members. They then set a vision for a fashion which accommodates opportunities as well as the preferences and needs of the team members. The last acquaint is the veritable implementation of the vision, motivating the following in the functioning. At this stage they besides stage demonstrations which projects their image, courage, dedication to the cause, sacrifice etc. (C Jacobsen, R J. House 2001). charismatic leaders are frequently value driven, visionaries and have a furrow of success stories which motivates the following. The primary risk of this stylus of leadership is that it may not be effective in all the backgrounds and much(prenominal) leaders can fade into amnesty as soon as the context changes. Perhaps the most striking physical exertion of Charismatic leadership is that of Sir Winston Churchill who proved to be a real effective war time leader and prime look but was voted out when elections were held after varlet 1 he war because concourse did not consider him as somebody who could effectively handle post-war reforms (Roy Jenkins, 2003). One of the strongly criticized and censured leaders of all times is Adolf Hitler who because of his war crimes and atrocities, went down in history as a bad leader. How did he rise from his humble beginnings to the all-powerful leader of a country which had the potential to be the most powerful country in the world if had won in the Second foundation War? The art of leadership onsists of consolidating the management of the great deal against a single opposite and taking attending that nothing will split up that attention. Adolf Hitler Hitler took advantage of the go under that pile in Ger umpteen were disillusioned with the leadership at that time and they were looking for a leader who would turn their insult and injury into victory and fame. (Gardner, 1995, p. 334)He was a wonderful speechifier who could mesmerise his audience with his speech through which he was successful in convince the plenty of Germany that he was their only believe and only he could catapult Germany to the realms of success and prosperity.His charisma in motivating the masses(John Dreijmanis, 2005) through speeches, vision and aggressive nationalism led to mass hysteria, trust and a good sense of pride and nationalism in the wad, which in turn catapulted him to the gamyest realms of power. His leadership notwithstanding the eventual(prenominal) failures he had was instrumental in labor union German mountain and hence can be classed under strong Charismatic leadership.O ne of the most recent, remarkable and widely inform event in India was the movement against turpitude by a common man named Mr Anna Hazare (NY times, Oct 2011). Until recently little was known about the man nationwide and in a span of about 6 months approximately e genuinely household in India knew about him because of his protest against corruption and his demands to bring a corruption prevention understanddog with incomparable sweeping powers which had the potential to put many corrupt politicians and officials behind bars (Reuters Aug 2011).A loving worker and an ardent follower of Mahatma Gandhi(N Y times August 18, 2011), Mr Hazare is a 74 year old man, who is not a mesmerising orator, but still managed to mobilise hundreds of millions of Indians end-to-end India and abroad to pressurise the Indian political sympathies to constitute much(prenominal) a watch dog. He later went on to sit for an indefinite hunger strike until his demands were met. The use of technology fo r the movement was unprecedented. Indians all over the world used online media web-sites like peep and Facebook to move mass opinion in his favour and to hold protest rallies in major capitals of the world.Such was the scale of support for him that Indian government finally relented to agree to his demands (Times of India, family line 2011). In the Indian capital of New-Delhi, hundreds of thousands of people from divergent parts of India descended on to the locale of the peaceful protest, provoking government fears for practice of law and order problems. Different Business schools in India conducted studies as to how this frail old man was able to mobilise masses in such(prenominal) huge numbers and bequeath leadership to them in what is described as one of largest protest movements in post-independence India (Businesstoday, Aug 2011).They wanted to know how his leadership workout could be useful for the future business leaders. under his leadership many volunteers and char itable organisations came unneurotic under one umbrella for organising and maintaining the venue and order, organising and coordinating media related activities, publicity, logistics etc. His leadership course is more of a representative form of leadership although there is a major element of charisma attached. Weber, 1968 has pointed out that a charismatic leader is liable(predicate) to appear when social situation makes people feel distress (RJ House, 2001).In this content the people of India have been so much thwarted with corruption that chasten environment was created for the outcome of such a leader. Shamir, House and Arthur (1993) have described in a play more detail as to what those contributive conditions could be. They have listed four situations that can catalyse the upshot of Charismatic leaders. First, the situation is perceived as a threat to important values. Second, relationship between goal learning and performance is unclear. Third, the situation is uns table and quarter it requires exceptional effort.These situations give rise to a weak psychological situation in which a charismatic leader can easily emerge and sour the followers provided he is able to offer hope and solution to the people. In the higher up example and also in case of post-world war I Germany, situations were quite favourable for the emergence of a charismatic leader. Bendix (1985) states that in such situations it is not certain that a charismatic leader will evolve in spite of the paramount conducive conditions and express necessity for such a