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According to Bass, transformational leadership can be defined based on the impact that it has on followers. Transformational leaders, Bass suggested, garner trust, respect and admiration from their followers. Charismatic Leadership The sociologist Max Weber defined charismatic authority as “resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him.
Charismatic authority is one of three forms of authority laid out in Weeper’s tripartite classification of authority, the other two being traditional authority and rational-legal authority. Analysis Gandhi is most famous for his straight ideology which entailed a nonviolent strategy of leading. Straight is the instrument of silent and nonviolent protest against certain unjust overt or covert actions by the authority. He reached his goals in South Africa and India without violence but with iron determination.
Mohammad Gandhi was an advocate of a) independence for India from Great Britain (b) Hindu-Muslim unity (c) the end of Intractability. As a preacher and practitioner of nonviolence, best described as passive resistance through soul force instead of active resistance through physical force, Gandhi became world famous and earned the name of Mahatma which is Sanskrit for great soul. In his straight teachings, Gandhi explained that the nonviolence practice yields to an aggressor but does not cooperate. This strategy assumes that even the cruelest opponent will ultimately melt by the sight of his cruelty.
Rightfully, minted out the limited applicability of this strategy by concluding, “Straight requires an opponent with a moral conscience (the British in India, for example); it will not work against unprincipled totalitarian regimes??Hitter’s Germany or Stalin’. Gandhi was described further as “a profound visionary looking for solutions to problems faced by mankind all over the world” and as “a practical politician who tried to translate many of his visions into action”. What can be derived from Gandhi as a leader?
There was an indisputable relationship between Gandhi, his followers, and the tuition in South Africa and India at the time he took on his leadership position. The oppression of Indian workers and the consequential dissatisfaction of the Indian people made it easier for Gandhi to become the people’s representative. Gandhi exhibited transformational leadership by arousing and elevating the “hopes and demands of millions of Indians whose life and personality were enhanced in the process”. Mahatma Gandhi as a charismatic leader and explain six steps with an example of his leadership in Indian’s non-violent freedom movement.
Step 1: Identification This step takes place from the composite mixture of the three factors mentioned above. It is a stage where the aspiring leader is on the social horizon; the followers are in distress and are looking forward to someone who will identify himself with their problems. The social situation is increasingly getting worsened in this stage. This is the time when the leader establishes him as a potential leader but the followers, by large, remain passive Step 2: Activity Arousal In this step the leader arouses the follower to become the part of the change.
Followers who were passive admirers of the leader till the earlier phase become active supporters of the leader and the cause for which he is identifying himself. The longer this stage lasts the longer is a span of the charismatic leadership. In Sandhog’s case this step lasted from 1920 till 1930. Step 3: Commitment Commitment stage in the charismatic leadership is without any doubt the most interesting step in the process. This step takes the charismatic leadership at the peak and at the same time this is the phase when the charismatic leader starts losing his charisma.
This step starts by demonstrating the extreme commitment of the leader towards the goal and same commitment from the followers towards the leader. Gandhi can be seen as a fusion with definitive inclination towards socialized type of leadership. For Gandhi the commitment stage can be said to have lasted from 1930 to 1935. Step 4: Disenchantment This phase is quite unavoidable and sometimes even intentional on the part of the leader. Many times social structure brings the disenchantment stage.
Sometimes, because the leaders themselves know that they are not mortal, they try to bring the ratification in the leadership. In Sandhog’s case disenchantment started from 1933 and lasted till 1938 in which stage he lost many of his old followers like Scubas Candor Bose . Step 5: Diversification This step is a logical follower of the earlier step of disenchantment. Disenchantment starts because of ratification and it leads to the diversification and formalization of the leadership. The leadership style becomes more and more like bureaucratic leadership.
This phase comes in Sandhog’s leadership during 1938-1942. This is the period when he made it clear that Charlatan Nehru will be his political heir. Step 6: Alienation This is a process of disintegration of the three factors mentioned in the beginning which had come together in phase one. In this step, due to the formalization and bureaucratically of the leadership, charismatic leadership becomes increasingly redundant. Years 1942-1948 show this phase in Sandhog’s leadership. Though Gandhi remained popular and worshiped leader of India till his assassination, his charisma faded gradually in his last years.