Leadership and Management of a Cult
In this series of essays I’m calling ‘Cults as Organizations’, based upon special episodes of the podcast Cult Hackers, I use the research and theory from Organizational Psychology and apply them to a special type of organization, commonly known as a cult. In this two part essay I am looking at Management and Leadership, with a focus here on Leadership.
Within secular organizations, Management and Leadership are perceived as being complementary, but different parts of the job when you have responsibility for other people’s performance. Management is defined in lots of ways, but it boils down to the utilization of resources to achieve the organization’s goals. These resources include money, time, buildings, equipment, and people etc. and good managers organize these resources efficiently and carefully to reduce waste and increase activity that adds value to the business.
Management skills include the ability to organize things, plan and to develop and use systems effectively. So, management is all about developing and using processes and systems to identify what needs to be done, how and when. Leadership, on the other hand is about influencing people to follow your lead by creating a compelling vision of the future. Leadership skills includes the ability to motivate and influence people to behave in a way that is in line with business goals, its culture and way of doing things. So, leadership involves those soft skills that build and maintain relationships with people.
In business, organizations normally have a hierarchy which can be displayed as an organization chart, with the most authority at the top, and gradually diminishing levels of authority as we come down the chart until we get to the team members. From an organizational perspective the senior leadership team set the vision, determine the direction of the organization, set expectations about behaviour and culture, and make decisions about where the focus needs to be. Great leaders are able to explain their vision in a compelling way so that the rest of the organization understands clearly where they are going and want to go in the same direction. They are energized by the way the leader communicates. They are convinced that they are part of something good. They recognise a benefit to themselves by being part of the organization and by working towards the vision.
The effective leader can also be in a position of considerable power and therefore the potential for abuse of this power is very real. In secular organizations this can lead to illegal or unethical behaviour. Within cults and high control groups this potential can be even greater. Cult leadership is often restricted to a single individual or an elite few whose power is considerable. Unlike businesses there are often few checks and balances on the leadership’s behaviour. Whereas a business may have to answer to the shareholders and legal entities within the country it operates, cult leaders, particularly of religious groups tend to have more freedom to operate with impunity.
Within organizational psychology the concept of the charismatic or transformational leader has been studied extensively. Max Weber a highly influential German Sociologist defined charisma as:
“a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a ‘leader’”
From this we can see the religious underpinnings of this concept of charisma which is still seen today in the language — for instance we talk about charismatic churches. In the workplace we tend not to overtly refer to leaders as being superhuman but in many cults the leader is seen as having either divine qualities, of the divine nature, or at least as being the channel through which the Divine speaks or instructs. Within the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization for instance, the claim that the leadership are ‘Brothers of Christ’ and that they are the only chosen avenue through which God speaks to his people can be seen as a claim to charismatic authority.
Weber’s definition also alludes to the fact that this ‘certain quality’ can be difficult to pin down. We often say that some people have a ‘certain something’ that’s hard to describe but that demands attention and respect, “They walk into the room and everyone notices”.
The scientific approach to organizational psychology has tried to do better than this, and one of my favourites is the use of Self Concept Theory to understand exactly what charismatic leadership is all about. There has also been some work done to identify the communication style of charismatic leaders which I will also discuss.
Self Concept Theory starts from the premise that our concept of self — our understanding of who we are is actually a hierarchy of social identities that are consistent and complimentary. For instance, we may see ourselves as a caring person who is a parent, a partner, a friend, have certain political beliefs, a professional and so on. These can be described as individual identities that sit together to form a sense of a rounded self. We feel much more at ease with ourselves if these different identities are in harmony or congruent with each other. When we sense that these different identities are not congruent, we may feel a lack of authenticity.
In order to influence followers, the charismatic leader links the organization’s vision to the person’s concept of self. This can be done openly and positively, for instance, by demonstrating the real good that an organization does in helping people — perhaps a charity, or a business that provides health care — the person is able to align being identified as working for this organization with another key identity, that of being kind and helpful. A person who sees themselves as innovative and excited by new technology might feel good to be part of an organization on the cutting edge of new technological developments. The charismatic leader is able to help the person align their self-concept with organizational goals and they therefore feel that to be part of this is to be doing something that is congruent, aligns to their values or even is their calling. They might comment that:
“Being a part of this team is part of who I am, and allows me to express myself”.
It’s easy to see how cult leaders can abuse this ability. By aligning people’s natural, often admirable qualities of wanting to help people, wanting to improve the world, finding happiness, being a kind and good person, a cult leader can leverage the person’s sense of self so it becomes tied up with the group, especially if the leader is lying about what the group actually does.
As a Jehovah’s Witness my sense of self was very much tied up with being a Witness. This is a relatively easy thing to someone born into the group, especially when young, because the construction of the self is done entirely within the framework of the group or organization. It’s also one of the reasons why leaving can be so difficult.
