There are two kinds of people in this world. No not entertainers and the ones that observe as Britney Spears has so kindly pointed out, but rather; followers or leader. There are so many styles in which a leader can lead a certain group of followers. The two most popular, common and most researched ones are transformational and charismatic leaders. Transformational and charismatic styles of leadership are widely known amongst philosophers. But which one is more effective? Transformational is definitely a better leadership style than charismatic, especially when dealing with and being in charge of a group of people or an organization. The three ways in which this can be proven is by studying ...view middle of the document...
In this statement that is extracted from one of his written texts, we can concur that transformational leaders give great importance to achieving goals that are for the better good for the organization and their followers. Unlike transformational leaders, charismatic leaders focus on themselves and often play on the emotions of their followers in order to attain ego reinforcement. Lisa Mooney, a journalist, states that “there are charismatic leaders who [are] motivated to serve themselves first and are not above sacrificing the needs of their employees and companies in order to get what they desire.” (Mooney) This article goes into further detail and says that a charismatic leader’s “[…] ego often inflates due to the adoring attention of the employees who follow her devotedly.” From these quotes in the articles we can clearly see that charismatic leaders are greatly involved in reaching their own goals, even if that mean that they have to manipulate the feelings of their followers. An example of this is Hitler. Hitler was extremely charismatic and played with many citizens’ emotions in order to reach his rather vile and cruel aim of ridding the country, or world, of Jews. This proves that charismatic leaders can be people with extremely negative goals as well. Through these explanations and proofs we can see how different a transformational leader’s focuses and goals differ from that of a charismatic leader. While a charismatic leader only focuses on reaching their own goal, transformational leaders work on attaining a goal that benefits not themselves but the organization and their followers. This selflessness and ambition to work towards a better good is what makes a transformational leader a better leader than a charismatic one.
Every leadership style is unique on how they interact with and affect their followers; may that be in a positive or negative way. Transformational leaders cause their followers to rise above their own self-interest, usually for the benefit of a good cause. According to Changing Minds “[t]he Transformational Leader seeks to infect and re-infect their followers with a high level of commitment to the vision.” (Changing Minds) From this statement, we can extract that transformational leaders convince and affect the followers in such a way so that they aim to rise above their self-interest so that they can work towards benefitting the organization or group. In comparison to transformational, charismatic leaders’ followers sometimes tend to imitate their personality and goals rather than transforming their basic self-interest. This can apply the idea of ‘fake it till you become it’. Because the charismatic leader doesn’t focus on the better future of the followers, they don’t spend enough time convincing the people of their ideas. Thus it often occurs that some followers may be faking their interest in the matter just so they can be liked and appreciated by the leader. When we compare these two leadership styles in this...
