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Episode: The dark side of charisma
Author: TED
Duration: 00:23:46
Episode Shownotes
You may think no leader could ever be too charismatic, but the evidence is clear: a dazzling personality doesn't always drive success. In this episode, Adam investigates why an excess of charm can actually be detrimental to people and organizations. He chats with bestselling author and executive coach Liz Wiseman
and one of her clients, CEO Hazel Jackson, about how to spot baseless charisma — and why sometimes leadership calls for being a bit boring.Available transcripts for WorkLife can be found at go.ted.com/WLtranscripts
Summary
In this episode of 'WorkLife with Adam Grant', the focus is on the potential drawbacks of charisma in leadership, as discussed by Adam Grant, Liz Wiseman, and Hazel Jackson. While charisma can inspire and energize followers, excessive charm may lead to a lack of substance, fostering dependency and critical thinking stagnation among employees. They explore how charismatic leaders can inadvertently diminish team creativity and the importance of balancing charm with genuine management strategies. Moreover, they introduce practical approaches to ensure effective participation and decision-making within teams, highlighting that good management can be more vital than mere charisma.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (The dark side of charisma) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
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Hi, I'm Rich, host of The Rich Roll Podcast, where I've spent the last 11 years exploring every facet of the human condition.
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And I do that via long form, open, vulnerable, and at times emotional conversations with the best and brightest minds in health, science, academia, art, fitness, sports, entertainment, entrepreneurship, and spirituality.
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00:01:21 Speaker_06
So kids, I just saw that the word of the year for 2023 is Riz? What's a Riz?
00:01:28 Speaker_04
Well, it comes from the word charisma. Riz, charisma. And it's when somebody, it's like if somebody is good at flirting.
00:01:37 Speaker_05
Who has Riz?
00:01:40 Speaker_04
Timothy Chalamet, Tom Holland. Travis Kelce. Oh, that's a good one. Somebody interviewed him, and they were to say, does Travis Kelce have Riz? He would say, totally. Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:56 Speaker_06
At work, Riz is more than a trend. Charisma has long been a trait that we prize and that many of us try to emulate. We look to charismatic leaders for vision, for inspiration, for innovation. We admire them as role models.
00:02:11 Speaker_06
In politics, you might think of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Ronald Reagan, Barack and Michelle Obama, or John F. Kennedy.
00:02:19 Speaker_00
We'll light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
00:02:29 Speaker_06
In business, examples range from Steve Jobs to Oprah.
00:02:32 Speaker_02
Use this moment to encourage you, to embolden you, and to literally push you into the rising of your life.
00:02:43 Speaker_06
And in entertainment, you can't talk about charisma without mentioning Beyonce and Taylor Swift.
00:02:48 Speaker_10
Some of these may be songs that started out being written about my life or something that I felt at one point. But the most important thing to me and my biggest dream is that when you sing them tonight, they'll be about you and your life.
00:03:01 Speaker_10
By the way, I'll be your host this evening. My name is Taylor.
00:03:10 Speaker_06
But when charisma is in the wrong hands or gets used in the wrong way, it can turn toxic for people and for workplaces. We saw it at Theranos, WeWork, and again at FTX.
00:03:23 Speaker_06
Visionary founders use their charisma to take advantage of employees, customers, and investors. Instead of glorifying charisma, we need to recognize it as a double-edged sword and figure out how to avoid the sharper edge.
00:03:45 Speaker_06
I'm Adam Grant, and this is Work Life, my podcast with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist. I study how to make work not suck. In this show, we explore how to unlock the potential in people and workplaces.
00:03:59 Speaker_06
Today, the dark side of charismatic leadership and how to recognize and overcome it. Charisma is a Greek word that means gift.
00:04:15 Speaker_06
When we talk about charismatic leaders, we're usually describing people with a special gift to attract and charm others, to follow their visions and values.
00:04:25 Speaker_06
Yeah, charisma does come more naturally to some people than others, but research reveals that charisma ultimately rests on a set of behaviors that can be taught and learned.
00:04:35 Speaker_06
Experiments show that when people are randomly assigned to practice a series of verbal and nonverbal techniques, they're rated as more charismatic afterward.
00:04:44 Speaker_06
It's been demonstrated with managers and with students, and the behaviors are not rocket science.
00:04:51 Speaker_06
They include articulating an inspiring vision, appealing to higher principles, telling moving stories, speaking in vivid metaphors, and presenting with an animated tone, gestures, and facial expressions too.
