Charismatic Leadership Can be Learned and Measured
Communication Monographs, December 2010
Not available online
According to a study co-authored by University of Tennessee, Knoxville, communications studies professor Kenneth Levine, until recently no one was able to describe and measure charisma in a systematic way. The study, “Measuring Transformational and Charismatic Leadership: Why Isn’t Charisma Measured?,” appears in the December 2010 issue of the academic journal Communication Monographs, published by the National Communication Association.
Levine says the large amount of academic literature on charismatic leadership never explored what it means to actually communicate charismatically. He and his co-authors, Robert Muenchen of the UT Statistical Consulting Center and Abby Brooks of Georgia Southern University, surveyed university students and asked them to define charisma and discuss how they thought charismatic leaders communicate.
Everyone has a leadership capacity in something, the researchers found. But if you want people to perceive you as charismatic, you need to display attributes such as empathy, good listening skills, eye contact, enthusiasm, self-confidence and skillful speaking. These are the attributes social scientists can measure to more fully understand charismatic communication.
The most surprising result was that the students felt that charisma was not just something you are born with, but something you can learn. The researchers say future research will include building on these concepts to better measure the level of charisma of individual leaders.