leader(C Jacobsen, R J. House, p77, 2001). He also says that it is entirely manageable that a charismatic who ossesses none of the above said characteristics may emerge a leader by articulating ideological, moral or other values relevant to the prevailing conditions. Another theory of leadership called behavioural model (Blake & Mouton, 1964) states that all leaders can be placed on a grid which evaluates them based on their people touch on and occupation final stage invade. consort to summon 2 behavioural model, different kinds of leaderships may be prevalent in different organisations which may go from one extreme to another in foothold of concern for people and concern for task.A impregnable in which managers exhibit so called impoverish or indifferent panache leadership, where managers have little concern for job completion or people, is rich in disorganisation, dissatisfaction and disharmony. The other extreme end of this style is speech sound style where there is high concern for people and productivity. Such organisations are bound to succeed as they have high productivity and motivation and belongingness among employees is also very high.Some organisations exhibit country club style leadership where concern for people is very high but not for productivity. The leaders do not want people to be unhappy and such organisations are not very successful. Another extreme is the Dict atorial style where there is no concern for people but very high concern for productivity. Productivity in such organisations may be very high in the shorter term but these organisations suffer from high employee turnover payable to enforcement of strict rules, regulations and punishments.Most of the organisations follow what is called the middle-of-the-road style where leaders show some concern for both people and productivity hoping to achieve acceptable results. One of the most striking schools of thought in leadership theories is Situational or Contingency theory. Proposed originally by Hersey & Blanchard, 1982, it states that leaders must vary their leadership style based on subordinate words competency and commitment. A leaders style should be delegation if the team members are competent and pull, grave or directive if they are neither competent nor committed.In case where the team members are competent but not committed the style should be Participating and the final ca se in which the team members are committed but not competent, the style should be selling. Fred Fiedlers fortuity model states the relationship between leadership style and favourableness of the situation (Fred Luthans, 1992). His studies suggest that situations are favourable for the leader if the leash dimensions are high, the dimensions being 1. Leader-member relationship 2.Degree of task structure 3. Leaders position power through formal authority. He also found that if the above dimensions are very favourable or very unfavourable, directive or hard-nosed leaders are more effective whereas diffused leaders are more effective in situations where the dimensions are moderately favourable. My extensive experience in various successful IT and engineering companies, compel me to come to the conclusion that these companies have adopted situational leadership as their main strategy.The reason for this may be that such companies require their engineers to be plenteous from day one an d as they take more experienced, they are expected to slang the ownership of the modules they work on and pose the point of contact for all issues on the module. The leaders in such cases fall upon different forms of situational leadership to deal with different team members depending on their willingness and ability. Once the leader is convinced of the team members competence and commitment, delegation is the form of leadership he or she chooses for that team member.Since performance in terms of the quality of work done and sticking to schedule is the main criteria in assessing the performance in such companies, telling style of leadership is also very common and results in redundancies many times when the team members are loth and unable. In larger companies, Transformational form of leadership (Bernard M. Bass, 1985) is also not very quaint nowadays in which the leader takes care to develop and transform his or her followers through, inspirational motivation, intellectual s imulation, idealised influence and most importantly individualized consideration.Leadership any(prenominal) form it may assume is an essential skill without which the society will have little progress. Leaders need courage, vision and determination to change things for pause. The need for better leaders will never kick to exist and right people with right skills will always seize the opportunity to lead the world for a better tomorrow. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Ann Florini. The Right to Know Transparency for an unmortgaged World. New York, 23 Columbia University Press. Bass, B. M. 1998. Transformational leadership Industrial, military, and educational impact.Mahwah, NJ Erlbaum Bendix, R. 1985. Reflections on Charismatic leadership. Blake, R. , Mouton, J. 1964. The Managerial Grid The Key to Leadership Excellence. C Jacobsen, R J. House 2001 kinetics of charismatic leadership A process theory, simulation, and tests 75-112 The leadership quarterly 12 David L. Cawth on, 1996. The extensive Man Theory Revisited, Business Horizons. Fred Luthans, 1992. Organisational behaviour 276,277 Hersey, P. , & Blanchard, K. , 1982. Management of organizational behaviour, 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall.John Dreijmanis, 2005 A portrait of the operative as a politician the case of Adolf Hitler, 3, intuition Direct. S J. Zaccaro, Zachary N. J. , 2003. Leadership theory and practice Fostering an effective symbiosis, Science direct. Page 3 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. S Fineman, Y Gabriel, D Sims, 2011. Organising and Organisations. Roy Jenkins, 2003. 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