00:05:06 Speaker_06
Charismatic leaders excel at motivating people.
00:05:09 Speaker_11
I love charismatic leaders as much as anyone. I love to listen to them. They're fun to watch perform.
00:05:16 Speaker_06
Early in her career, Liz Wiseman was one of those charismatic leaders, and it didn't go quite as she hoped.
00:05:23 Speaker_11
There was a time when I was at Oracle and I found myself leading an organization that I wasn't, I don't know, I just didn't have a lot of passion for. And I think I made up with it through a lot of charisma and in some ways kind of rousing
00:05:41 Speaker_11
conversations and speeches to the team. And I remember I got a 360 assessment and one of the anonymous comments was, we need a leader with less charisma and more substance.
00:05:54 Speaker_05
Sounds like charisma was a smokescreen.
00:05:56 Speaker_11
But it was the smokescreen. And I absolutely saw how it was not only damaging my organization, it was hindering my own development. I had to get off the charisma track.
00:06:07 Speaker_06
Charisma seems like an asset, but if you're not careful, it can become a liability. Research suggests that leaders and followers often fall into three charisma traps. The first trap is what Liz experienced. Charisma can get in the way of substance.
00:06:23 Speaker_06
It becomes a crutch. Instead of preparing, you know you can get away with winging it. You focus on the big picture and wind up neglecting all the small but important details.
00:06:35 Speaker_06
Empirically, highly charismatic leaders tend to be heavy on vision, but light on execution. And as the saying goes, vision without execution is hallucination.
00:06:46 Speaker_11
I was bringing a lot of energy and trying to motivate the organization, maybe talk big, rather than really dig into the hard issues.
00:06:57 Speaker_06
Liz decided to shift her career to some hard issues. She launched a research project to study leadership, and she wrote the book on how not to be the wrong kind of charismatic leader.
00:07:09 Speaker_06
Today, she's an executive advisor to clients who often need to rein in their charisma.
00:07:13 Speaker_11
There was a CEO of a tech company. This is a gaming company. And he just was a big thinker, big energy. He was a spokesperson, kind of the face of this organization out to the market. But he continued to play that same role inside the organization.
00:07:32 Speaker_11
And you can imagine how the programmers And the developers of all these games, how confused they were because he was constantly like, hey, we've got this new feature, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, and it's amazing.
00:07:46 Speaker_11
And the chief technology officer for this company, he told me, he said, man, a good 80% of my job is just settling the organization back down and telling people, like, don't worry, don't stop working on what you're doing.
00:08:03 Speaker_11
and shift focus there because he was whipping the organization into this frenzy of what's possible and disfocusing the organization.
00:08:13 Speaker_06
The second charisma trap is creating a cult of personality. Charisma makes it easy for people to get attached to the leader instead of the mission.
00:08:23 Speaker_06
In one study at a bank, employees who worked for charismatic leaders were more likely to identify with the bank, but also more likely to identify with their leaders personally.
00:08:33 Speaker_06
And the more they identified with their leaders, the more dependent they became on them, and the more difficult they found it to do their job without them.
00:08:42 Speaker_06
If you've run into that challenge with a charismatic leader, Liz suggests analyzing how you feel when you're around them versus when you're not.
00:08:50 Speaker_11
Like you feel this temporary infusion of energy and passion, but then you wake up the next morning and that energy level is gone. Like, you know, it ends up leaving people kind of enervated rather than energized. And it leaves people dependent.
00:09:07 Speaker_06
Given that charisma is so clearly a double-edged sword, why do we glorify it? Why do we only focus on the upsides?
00:09:14 Speaker_11
I think we're attracted to charismatic leaders in the same way that I'm attracted to cotton candy. I love cotton candy. When I'm in a stadium and the guy with the big bags of pink and yellow and blue cotton candy come around the stadium, I want that.
00:09:29 Speaker_11
I'm noshing on that. And then I start to feel bad. And these leaders, I think, create this kind of sugar high. which just isn't sustainable. In some ways, it's the junk food version of good leadership.
00:09:46 Speaker_06
Another warning sign is that people focus on pleasing the boss rather than advancing the cause. That leaves them vulnerable to manipulation. And that brings us to the third charisma trap, a lack of critical thinking.
