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Can you introduce us to the concept of the two different leadership styles, charismatic and systems leadership. How are they different?

Charismatic leaders can be very magnetic, and people will inevitably be drawn to that magnetism and the individual. It’s a wonderful thing to have magnetism but it depends on how it gets utilised because for many, many years a lot of what we understood about leadership really was about charisma. The focus was on, can this leader generate trust? Can they take people on a journey? Will people be inspired by them? It’s certainly very useful up to a point, but it doesn’t necessarily galvanise the organisation as a whole, unlike systems leadership. A charismatic leader will make you feel great about them, and a systems leader will make you feel great about the organisation. 

I remember interviewing a CEO that was moving into coaching, and I asked him, how are your relationships? Did you form rock-solid trusting connections with all of your executive direct reports? He said, yes, that was something he was very proud of, and it was a core achievement. He built the right team. It is important, of course, for the CEO to build the right team and have a trusted team around them. It’s essential. But then I asked another question: how were their relationships with each other? And that’s when he went quiet and said, “I really didn’t tackle that adequately. There were fractures and there were silos across the organisation.“ 

That’s a signal of a missed opportunity to galvanise the organisation, in creating a connected, cohesive presence where it’s less about the individual leader and it’s more about:

1. 1. The leadership team who are collectively guiding the organisation,
   2. The potential that sits in the organisation itself regardless of who happens to be leading right now.

That last piece is the biggest challenge for charismatic leaders because there’s not a lot of space for ego in systems leadership because it’s all about what the organisation needs from its leaders (not the other way around), regardless of who they are. 

 

What are the strengths and the limitations of these different types of leadership? Is there tension between them?

There could understandably be tension between them. What is the strength of charismatic leadership? It can inspire for a certain period of time. The weakness is it can disappoint because leaders are human. A charismatic leader might be less inclined to show their humanity, their vulnerability, their shortcomings, whereas a systems leader will broadcast their shortcomings in order to protect the system from those deficiencies. A charismatic leader is almost consciously or unconsciously operating from a pedestal. So, when a charismatic leader makes a mistake, it can be quite brutal for them to recover from that. 

Whereas a systems leader is making a different promise. They say “I’m learning about this organisation and what it needs from us to be a success”. They will never claim that this learning process reaches a full stop. Instead, they will be continuously curious. So when mistakes occur for a system-oriented leader, it’s just more learning. It’s another opportunity to appreciate the dynamics across the system at a more comprehensive level.  

Let’s say a systems-oriented CEO is talking to a charismatic executive leader. There could be quite some tension there because the CEO is going to make it more about that leader’s place in the system and what it means to entirely fulfil what’s needed from their role, whereas the charismatic executive wants to hear more about them and wants to understandably orient towards individual growth, which is important, but from a systems perspective, it’s less important than their relationship with the system itself. 

 

Could the two be integrated or is it one or the other?

I don’t think it’s ever one or the other because we are all evolving. Generally speaking, for those of us early in the evolution of our human leadership journey, it’s likely that you’re going to oscillate a bit because the ego is always ready to step in, particularly under pressure. 

It starts with the awareness though, to notice and to re-approach a system’s stance and presence as a leader. Come back to “it’s not actually about me. It’s about the whole. It’s about all of us and this entire ecosystem. It’s about our customers, it’s about our people, it’s about our shareholders, it’s about our stakeholders, it’s about our partners, it’s about our industry, it’s about our community, it’s about our society, it’s about our planet.”  

 

Which is the most sustainable framework and why?

The most sustainable framework is systems leadership because it’s always going to draw you back into a state of expanded intelligence and awareness. It’s complex, and if we have any degree of habitual myopia and we default to putting our blinkers on, there’s a price to pay for missing out on the bigger picture. Now, it’s not all about the bigger picture, of course you do need to maintain your ability to zoom in also – to appreciate the individuals and the detail, yet we have had years and years of that kind of leadership development. That’s why I am highlighting the need to be able to zoom out right now because that’s had far less attention than other analytical approaches.