Kugler 1

Abilene Hope

English 2010

Instructor Jackie Burr

16 May 2019

Unquantifiable Leadership

There are not any findings or professional studies that prove that charisma is ineffective

and irrelevant to strong leadership. However, Sally A. Carless discusses in her essay ‘Discussing

the Discriminant Validity of Transformational Leader Behavior as Measured by the MLQ’ her

thoughts on why previous studies concerning the precise effects of charisma are irrelevant. The

MLQ (Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire) is supposed to measure different elements of

charisma as found in managers of businesses. The study it was created for is usually accepted as

one of the best studies to date. Carless argues in her comparison of the statistics found within the

alternate study, that many of the results of the MLQ are too similar and therefore overlapping.

She offers a personal insight in her discussion section saying that she believes that “the actual

charismatic behaviours are different from the intellectual stimulation and consideration

behaviours” (357). This variance between perception of traits and actual behaviors distinguishes

it’s self in the data and observations which were made. If a person were to score proficient in one

category of the MLQ-- they were far more likely to score proficient in other sections as well.

Subordinates were not able to distinguish charismatic factors such as consideration and

intellectual stimulation within an actual individual regardless of whether or not they understood

the definitive differences between the descriptive words. Carless concludes at the end of her

work that the MLQ is useless for assessing multiple qualities relating to transformational
 Kugler 2

leadership due to overlap of results, and that there is no way to separate each factor from the next

and create a list of developable and teachable qualities.

I actually do really understand and actually agree with a lot of things that Carless has to

say. Because charisma is not normally a scientific occurrence, the only data that can be

recovered comes from unreliable and inconsistent sources such as polls and questionnaires.

There are some things that I disagree with her on too. Maybe it is just because her essay is

extremely formal, but some of her writing leads me to believe that she derives from her study

that training leaders in certain aspects of charisma is ineffective and useless. I actually see it as

the exact opposite. If her work is true, and employees cannot distinguish charismatic qualities

(they give higher scores in other categories if the test subject scores well anywhere else), then

that is all the more reason to teach them. The reason why charisma is important is because it

allows you to build trusting relationships with other people. The fact that their cognition of why

this trust exists is not perfectly quantifiable is irrelevant in my opinion.