00:10:01 Speaker_06
Evidence suggests that when leaders are charismatic, employees are less likely to challenge them. Stirring speeches from inspiring speakers rarely get the scrutiny they deserve. When we fall under their spell, we often stop thinking critically.
00:10:17 Speaker_06
It's called the awestruck effect, but I like to think of it as the dumbstruck effect.
00:10:22 Speaker_11
We can become enamored with them and their ideas to the point we stop asking questions.
00:10:28 Speaker_06
Over time, as loyalty intensifies, charismatic leaders who are unscrupulous or misguided can lead their people to abandon rationality and blindly embrace ideas they wouldn't normally support. And this doesn't just happen with employees.
00:10:43 Speaker_06
Investors are captivated, too, and are more likely to gamble on companies with charismatic leaders at the helm, especially if those firms are struggling and prospects for a turnaround are dim.
00:10:56 Speaker_06
There's even evidence that charismatic leadership increases the odds that people will lie and cheat in a twisted effort to support the leader or the organization. So how do you know if you're under the influence of the dark side of charisma?
00:11:10 Speaker_06
Pay attention to these warning signs. One, people never disagree with the leader, privately or publicly. That's a sign that they're drinking the Kool-Aid. Two, a leader is asking you to violate your values.
00:11:26 Speaker_06
Instead of standing by your principles, you're expected to conform to theirs. Three, you can't think of anything that would cause you to withdraw your support of the leader. No leader deserves unconditional love. Charisma isn't inherently good or bad.
00:11:46 Speaker_06
It's not a panacea. It's a tool. The effects depend on how we use it. So if you're a leader or manager hoping to harness charisma for good, how do you make sure there's as much substance as style? More on that after the break.
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00:13:03 Speaker_01
I wanted to be a famous actress when I was 16. And then I saw how hard it was going to be. So I decided I'd be a famous businesswoman instead. And I think charismatic leaders can sometimes take up too much space, too much oxygen.
00:13:18 Speaker_01
And I know I'm guilty of that.
00:13:20 Speaker_06
Hazel Jackson is the founder and CEO of BizGroup, a corporate training company based in Dubai. She radiates charisma. I could even feel her energy over Zoom. She tells memorable stories, she uses vivid metaphors, and she has a dynamic presence.
00:13:36 Speaker_01
I do like being on stage, and I do like lighting up other people and persuading them they can do things better than they're currently doing right now.
00:13:44 Speaker_06
For years, Hazel was the loudest and fastest voice in the room.
00:13:48 Speaker_01
And she developed a reputation for being a little chaotic, well-intended, enthusiastic, keep up or fall away. But certainly I never knew how to slow down. And I thought my job was to do most of the thinking.
00:14:06 Speaker_06
But Hazel started seeing signs that her energy might be hurting more than it was helping. She remembers coming back from a conference full of ideas to share with her team.
00:14:14 Speaker_01
And literally I will show up and throw up with all of the things that we could do to make the company better. And you just end up overwhelming everybody to the point that nobody wants to do any of the ideas that you brought back.
00:14:29 Speaker_01
And so that energy, that passion, that desire to share in the wrong context is disastrous.
00:14:37 Speaker_05
How do you tell that people are overwhelmed by it?
00:14:41 Speaker_01
Blank, kind of like rabbits in headlights. So it becomes a one-way conversation. When you get that blank stare as a leader or that silence, when you were hoping to get enthusiasm, you get bigger and they get even smaller. So what did you do about it?
00:14:57 Speaker_01
I picked up the phone and I rang Liz Wiseman.
00:15:01 Speaker_06
In her research, Liz had noticed a pattern among charismatic leaders. Many had bad habits of diminishing others.
00:15:08 Speaker_11
There were a lot of really smart, talented, capable leaders who were so focused on their own intelligence and ideas that they were underutilizing people around them. They became diminishers to the intelligence and capability of others.
00:15:25 Speaker_06
If you're a leader, Liz identified some clues that your charisma might be stifling people. You might be the idea fountain who's always on and ends up overwhelming and shutting down others.
00:15:37 Speaker_11
They love a creative environment, so they toss out ideas. And what tends to happen is that people get idea-lazy around people who are idea-rich simply because we don't have to bring it. The leader's bringing it.
00:15:49 Speaker_06
Just like Hazel. Or you might be the irrepressible optimist who seems to believe in impossible things and ends up burning people out or wasting their time. Or you could be the pace setter who turns others into spectators.
00:16:04 Speaker_11
This is a leader who gets out ahead of their team, and they're showing people what good looks like.
