Why Charisma is Bad for Leaders
Charismatic leadership is a leadership trait the world should wipe from every list of required traits for leadership that exists. Charisma is shiny, it’s attractive, it’s flashy, and it’s often lipstick on a pig.
The primary thing charisma does for those in leadership positions is mask bad leadership.
Peter Drucker, one of the most prolific business thinkers in history says it best:
Charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change. This is what happened to Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, and it is a commonplace in the study of ancient history that only Alexander the Great’s early death saved him from becoming an ineffectual failure.