Experimental Determination of Nonverbal Charismatic Leader Signalling via Prerecorded Stimuli: The Effect of Medium and Virtuality

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Type and Duration

FFF-Förderprojekt, November 2023 until December 2025

Coordinator

Entrepreneurship & Leadership

Main Research

Growth and Complexity

Description

Charismatic leadership has emerged as a highly effective form of organizational coordination, in both the private and public sectors. The novel "signalling-approach" to charisma (Antonakis, Bastardoz, Jacquart, & Shamir, 2016) has helped research gain countless new, fruitful insights over the past 5 years, and resolved problems of endogeneity that arose in earlier operationalizations. Numerous recent studies have begun to link specific proximate behaviors of leaders, known as charismatic leadership tactics (CLTs), to charismatic affect, which are included in followers' charisma attributions. These behaviors include gaze, facial expressions, gestures, and various vocal characteristics. However, in the current phase of the global pandemic, many charismatic leaders are forced to use video conferencing to stay in touch with their followers. By employing an experimental methodology and highly complex statistical procedures, this project intends to measure the four key nonverbal charismatic signals with unprecedented precision.

Practical Application

This research project investigates which charismatic behaviours of leaders work best in which medium. This will enable practical recommendations to be developed for leaders in politics and business on how they can make the most of their charisma capital in different media, including specific training steps for the digital leaders of the future.

Reference to Liechtenstein

For many managers in the Principality of Liechtenstein, demonstrating digital leadership skills is of paramount importance; even more so than for their counterparts in urban centres. The reason for this is the large number of employees who regularly commute to Liechtenstein from far or near. Since coronavirus, a large percentage of such employment relationships have had a much larger "home office component". A structured and clear examination of the modulation of effective leadership is therefore essential if this has to be carried out via telecommunication instead of face-to-face contact.

Principal Investigator

Theo Émile Ravet-Brown, MSc

Project Collaborator

Dr. Michael Gau