00:16:11 Speaker_11
But the problem is, once the leader gets out ahead of their team by, I don't know, a car length or two, people don't tend to speed up and catch up to match that. Like, people aren't with us. They're watching us.
00:16:25 Speaker_06
These misuses of charisma might sound all too familiar if you've had a boss who displays them. But when you're in charge, you may not be aware that you're diminishing others.
00:16:35 Speaker_11
Most of the diminishing that's happening in the workplace is coming from the accidental diminisher.
00:16:40 Speaker_11
Like, they're energetic, but everyone else is kind of left with that post-cotton candy, sugar rush low, versus the multiplier who ends up using their energy in a way that energizes other people.
00:16:57 Speaker_06
A multiplier. That's what Liz calls the opposite of a diminisher. A multiplier is a leader who amplifies the capabilities and contributions of others.
00:17:07 Speaker_11
They get other people thinking. They ask hard questions. They give you an intellectual puzzle that ends up energizing you.
00:17:16 Speaker_06
When Hazel read Liz's book, Multipliers, she recognized herself in it, and she wanted to change.
00:17:22 Speaker_01
I said, this is the first time I've read a book where I get it, but I need way more help than you've given me in the pages.
00:17:30 Speaker_05
Has your charisma ever made you an accidental diminisher?
00:17:34 Speaker_01
Oh, all that I do makes me an accidental diminisher. I'd hired smart people, but I wasn't allowing them to be smart. And it wasn't to do with them. It was to do with me.
00:17:46 Speaker_06
Hazel wasn't a bad leader. She had successfully run an organization for decades, but she wasn't getting the most out of her team because her charisma was getting in the way.
00:17:56 Speaker_06
So Liz started coaching Hazel to manage her charisma more effectively, to shift from diminishing to multiplying. At a recent coaching session, Hazel was preparing for her team's big annual strategy meeting.
00:18:10 Speaker_01
I don't want to look like I've abdicated responsibility. And at the same time, I don't want everybody every five minutes turning to me to look as though to say, what does Hazel think? How do I strike the balance?
00:18:23 Speaker_06
Liz's guidance on a challenge like this, or any effort to change the harmful kind of charisma into the helpful kind, follows three key practices. And these practices aren't just for those trying to rein in their charisma.
00:18:36 Speaker_06
They actually align with established principles of good management for everyone. Step one, set expectations. Explain to your team that you're making a change, especially if they're used to you dominating the room.
00:18:53 Speaker_11
In some ways, that's what your team expects. So you probably need to let your team know that you're going to break that pattern.
00:19:02 Speaker_06
In our research across multiple organizations, Konstantinos Koutiferis and I found that when leaders acknowledge their limitations out loud, it builds psychological safety for their teams to speak up.
00:19:14 Speaker_06
So Hazel admitted her shortcomings and told her team directly how she was trying to make space for them.
00:19:20 Speaker_01
I can say, hey guys, my tendency, as you know, is to get quite enthusiastic, maybe to get overenthusiastic and to share my opinion perhaps a little bit too much. And so this is the way that I'm gonna try and manage that today.
00:19:34 Speaker_06
That led to step two, shine the spotlight on the supporting cast. Liz encouraged Hazel to be willing to play the supporting actor role in meetings and let others own the leading role.
00:19:46 Speaker_01
So this example of this strategy meeting i've been doing them for thirty years in my company i can think of many examples where i left completely drained. Because i did all the thinking i guess who strategy it is.
00:20:03 Speaker_01
It's my strategy, so I have to execute it. That's the opposite of what I'm trying to create with this conversation, is I want it to be something that's co-created or even it's owned by them and I'm here to support.
00:20:24 Speaker_01
I have to learn to ask more questions, absolutely, but I don't think I have to turn down my charisma, as long as I create space for others for theirs to dial up.
00:20:36 Speaker_06
One author coined a lovely phrase to capture it, inverse charisma. Instead of being the sole source of charisma, the goal is to evoke charisma in others.
00:20:47 Speaker_06
By asking thoughtful questions and paying close attention to the responses, you stimulate new insights and energy in your team.
00:20:55 Speaker_11
like really emphatic points in a meeting. And there are places where it's important for a leader to play big. And one of those is at the beginning.
00:21:04 Speaker_11
And another one of those is at the end of the meeting and, you know, set the context and framing and then to hold back, which is, Hey, you know what? I'm going to kind of kick us off with some thinking. I'm going to wrap us up.
