Charisma is not leadership
The dangerous habit of thinking the loudest are the greatest
With a December election looming, we’re being asked to vote not just on policies, but on who we want to deliver those policies. Now seems like a good time to revisit the concept of leadership.
So. What kind of leader do you want for Christmas?

Charisma ≠ leadership
A few years ago I took part in a year-long fellowship designed to develop leaders who could help social sector organisations to scale. In one of our programme sessions, my coach (let’s call him Nick because, well… his name is Nick) asked me what I meant when I said ‘leader’. It’s a pretty basic question for a leadership programme, but one which opened a pandora’s box of tumbling realisations.
I’m pretty sure Nick asked me this question because he could see that I was somehow reluctant to see myself as a leader. Digging into that hesitation, I realised that when I thought of a leader I thought of a certain type of person; not just a type I couldn’t be (male, rich, extroverted, overbearing) but one I didn’t want to be. I was reluctant to call myself a leader, because I had almost never encountered anyone in a position of hierarchical power that I wanted to be like.
I know, none of this is new. ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ is hardly a new concept, but most often this is set out in terms of protected characteristics like gender, race, disability or other, usually visible, characteristics. It’s less common to see this analysed in terms of style of leadership; that’s something that should give us pause.
Great news for people called Steve
It’s understandable that we’re not yet ready to address leadership style, given how poorly we’re doing on diversity in other areas. A report from the Chartered Institute of Professional Development published earlier this year noted that “despite efforts to improve boardroom diversity, a FTSE 100 CEO is more likely to be called Steve or Stephen than to be female.” Another study noted “there are more chief executives called Steve among the UK’s 100 biggest companies than leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds.”
I’ve personally been in meetings with FTSE 250 board members where they joked about finding a ‘token woman’. A lack of pipeline is often blamed, but that argument is unconvincing if you’re running a multinational group with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of employees. Don’t tell me you can’t build a pipeline, when you have that many resources and employees in your empire.
I would argue that these issues of ‘traditional’ diversity and leadership style are not in fact discrete conversations, but rather are wrapped up together in the messy issue of how we recognise and categorise ‘leadership’. Let’s try an exercise.
First, name the person who comes into your mind when you see the word ‘leader’. Now name three behaviours or ways of relating that person demonstrates. Some examples might be decisiveness, kindness, thoughtfulness, brashness, humility, pride, bullying, misogyny, openness, secrecy, approachability, dismissiveness… you get the idea.
Now close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Now take another one. Let your mind settle on a leader you have really respected. Now name three behaviours or ways of relating that person demonstrated.
Do they match?
Of course this exercise may be steeped in my own bias as to what I think good leadership looks like, but still, I’m curious. What behaviours did you name? Who came to mind when you really though about a leader you respect? Was it someone who maybe even years later you hold as an example of a good person? Someone who could take difficult decisions when needed, but kindly? Someone who not only saw you, but also took the time to really hear you? Someone who cared for the bigger picture, and took the time to unpick life’s complexities?
This isn’t just a question of extroverts or introverts, although that’s a part of it. How would it be if the leaders we saw and valued in public life were cut from a gentler cloth, displaying a quieter, more conciliatory kind of strength than the brutish, overbearing kind we so often see around us? Maybe then it would easier to imagine leaders that also look different, or have different beliefs or sexual preferences?
Maybe?
Building new mental models
There’s a lifetime’s more to unpack here, about how and why this prevailing and prevalent model of leadership arose, or about the different types of leadership and power (I’m talking here mainly about hierarchical, which is just the tip of the power iceberg).
There’s even more to unpack about why we often refuse to recognise damaging leaders, or do something about it. Think that’s not true? I’d argue we’ve all been in toxic workplaces. Often these are poisoned by just one person. Even when everyone knows who that person is, only rarely is anything done. Sound familiar?
But workforces can be saved by just one person too, especially if that person is in a position of power. If we can understand that power at the personal, everyday level of our jobs, we can understand how this is all the more powerful at the national or international level.
And that’s really why this matters. The world is so complex and difficult, runs the argument, that we need these strong if somewhat abrasive leaders to see us through, never mind if that means they also do things we’d rather they didn’t. This isn’t just wrong, it is dangerous. Of course our leaders need certain characteristics, yes strong, yes able to make difficult decisions, but not therefore necessarily loud, and certainly not mean, or dishonest.
So vote for who you want — I’m not trying to make a party political point here — but please stop and question what ‘leader’ means to you before just accepting the view that whoever speaks the loudest, or with the most confidence, is our best chance for a safe and certain future.
