What the research means by charisma

The word is doing three different jobs and only one of them is trainable.

Weber's original formulation treats charisma as a relational attribution: a quality by virtue of which a person is set apart and treated as exceptional, resting on followers' recognition and requiring validation by results. That is a sociological claim about authority, and it is not a set of behaviours you can practise.

The organisational sciences then turned it into something measured by questionnaires asking followers what they attributed to a leader, which produced a circularity problem. House's 1976 definition made it explicit: a charismatic leader is "any leader who has the above charismatic effects on followers to an unusually high degree". A measure built on effects cannot then be used to predict those effects.

The definition this course uses is the third one, and it was written specifically to escape that trap: charisma as values-based, symbolic and emotion-laden leader signalling (Antonakis, Bastardoz, Jacquart & Shamir, 2016).

Operationalised, that is twelve behaviours a trained observer can mark present or absent. Nine verbal: metaphors, similes and analogies; stories and anecdotes; contrasts; rhetorical questions; expressions of moral conviction; reflections of the group's sentiments; three-part lists; the setting of high goals; conveying confidence that they can be achieved. Three nonverbal: animated voice; facial expressions; gestures.

Coded use of those tactics roughly doubled after training, from .24 to .48, and the sample-weighted effect across two studies was D = .62 (Antonakis, Fenley & Liechti, 2011).

And in the study that matters most, because its outcome is not a rating: 106 temporary workers stuffing envelopes for a children's hospital were randomised to a fixed wage, a piece rate, or a fixed wage plus a charismatic speech. Output was 230.9 letters at baseline, 277.7 with the piece rate, and 271.2 with the speech. The speech raised output 17.4 per cent, p = .017, and the difference between the speech and paying people more was not statistically significant, p = .671 (Antonakis, d'Adda, Weber & Zehnder, 2022).

Four qualifications, and they are the reason this course is fourteen weeks rather than a workshop.

Nobody knows which of the twelve matter. The authors state it plainly: "It is not clear whether we have identified the best markers of charisma", and "it would be interesting to know which combination of markers works best". Any course ranking the tactics, or telling you the top three, is inventing it.

The doses were large. The two studies that produced measurable change used 16 hours plus one to two hours a week for twelve weeks, and 80 to 90 hours including preparation. A 45-minute virtual-reality training study produced a headline interaction at p = .10, non-significant, on the general charisma measure.

More is not better. Across samples of 306 and 287 leaders, the relationship between charismatic personality and rated effectiveness was an inverted U, fully mediated by behaviour: low-charisma leaders were rated less effective because they lacked strategic behaviour, high-charisma leaders because they lacked operational behaviour (Vergauwe, Wille, Hofmans, Kaiser & De Fruyt, 2018).

And one finding to hold uncomfortably. In two preregistered studies with 668 participants, charismatic delivery did not change how carefully people read a message, and the one significant effect ran the wrong way: contra-environmental messages were rated more convincing after charismatic delivery, β = 0.17, p = .028 (Engelbert, van Elk, Theeuwes & van Vugt, 2024). Delivery can carry a weak argument. That is a reason for the facilitator principle at the end of this course, not a reason to celebrate.