00:21:17 Speaker_11
I'm probably going to be stoking the conversation with a few questions, but other than that, I'm going to sort of sit on my hands.
00:21:23 Speaker_06
It's called strategic silence. Deliberately being quiet when speaking up might be counterproductive.
00:21:31 Speaker_01
I felt I needed to solve the puzzle and give everybody the path. And so what I needed to do was not complete the puzzle, actually write a really big question, let them go down their own routes of coming to the solution of the path.
00:21:50 Speaker_06
Psychologists have long found that if people don't have a say in the goal or the path, they're less likely to buy into it. Participation builds commitment.
00:22:00 Speaker_06
Involving people in shaping the path is especially important when the stakes are high and the leader doesn't have all the expertise.
00:22:08 Speaker_01
As leaders, we do have a lot of the answers because we've been thinking about the problem longer. We have to give people the chance and the time and the opportunity to think about it in the same way.
00:22:20 Speaker_01
And they probably have the answers, even better answers than me.
00:22:24 Speaker_06
Liz has a practical way for leaders to avoid hogging the spotlight. She calls it the poker chip challenge. If you're the leader, you're allotted a specific number of chips in a meeting. Each chip represents a comment or contribution.
00:22:41 Speaker_06
You know you have limited airtime, so instead of dominating the conversation, you start becoming more selective in your input. That doesn't mean Hazel is going to stop contributing ideas, but she has learned to filter them more.
00:22:58 Speaker_06
That brings us to step three. Don't be a fountain of more ideas than you can execute. Research shows that effective leaders are careful to balance imagination with implementation. That means maintaining a healthy ratio of dreaming to doing.
00:23:14 Speaker_01
What I learned was to either create a holding tank and say, OK, I'm going to drip feed ideas at certain times, or I would label, this is me in idea fountain mode. I am now going to share a whole load of ideas. I'm not expecting you to do them all.
00:23:33 Speaker_01
I'm not expecting you to like them all. I want you to listen and share where you think we should explore further. Because sometimes, as the boss or the founder, everyone assumes that every idea needs to be actioned.
00:23:47 Speaker_01
And all you're actually doing is sharing.
00:23:50 Speaker_05
I feel like you're coining a whole vocabulary for this. If you have a tendency to show up and throw up, you need to build a holding tank and drip feed your ideas. I mean, that's a book chapter waiting to be written right there.
00:24:06 Speaker_06
It's easy to stereotype charisma as an essential ingredient for leadership. But I've come to believe that the most underrated leadership skill might be management. A bold, inspiring vision goes nowhere without the essential, unflashy stuff.
00:24:23 Speaker_06
Setting clear expectations, involving people in decisions, showing care. To become a great leader, you don't have to start with charisma. You can start by being a good manager. This episode was produced by Courtney Guarino and Constanza Gallardo.
00:24:50 Speaker_06
Our team includes Daphne Chen, Dan O'Donnell, Greta Cohen, Grace Rubenstein, Daniela Balarezo, Benben Chang, Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar, and Roxanne Highlash. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin.
00:25:01 Speaker_06
Our show is mixed by Ben Shano, original music by Hans Dale Sue and Alison Leighton Brown. Ad stories produced by Pineapple Street Studios. For their research, appreciation to the following scholars and their colleagues.
00:25:13 Speaker_06
Jake Honger on Charisma, John Antonakis on Teaching Charisma, the late Boaz Shamir on Dependency, Rob Kaiser and Ellen Miron Spector on Balancing Vision and Execution.
00:25:23 Speaker_06
Yanhan Zhu on suppressing follower voice, Jochen Menges on the awestruck effect, David Effelsberg on unethical behavior, Rakesh Khurana on searching for a corporate savior, Avi Kluger on listening, Wendy Moffat on inverse charisma, Michael Park on strategic silence, the late Victor Vroom on participation, and Tim Judge and Ron Piccolo on transformational and transactional leadership.
00:25:46 Speaker_06
And thanks to Brenna Lynn Small for sharing her Taylor Swift video. If I wanted to have more Riz, what should I do?
00:25:55 Speaker_04
More charisma. Well, you'd have to be younger. Yeah, you're way too old.
00:25:59 Speaker_10
I can't do that. Okay, what else?
00:26:01 Speaker_04
You're way too old. You should practice something, Mom.