Charismatic Leadership

Introduction We have evidence that charismatic leaders behave differently than non-charismatic leaders. Furthermore we know that charismatic leaders can generate social changes with ease, and that the performance of charismatic leaders and their subordinates is at a higher level when compared to that of non-charismatic. At this moment in time very little about the processes by which leaders and followers interact to effect social changes (Meindl, 1992). This paper will answer the questions I think need to be addressed when try to understand charismatic leaders: Why do charismatic leaders act and behave a certain way? Why do the people who follow react in predictable ways to these behaviors? How does the leader follower relationship and interaction generate social change? In this paper, we dissect certain behaviors that begin to explain why and how the charismatic leader-follower interaction can generate change in the workplace or in any social atmosphere for that matter. I will examine the speeches of some of out nation’s greatest and most charismatic presidents, the CEO’s of our country. The analyzing of these speeches will show that charismatic leaders use consistent communication techniques to break down, move, and then change the norms of their followers.

Charismatic leaders have the ability to break down, move, and alter the mindset of their followers with ease; it’s very easy for them and also comes very natural. Take for example President Bush senior: In his time of presidency he was able to change the minds of several congress men to enter into the Persian Gulf. The best explanation for what he did can be best described by the technique that Kurt Lewin developed in 1951. This theory explains that change comes by first frame breaking, moving, and then realigning. This is what we will use to examine the behaviors of President Bush and how we will ultimately be able to see how this can be applied to understand the behaviors of charismatic leaders. To effect a change in social values, a charismatic leader must first attempt to reduce the power of the value individuals place on their own established norms (Lewin, 1951). This is what is described above as the frame-breaking or unfreezing phase. If the flower has a current conception the leader has to create a more neutral state. Leaders can do this by convincing society that conventional thinking is not a way to move forward, but rather a way of staying still. For example, before President Bush could successfully press for intervention into the Persian Gulf in 1991, he had to convince congress and the masses that conventional wisdom, which interfered with his vision, was wrong. He had to persuade them that it would not be another Vietnam War, that it would not be another military defeat, that it would not be an embarrassment even in victory (Vietnam), and that the U.S. was not intervening for the sole reason of protecting its interest in crude oil. The president recognized that in order to get what he wanted he had to discredit people's ties to their norms. The second approach to frame breaking would be convincing the public and congress that non-innovation is not healthy for the country. Put in context again with President Bush’s push into the Persian Gulf also know as operation Desert Storm you can see how this works. The President said that the U.S. as committed by treaty, precedence, and moral obligation to not sit by and watch an ally fall to an aggressor. That is, not intervening equaled non-innovation, according to the President's arguments, was not an option for the United States. This is a frame breaking technique at its best, he tells the public and the country that sitting and watching another country invade an ally is against innovation. People reacted to this, putting ourselves in that time period we would have to, do you want to be stale and not innovate? Or do you want to move forward into the future? This struck a core in American society; a society that from its very inception has been very involved in progress. After frame breaking you must build a new stable and compatible value structure, leaders must eventually move personal values from a neutral to a more active state, and social values from opposing to conforming with the desired innovation (Lewin's, 1951) This is the second phase of Lewins’s model. An efficient way to start this shift is to first negate the popular social norm that contradict the one that you want to achieve. Parallel, followers' values must move from non-desire or non-fear to an active state a desire or a fear. So frame moving will include a double negation: essentially you turn non-desire for convention into desire for non-convention, and non-fear of innovation into fear of non-innovation. Looking at the example, having discredited the normal thinking about U.S. military intervention, President Bush made an attempt to shift non-fear of innovation to fear of non-innovation by labeling Saddam Hussein as a neo-Hitler who must be stopped before he reached full power. Denying or inverting both personal and social values reduces potential resistance from the masses because the resulting values remain compatible with the ones they had before. The resulting values, however, now encompass the personal motivator’s desire and fear which are needed to move collective values to a new level (Lewin, 1951). Finally, the third step of the change process involves re-freezing new and compatible values (Lewin, 1951). If the leader is succeeds, the second step results in personal motivators that a leader can now channel them in the direction her or she see fit. Through substituting a compatible positive image for the now negative social norm, leaders can now motivate their followers. The third step in Lewin’s model substitutes innovation for non-convention, this leads to the desire for innovation. In the second scenario, it shows that substituting positive values for both personal and social negative values (from fear/non-innovation to desire/innovation). Back to the President Bush example, the administration needed more than discrediting conventional views of U.S. military intervention and creating fear of Saddam Hussein. A new vision (innovation), the "new world order," as some called it back them had to replace the discredited convention. This final change phase will likely meet with minimal resistance as it represents filling an empty space rather than opposing an already created position. The success of this final phase of value transformation critically hinges on a leader's ability to provide for followers a sense of positive identity with the change.

Conclusion

To this very date the qualities and motives that define charismatic leadership have been very hard to understand. Perhaps they will never be completely understood, and it seems to be elusive for the majorities. In the past and now in more modern times researchers have tried to identify the personality and characteristics that predispose individuals to be effective leaders that can create change. The focus seems to be on leader’s motives and personality characteristics as well as leader’s behaviors and what those effects do to their followers. The results still cannot showcase what the psychological processes of charismatic leaders have such extraordinary effects on followers and organizations. This paper simply shows why dissecting how leaders speak and how they can change norms using the theory that Kurt Lewin developed. The theoretical framework emphasizes frame breaking for leaders and frame alignment for followers. It combines these into a process model of how the leader/follower interactions can result in social change. The results I believe suggest that charismatic leaders use a predictable, consistent set of speech techniques to break down, move, and re-align certain beliefs of their followers and masses. Looking closely at the president we used in our example President George Bush senior whom effectively employed techniques of negation with a purpose in mind. The president used these techniques while he was in the middle of his term in office because of the time of the crisis there is no way to determine if this strategy was used deliberately or not,. To explain why these techniques are effective and how they work, it is necessary to discuss them within the larger context of all social interaction. References

Lewin, K. (1951) Field theory in social science; selected theoretical papers. D. Cartwright (ed.). New York: Harper & Row.

Meindl, James R., and Sanford B. Ehrlich. "The Romance of Leadership and the Evaluation of Organizational Performance." The Academy of Management Journal 30.1 (1992): 91-109. Web. 10th Nov. 2013.