Differences and Similarities between Charismatic and Transformational Leadership

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.