Another way that self-concept theory relates to charismatic leaders is that individuals have a natural need to enhance and defend a sense of self-esteem. In other words, we are always on the lookout for anything that might help us feel valued and valuable. According to Shamir, House and Arthur (1993) this is based upon our sense of competence, power, achievement and the ability for us to Cope with our environment. Charismatic leaders may offer the opportunity to enhance feelings of being important, valued, feeling powerful, able to cope etc. This is very attractive in a complex, sometimes confusing world where we endure many risks to our feeling of esteem. It also means that once in the group the leader can leverage this need by being the main determinant of how much of this feeling of self-esteem we have at any time. In this way they wield power over their followers creating a sense of powerlessness and a need to cling to the only source of potential enhancement of self esteem.
According to researchers Shamir, House and Arthur charismatic leaders do this in five primary ways:
· Communicate the value of the effort
· Demonstrate high expectations of team
· Communicate the value of the goal
· Create confidence in an optimistic future
· Generate personal commitment regardless of cost
Charismatic leaders link the value of the effort to the person’s self-concept, their values and identities. I argue that whilst ethical leaders do this in a way that is healthy for the individual and is congruent with their existing sense of self, charismatic cult leaders leverage what might be initially natural self-concepts in such a way as to impose new identities onto the individual that are not in their own interests and are purely a way to progress the leader’s agenda.
Ethical leaders demonstrate high expectations and demonstrate confidence in the team. Cult leaders may also have high demands of their team, although they may or may not express confidence in their followers to reach them. Many religious groups stress concepts such as inherited sin which can have the effect of making the person feel worthless and in constant need of forgiveness from the leader.
Ethical charismatic leaders create a sense of purpose through linking past, present and future goals. Cult leaders do something similar but ‘turn it up to eleven’ by creating an all-encompassing worldview or Weltanschauung that rewrites history in a way that suits the philosophy of the leader.
Charismatic leaders create confidence in an optimistic future. Where ethical leaders paint a picture rooted in reality, cult leaders cook up fantastical futures where people can live forever in perfection or where they become like gods themselves.
Finally, charismatic leaders generate high levels of personal commitment regardless of cost. Again, it’s easy to see how this might be exploited by unscrupulous cult leaders. As a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) I was encouraged, and for the most part did commit myself and my efforts to furthering JW interests.
A further perspective is the way that charismatic people signal certain things by the way they communicate. One of the most interesting characters researching this is John Antonakis. His research suggests that charisma is values-based, symbolic and emotion laden leader-signalling — both verbal and non-verbal. He emphasises techniques such as the use of metaphor and the telling of stories as central to what makes us think an individual is a charismatic communicator. This is interesting because as we know, many religious leaders use story and metaphor heavily in their teaching.
Cult leaders may use charismatic teaching as a way to attract possible new recruits. Certainly, as a young Jehovah’s Witness I was trained to speak in a way that used metaphor and stories to bring the ideas to life. It was even part of my training at the Theocratic Ministry School — a JW programme designed to produce effective speakers. I remember ‘being a good speaker’ was the subject of much discussion at the dining room table. We would often critique the speaker of the Sunday public talk for instance, and we would comment on qualities such as animation and the use of illustrations. As I think back to this now, I believe in many ways we were judging speakers on the basis of what, I now know, as charismatic communication.
It is easy to see how many cults, especially small ones, revolve around the charismatic qualities of a single leader. However, if the group grows, then more than leadership is required. As the organisation grows, the need for management of its increasing resources becomes more important. It also needs to coordinate its efforts in whatever its key activities are. Normally these activities include things like raising funds and proselytising. For an organisation such as Jehovah’s witnesses, with its millions of members attending meetings, preaching, conducting studies, building halls and other facilities, a tremendous amount of management of resources are required. For JWs the hierarchy is clear. The governing body are the leaders, they are assisted by helpers. Branch offices in regions manage nations’ activities and these nations are split into circuits in which congregations operate. Although they are not called managers, Overseers fulfil that role at these various levels, with Elders managing the interests at congregation level. Individual Elders also operate in a leadership role within the congregation, some displaying charismatic qualities as do some circuit overseers.
In my second essay on Cult Leadership and Management I will focus on the managerial aspects of cults and explore how they control and utilize their resources.
Stephen Mather MBPsS is a Podcaster, Corporate Leadership and Management Trainer & Coach with a Bachelors Degree in Psychology and a Masters in Organizational Psychology. He was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and studies cults and high control groups.
My Podcast ‘Cult Hackers’ pod.link/1540824671
References and further reading
Shamir, B., House, R. J., & Arthur, M. B. (1993). The motivational effects of charismatic leadership: A self-concept based theory. Organization science, 4(4), 577–594.
Tur, B., Harstad, J., & Antonakis, J. (2018, July). Effect of charisma in informal leadership settings: The cases of TED and Twitter. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2018, №1, p. 13242). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
