The first class I developed for an online EMS Management degree program provided a lasting impression of the impact that charismatic individuals have as leaders. I started at the university in July and learned that I would be teaching “Leadership in EMS Organizations” in six weeks. I had a course number (EHS 172), a course title and a 44-word description of the course.
My departed colleague had got the course in the Fall Semester schedule but nothing else. I needed to create the course, build the online content and be ready to teach the course in five weeks. Unfortunately, as “the new faculty member” there were a lot of other responsibilities. I worked on the EHS 172 course on Tuesday nights from mid-July through Thanksgiving.
A Great Resource Needing a Detailed Outline
Michael Taigman
Michael Taigman and Stephen Dean created a great audiocassette program “Secrets of Successful EMS Leaders: How to Get Results, Advance Your Career, Advance Your Service.” It was published a year earlier and I adopted it for EHS 172. I used the titles of the 30-minute presentations as a description of the weekly lectures.
It was an effective adult learning resource as it used vivid stories and examples to make their points. There were a lot of them. I reached out to the publisher to see if there was an outline that I could use to develop the weekly lectures. The publisher said to check with the authors. I did … there were no outlines or transcripts.
Stephen Dean
I stayed about two weeks ahead of the EHS 172 students that semester as I went through each audio presentation sentence-by-sentence to create a transcript. Identified the individuals and the organizations described by Taigman and Dean.
Distilled the “need to know” information, added the “nice to know” and found enough “gee-whiz” items to keep me entertained. Declared a “gee-whiz” win finding the northern California restaurant used in one of Taigman’s examples.
In the end, I built a course that included rich descriptions of the people and organizations used by Taigman and Dean to illustrate their leadership secrets.
What Makes Charismatic Leadership Work
Many of the organizations used as examples in the series were built by unique individuals who were charismatic leaders.
In a study to determine what distinguishes charismatic leaders from others, Jung and Sosik (2006) found that charismatic leaders consistently possess traits of self-monitoring, engagement in impression management, motivation to attain social power, and motivation to attain self-actualization.
In his theory of charismatic leadership, House (1976) suggested that charismatic leaders act in unique ways that have specific charismatic effects on their followers. The personality characteristics of a charismatic leader include being dominant, having a strong desire to influence others, being self-confident, and having a strong sense of one’s own moral values.
Charismatic leaders also demonstrated 5 specific behaviors
- Strong role models for the beliefs and values they want their followers to adopt.
- Appear competent to their followers
- Articulate ideological goals that have moral overtones
- Communicate high expectations for followers and exhibit confidence in follower’s abilities to meet these expectations
- Arouse task-relevant motives in followers that may include affiliation, power, or esteem
Charismatic leadership works because it ties followers and their self-concepts to the organizational identity.
What Happens When The Charismatic Leader is Gone?
The second year of teaching EHS 172 was far less hectic, but a new issue was developing. Some of the individuals used as leadership examples were retiring, dying, or “moving on.” I would update the course materials each year, explaining that the founder of this organization was gone and what changes were relevant to the EHS 172 lecture.
I noticed that the organization would start to fade after a year, as they unsuccessfully tried to keep the spirit of their departed leader at the forefront of their mission. Some organizations remain fast-frozen at the point the charismatic leader left. A few quickly evaporated.
Some EMS specific charismatic leaders became more problematic. One was the victim of a hostile takeover from the ambulance service board of directors. Another became entangled in a scandal that included a federal investigation.
I needed to replace the audiocassette program after 4 years. Too many of the examples had changed. It was not a bad run, from the start of Taigman and Dean’s development to the end of using the audiocassette program, about 6 or 7 years transpired.
Emergency Service Takeaway
Charismatic leaders press a lot of the buttons for emergency service workers, especially as a “change agent” or advocate for an organization. They are inspiring to work for, but their impact fades when they are no longer the leader.
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Taigman, Mike (2014) Implementing Patient-Centered Quality Management. Encinitas, CA: The National Emergency Services Institute. Accessed January 10, 2020. https://www.firstwatch.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/mike-taigman-monograph-final.pdf
Jung, D., & Sosik, J. J. (2006). Who are the spellbinders? Identifying personal attributes of
charismatic leaders. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 12,12-27.
House, R. J. (1976). A 1976 theory of charismatic leadership. In J. G. Hunt & L. L. Larson (Eds.), Leadership: The cutting edge (pp. 189-207). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
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