Charisma - leadership versus holistic (synergetic) competence of the managers

Abstract

There has been the use of the term manager together with a leader – an individual with charisma. Nowadays, they are found even more within the various subjects of management and also in scientific literature. If activities of manager are called managing, activities of leader are named leadership. Publications titled “Managers and leaders” are issued in order to underline the differences between the activities of managers and humans endowed with charisma on the other side. The demands for the inclusion of the subject of leadership in the curriculum of faculties of management tend to appear in the academic field. The leadership subject is already lectured at many business schools abroad. Even though it is hard to express any restrictions on the introduced approaches in management, it is necessary to realize that features credited to leaders, which are claimed impossible to be possessed by managers (charisma - often given by higher power or mysticism, ability to rouse or to lead corps for achieving inhumane aims etc) lead to the need for introspection as to whether the manager with a developed competence is not disposed with all the attributes of the charismatic leader. However, it is often argued that managers tend to be focused on the filling of appointed tasks by humans´ leading, whereas leaders concentrate on the formation of good relations. Both of these roles are useful. The usage of concrete activities for the sake of establishing and achieving real targets depends on the degree of competence of the members of a team or group, who participate in activities for achieving specific targets as well as on the degree of competence of the manager and/or leader of the organization or team. This indicates that, managers with advanced holistic degree of competence are capable of leading people in the same way as a leader. Some questions that are raised in this paper are: Is it possible to understand the competitiveness of countries and companies as well? How is a charismatic human a subject of management perceived in scientific literature?