Charismatic Leadership: The Dark Side

Note: The content here seems potentially harmful.   It strikes me as a sort of Munchausen-by-proxy in which someone causes injury in order to generate the need to be a healer.   I have no doubt that some people seek to become leaders by creating a crisis where none existed so that they can play the hero, but this is harmful and unethical.  It may be possible to salvage some techniques and use them in a more constructive and ethical manner.  Or at the very least, to recognize these tactics when they are being used.

Generally speaking, people do not wish to be led – they wish to follow their own desires, and tend to react negatively to anyone who proposes to meddle in their affairs – even when what they are doing is ineffective, pointless, and even damaging.   On the other hand, they will yield to a leader when they see the error of their ways and feel helpless: they cannot devise or execute a plan on their own, and need someone to guide them.

So the first step in taking control is to recognize the elements of a situation that have the potential to trigger fear.  It may or may not be obvious to the people involved that their current behavior and situation will result in a crisis.

Pause to consider that the perception of crisis is subjective.  A person must perceive the potential for events to cause suffering, believe in the capability and likelihood of these events to have negative consequences, and perceive the suffering as something that cannot be endured or accepted.    People fear different things because they do not perceive the same threats, do not see the same threat as credible, and have different expectations about the potential outcome and their own ability to sustain damage.

It follows, then, that the leader’s next step is to convince his potential followers of the impending crisis: to get them to recognize and believe in a threat, and to be afraid of the potential consequences of failing to take action.   If these factors are not present in the minds of followers, and if he cannot create them, then he has no power over them – and there is no foundation for leadership.

Creating fear in others is a straightforward process: influence them to perceive the potential danger in the situation by creating a plausible scenario of how a crisis will arise.   The greater and sooner the damage, the stronger the reaction – the more they will feel panic and mentally freeze, waiting for you to help them avoid the crisis.

After you have instilled them with fear and panic, propose a plan that will avoid or mitigate the damage that they now believe is inevitable if they do not take action.   As an added bonus, fear is paralytic.  If they are in a panic, they will be unable to think – which means they cannot formulate a plan of their own, nor will they be prone to argue and resist your proposal.

An important factor is communizing the fears of many people.   If you mean to dominate only one person, then speaking to that person’s individual fears is sufficient.   However, if you mean to dominate a group of people, you must get them all to fear the same thing and accept the same proposal, which can be difficult to do.

A common fear has the potential to unite many individuals and reinforce your leadership.   Charismatic leaders do not merely create loyalty of followers to themselves, but loyalty to a group of like-minded individuals who all have the same fear and who all support the same solution.   They identify with this cause, and feel a sense of group identity – loyalty to the leader being only one of the factors that gives them a sense of common interest.  Once the group is communized, it can be managed like a herd, driven by panic and fear to move in the same direction under the command of their leader.

Moreover, the group identity becomes self-reinforcing.  A single follower believes that if he fails to follow orders, he will suffer harm.  A group of followers believes that if anyone fails to follow orders, they will suffer harm - so they exert social pressure on other members of the group to toe the line, to obey the leader.  On an individual, the belief is that your failure to be obedient will cause me harm, so it is in my interest to ensure that you remain obedient - and this attitude and the precipitating behavior helps the leader to maintain absolute control.

Some of the most powerful leaders in history have used this formula to attract large groups of fanatical followers for extended periods of time - but I cannot recall a single instance where this did not end in a tragedy of epic proportions.