Charismatic leadership has been proven to deliver strong outcomes in terms of adoption of change and business performance.
But what, precisely, is charisma?
And can we develop it, or do we just hang our heads and rue our genes?
In 1977, Robert J House defined charisma as ‘leaders who by force of their personal abilities are capable of having profound and extraordinary effects on their followers.’ Who wouldn’t want some of that? However, his definition just makes us want more charisma. It doesn’t give us any clues about how to acquire it.
Enter Professor John Antonakis and colleagues from the University of Lausanne. They have conducted a string of insightful studies about charismatic leadership.
As a first step, they identified twelve Charismatic Leadership Traits (or CLTs) which are frequently demonstrated by charismatic leaders. They comprise nine verbal CLTs and three (you guessed it) non-verbal CLTs.
Verbal CLTs
- Metaphors
- Stories and anecdotes
- Moral conviction
- Share sentiments of the collective
- Set high expectations for self and others (one to work on, Boris)
- Communicate confidence
- Use contrasts (e.g. contrasting the organisation’s past and present achievements)
- Use lists (especially three-part lists)
- Pose rhetorical questions
Non-verbal CLTs: charismatic leaders convey emotion using:
- Body language
- Facial expression
- Vocal expression
So now at least we have a better idea of what leadership charisma is made of. Antonakis and colleagues subsequently evaluated utilisation of these CLTs in political nomination speeches and showed that they significantly predicted the outcomes of the US Presidential elections. Simply put, CLTs = votes.
But that still doesn’t tell us if charisma is something we can develop. Fortunately, the team at Lausanne conducted another study.
Step 1: an audience evaluated executive presentations.
Step 2: the executives received CLT training.
Step 3: They evaluated a second round of executive presentations.
They found that the executives almost doubled their use of the CLTs in the second round of presentations. And consequently, ratings of their leadership competence increased by 60%.
The conclusion is clear: charismatic leadership can be developed.
A simple tip to bolster charismatic leadership:
When creating or co-creating speeches and presentations for my clients, I use a simple checklist which includes the nine verbal CLTs. We also routinely work on the non-verbal CLTs during rehearsals and recordings.