Comparing and Contrasting Charismatic and Transformational Leadership (Coursework Sample)

Comparing and Contrasting Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
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Comparing and Contrasting Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
People demonstrate multiple leadership styles depending on how they were mentored, the task at hand, and their personality traits. Regardless of these factors, every leader aims at becoming an effective leader. Most individuals find charismatic and transformational leadership some of the best leadership types. These styles of leadership are similar but also different in certain aspects. Transformational leadership impacts on followers include continual development and empowerment, inspiration, and innovative behavior. Key similarities between charismatic and transformational leadership include a leader’s ability to inspire followers and encouragement of initiative and boldness, while the key differences include distinct focus and vision. Charismatic leadership impacts followers through the provision of support, inspiration, and promotion of initiative-oriented behavior. Transformational leadership impacts on followers include continual development and empowerment, inspiration, and innovative behavior.
The main similarity between charismatic and transformational leadership is that both apply the same approach to inspire followers. In both leadership types, the leaders rely on their ability to influence and consequently inspire followers. Charismatic and transformational leaders motivate and rally their followers in service of a common goal or for the greater good of the organization or community (Stowell & Mead, 2016). Moreover, both leaders act as role models of their followers by challenging them to take greater ownership of their duties. These leaders are excellent at inspiring their followers because they understand their strengths and weaknesses (Hickman & Silva, 2018). Therefore, both charismatic and transformational leaders can easily assign tasks that will result in optimal performance from followers.
Another key similarity between charismatic and transformational leadership is the encouragement of initiative and boldness. Both charismatic and transformational leaders ooze confidence in their leadership. These leaders will rarely express self-doubt but instead demonstrate confidence in their actions and decisions. They exhibit powerful personality traits that greatly attract followers, making them admire the leader to the extent that they can ignore critical conclusions about a leadership quality (Meslec et al., 2020). Additionally, these leaders' boldness affects the followers to an extent they perceive the leaders' philosophy as correct, thus following them without questions. Therefore, by influencing followers to be bold, both charismatic and transformational leadership show similar characteristics.
Apart from having similar characteristics, charismatic and transformational leadership also differ greatly. One of the key differences between charismatic and transformational leadership is in terms of focus. The focus of charismatic leadership is to maintain the status quo. These types of leaders are more conservative and prefer things to remain the way they are in the organization or society. Instead of transforming others or organizations, they focus on transforming themselves. However, transformational leaders’ focus is on introducing new beliefs and philosophies to transform the organization and followers. These leaders aim to develop their followers to learn and evolve as they believe followers can transform into accomplishing more in the future (Pawar, 2016). Therefore, by having a common focus as followers, transformational leaders differ from charismatic significantly.
In addition to focus, charismatic leaders also differ from transformational leaders in terms of vision. According to Pawar (2016), vision is put together by the entire team in transformational leadership. Transformational leadership encourages the active participation of all team members since this is one of the approaches to develop people in the organization. However, in charismatic leadership, the leader's vision becomes the followers' vision. For this reason, this leadership style eliminates a democratic way of setting a vision. As a result, transformational leaders’ vision for leading people contrasts charismatic vision.
Even though charismatic and transformational leadership may share and differ in characteristics, they both have a specific effect on their followers. Charismatic leadership provides support to followers through mentoring and coaching and consequently improving their self-esteem (Meslec et al., 2020). They achieve this by demonstrating self-confidence, optimism, and positive body language. Moreover, this leadership type inspires followers to achieve great outcomes set by the leader through identification with the organizational goal, understanding, and meaning. Charismatic leaders have the ability to influence their followers through expressing boldness in their actions to perform at remarkably greater heights (Hickman & Silva, 2018). Lastly, charismatic leadership impacts followers by promoting initiative-oriented behavior, thus improving their confidence. Charismatic leaders promote initiative-oriented behavior by applying self-efficacious language to influence followers to increase their belief in themselves and avoid giving up.
On the other hand, transformational leadership impacts followers by encouraging their