Charismatic leaders move masses, inspire millions, and do not shy away from guiding and leading in times of crisis and change. Research on charismatic leaders mainly centers around their effectiveness in organizational settings. Indeed, substantial evidence on the economic value of charismatic leadership has been accumulated during the last decade. What has remained largely unexplored are the cognitive mechanisms that underlie the effectiveness of charismatic leaders. During my PhD project, we explored this question using various methods (e.g., eye-tracking, cognitive tasks, EEG). Our findings illustrate how charismatic leaders are capable of altering people’s attentional processes. In a postdoc research project, we build on this work and explore whether charismatic leaders narrow workers’ attention to specific information. The proposed mechanism could explain why charismatic leaders are so effective in increasing performance at group and individual levels. During the talk, I briefly summarize the findings from my PhD project and lay out the research plans for the postdoc project.

Lara Engelbert