Leadership Styles
In many ways the United States offer the ideal case study for examining different leadership styles, because its particular process of election and governance presents opportunities for each leadership style to flourish. In short, while the election itself favors a charismatic leadership style, the success of the executive branch depends on a transformational leadership style, and the interactions between the executive and the legislature can only be characterized as transactional. This dynamic is partially due to the structure of the United States itself, as well as cultural and traditional standards that have developed over time. By examining how the different types of leadership are favored at different times and places in the governance of the United States, one will be able to understand not only how organizations actually encourage and shape certain leadership styles, but also how certain leadership strategies intended to generate change actually work to perpetuate the same structures and standards.
To begin it will be worthwhile to briefly outline the three main leadership styles under discussion here, before examining how they are actually expressed in the governance of the United States. The first style is called charismatic leadership, and refers to leadership oriented around a charismatic leader, one who inspires devotion, commitment, and sometimes servility from his or her subordinates. One must be careful to point out that of all the leadership styles, charismatic leadership is often the most volatile, because by definition it depends on the personality and charisma of the leader, two things which may be completely unrelated to the leader's actual intelligence, ability, or ethics. As Howell and Avolio (1992) note, "charisma can lead to blind fanaticism in the service of megalomaniacs and dangerous values, or to heroic self-sacrifice in the service of a beneficial cause" (p. 44). While ethical and unethical charismatic leaders ultimately gain and use their power in slightly different ways, they share the same underlying basis for their success; namely, a charismatic personality which allows them to gain people's trust and support, regardless of the content of their ideas or values.
Like charismatic leadership, transformational leadership depends upon the relationship between the leader and his or her subordinates, but with a slightly different focus. While charismatic leadership depends upon the personality and charisma of the leader, transformational leadership depends upon the subordinate's own identification with both the organization and the tasks at hand. The transformational leader attempts to "assist followers to grow and develop into leaders by responding to individual followers' needs, by empowering them, and aligning the goals of the individual followers" (Green & Roberts, 2012, p. 16). Thus, while a successful transformational leader will likely have to be charismatic, transformational leadership actually has less to do with the leader's particular personality and more to do with his or her ability to get followers to invest, both literally and figuratively, in the task at hand.
In contrast to charismatic and transformational leadership, the transactional leadership style eschews charisma and identification for fairly straightforward, pragmatic reinforcement, both positive and negative. Rather than attempting to win followers with an attractive personality or persona, or by wedding their individual interests to the interests of the organization, transactional leadership attempts to achieve goals by encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors through clear-cut rewards and punishments, such that the relationship between leader and follower is less dependent on personality or trust and more dependent on (relatively) quantifiable calculations regarding benefit and cost (Trottier, Wart, & Wang, 2008, p. 320). While transactional leadership might come across as somehow cold or unfeeling, in fact it can be quite beneficial, particularly in instances where individuals might have competing goals but must nevertheless work together. Furthermore, because it is less dependent on personality and charisma, transactional leadership can actually remove some of the nebulous indeterminancies of interpersonal communication that can ultimately hinder the completion of cooperative tasks.
Of course, no leader sticks to one style exclusively, because different situations call for different approaches, and furthermore, no one style has a clear advantage over any other. For example, while charismatic leadership may allow one to gain a high number of devoted followers...
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