Transformational Leadership vs. Charismatic Leadership: Key Differences
Leaders should be able to inspire, engage, and motivate employees. Two leadership styles that focus on those abilities are charismatic and transformational leadership. However, despite those shared goals, the two leadership styles are very different. Understanding their similarities and differences can help you identify where you fall on the leadership spectrum and make adjustments to ensure you’re giving your team members what they need.
What Is Charismatic Leadership?
Let’s start our comparison of charismatic vs. transformational leadership with a quick exploration of the former. What is charismatic leadership? This style focuses on the leader and their charisma first, the organization second, and individual employees/team members third.
Charismatic leaders often have strong persuasive skills and are strong communicators. They are very good at convincing others of their points and getting people to change their minds. These leaders excel at getting people to adopt particular causes, buy into new projects, and commit to new goals.
What Is Transformational Leadership?
Next in our discussion, let’s compare transformational vs. charismatic leadership. Transformational leaders focus on their team members rather than themselves. This leadership style focuses on motivating and inspiring employees to make necessary changes to drive improvements and innovations across the organization.
Transformational leaders often share a common vision, set clear goals, and help employees upskill, develop their knowledge, and evolve so they can better aid the organization in achieving its goals while also finding personal fulfillment. Transformational leaders have strong interpersonal skills, a genuine interest in helping others thrive, and a strong drive toward collaborative growth and the development of a positive culture within the organization.
Understanding the Core Differences in Transformational vs. Charismatic Leadership
While charismatic and transformational leadership styles do have some similarities, they are more dissimilar.
- Mode of Operation – Perhaps the single largest difference between charismatic and transformational leadership is their mode of operation. Charismatic leaders rely on their innate charisma and ability to persuade others to encourage employees. This can create employees who are dedicated to the leader rather than the organization. It also runs the risk of creating role models who then fail to walk the talk; and the dangers of narcissistic leaders using their charm to persuade people to do things they do not feel comfortable with in their core values.In contrast, transformational leaders use empathic resonance, purpose, meaning, trust, truth, transparency, and a shared vision to motivate employees, which creates a sense of connection, belonging, and teamwork across the entire organization that does not center on the leader.
- Decision-Making – Another key difference between these two leadership styles is how the decisions are made. Charismatic leadership is very traditional in that the leader makes the decision and then tells team members what they should do.These team members usually have less autonomy and freedom to decide things for themselves. Transformational leaders do things more democratically, provide team members with the ability to decide things for themselves, and get input and feedback from others before making major decisions. They also help train employees so that their decisions are more in line with the organization’s overall goals.
- Level of Agility – As you can likely surmise, these two leadership styles don’t offer the same level of agility. Because charismatic leaders make most of the decisions, their agility and ability to adapt are limited to their mindset and willingness to change their minds when presented with new information. Transformational leadership democratizes the decision-making process while also encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and innovation. That is highly beneficial in fast-paced industries but offers value across most sectors today, with the dramatic shifts in employee expectations and the effects of global events, including armed conflicts, the lingering effects of the pandemic, and more.
- Impact on Morale – Both charismatic and transformational leadership styles can increase morale. In turn, that can drive improved employee retention and other important benefits.However, charismatic leaders achieve this through persuasiveness, which often ties motivation to that leader rather than to the organization or the wider leadership structure. It can also be highly manipulative, even deceptive. Transformational leaders improve morale across teams and entire organizations, and that is not tied to the leaders themselves.
Charismatic and Transformational Leadership: Is One Better Than the Other?
When it comes to transformational leadership vs. charismatic leadership, is there a clear winner? The truth is that both leadership styles have something to offer, but transformational leadership is the best suited for the VUCA world we find ourselves in and the unique challenges it presents. It is premised on truth, values, transparency, authenticity, insight, and integrity rather than charm and the cult of the individual.
However, building authentic charisma, based on developing more wholeness, aliveness, vision, and relational energy, can be extremely powerful and effective for all transformational leaders. This is particularly true for upper-level, C-suite positions.
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