Ruth Schmidt
The sociological concept of charisma is often traditionally attributed to Max Weber, who defined it as a distinct quality held by individuals imbued with the aura of divine authority “by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” Despite traditionally being seen as requiring a human host or conduit, some have made the case that charisma can also be manifest in non-human and non-tangible proxies such as totems, titles or offices, or technology. In today’s world, for example, machine learning technologies like ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) exhibit characteristics—e.g., the attribution of almost otherworldly powers, cultivating a belief in its abilities and potential that has grasped the popular imagination and inspired an intense followership—very similar to those that have typically been ascribed to charismatic leaders. Charisma’s reciprocal relationship to collective belief and its tendency to influence system dynamics position it firmly as a potent force within systems in the form of “charismatic authority”, which sits in contrast with both rational/legal authority encoded into laws and traditional authority gained through long-standing belief in adherence to norms. Charismatic authority’s emphasis on followership as a central, even essential, attribute—in other words, one cannot be charismatic in isolation—also centres its essence as a distinctly relational force, with some going so far to say that charisma is perhaps less characterised by a leader’s actual being or personality than in their followers’ collective perceptions and belief in their divinity. These relational and persuasive qualities also suggest that certain functions within systems might be themselves be described as charismatic, and may therefore reflected in familiar constructs used to conceptualize systems and systems change such as Donella Meadows’ leverage points and the iceberg model. Given the roles charisma and charismatic authority are currently playing within and across international geo-political activities and discourse, this exploration is not just theoretically interesting, but timely, suggesting that gaining further understanding how charismatic authority manifests within systems and how its relational qualities impact on judgment, decision-making, and behaviour position it as a system force are highly relevant directions of inquiry for systemic design.
Keywords: charisma, charismatic authority, systemic design, leverage points