The Charismatic Situation

President Obama proves yet one more element of charismatic leadership: a sense of crisis and need for change. Perception of crisis leads followers to look for new direction and solutions and prepares them to accept change.

 

External Crisis And Turbulence

Many Charismatic revolutionary leaders achieve their status without any formal designation. In organizations, although charismatic leaders are elected or appointed, their followers recognize them as leaders before a formal appointment, the last step in their rise to power, typically during a time of crisis.

 

Altough not all researchers believe that a situation of crisis is necessary for the emergence of charismatic leadership, many suggest that sense of distress or crisis is. Therefore, charismatic leaders emerge in situations where a change and new ideological vision need to be articulated and when followers are ready to be saved or more simply moved in a different direction. As a result, followers are convinced that the charismatic leader helps followers becoming aware of how they can contribute individually.

 

Internal Organizational Conditions

• Organizational life cycle. Charismatic leaders are more likely to emerge and be effective in the early and late stages of an organization's life cycle, when either no set direction is established or change and revival are needed.

• Type of task and reward structure. Complex, challenging, and ambiguous tasks that require initiative and creativity and where external rewards cannot be clearly tied to performance can be ideal situation for charismatic leaders.

• Organizational structure and culture. Flexible and organic structures and non-bureaucratic organizational cultures are likely to encourage charismatic leadership.

 

Role Of culture

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