Differences and Similarities between Charismatic and Transformational Leadership

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Management Styles, grade: 1,0, AKAD University of Applied Sciences Leipzig, language: English, abstract: Especially in crises, companies need leaders to help them asserting themselves on the

markets and getting them through difficult times. However, not every leader always

comes to a satisfying result, since there might be a mismatch between the company¿s

situation and the attitudes and practices of its leader. As a result, the style of leadership

plays a decisive role concerning a company¿s achievements in the majority of cases.

Since the style of leadership might be the critical factor when it comes to the

success of a business, scientists have analyzed several leadership styles, which all have

different characteristics and therewith also varying effects on the respective companies.

Two of the most common styles are the charismatic and the transformational leadership.

As their names already indicate, each of these styles has its own characteristic features

that affect the surroundings in a variety of ways. But as different as these two leadership

styles might seem, they also have similarities based in their principles and attitudes.

Since the opinions among scientists partly seem to be divided concerning the

resemblance of the two styles on the one hand and the diversity on the other hand, this

paper consequently deals with the task to expose the differences and similarities

between charismatic and transformational leadership.

First, in Chapter 2 Leadership in general a short definition of leadership in

general is given, for describing the universal understanding of leadership and its

components. For being able to highlight the corresponding differences and similarities

between the two special leadership styles that have to be examined, Chapter 3

Charismatic Leadership and Chapter 4 Transformational Leadership analyze the

characteristics as well as the components of charismatic and transformational leadership

in order to get a better understanding of their basic attributes. The following Chapter 5

Differences between Charismatic and Transformational Leadership shows the main

distinctions between these two leadership styles, based on the perceptions of the

previous chapters. Chapter 6 Similarities between Charismatic and Transformational

Leadership underlines on the other side the general similarities and parallels between

the two. Chapter 7 Résumé finally summarizes the results and concludes the paper.