Leadership

Is Charisma Overrated?

By Jessica Stillman

Updated on: July 8, 2009 / 9:39 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

The Find: You don't have to be "a jump-on-the-desk-and-shout-at-the-troops type of person" to be an excellent leader, argues one long-time manager.
The Source: John Hollon writing on The Business of Management blog.

The Takeaway: When Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach for America, recently told the New York Times that when she goes out to find new teachers, what she's looking for is "not necessarily charisma," the comment caught Hollon's eye. Why? Her dismissal of charisma flies in the face of what we usually think it takes to make a great educator â€" and a great leader. We've all had that one magnetic and inspiring teacher who influenced the trajectory of our life through sheer force of personality. And we often expect the same forceful presence from our business leaders. But Hollon finds this expectation misguided and liable to obscure what really underpins successful leadership. He argues,

Leadership is about consistently motivating your workforce to push harder, to stretch farther and to think smarter about how to better accomplish their goal.... Sometimes, great leaders CAN be charismatic (Southwest Airlines' legendary Herb Kelleher is one of those guys), but I find that to be the exception, not the rule. In fact, I worked for one company that really gravitated to people who had charisma and presence.

It hired a lot of executives and managers based on these qualities, but usually, what they ended up getting were people who were glib and good at talking to a crowd, but terribly shallow, shortsighted and unaccomplished when it came to actually leading anyone.

Hollon ends with a call for those looking for leaders to get past charisma, but he seems a little pessimistic about the prospects of this actually happening and it's easy to see why: it's far easier to determine whether someone is a slick performer before hiring them (interviews are quite good at this, at least) than it is to dig deeply into their experience and qualifications to see how they've actually performed in the past and are likely to perform in the future.

The Question: In your experience, is charisma often associated with quality leaders or glib self-promoters?

(Image of congressman giving a charismatic smile by DavidAll06, CC 2.0)