Leadership online: In video communication, charisma is what matters most

Leaders need to persuade to motivate and inspire people, and that applies even more to video than any other digital channel. This is the result of a study by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). They examined the impact that charismatic leadership tactics have on employee performance in text, audio, and video communication channels. They focused on mobile working and the gig economy, in which jobs are flexibly assigned to freelancers via online platforms. The results of the study were published in The Leadership Quarterly.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people have been working entirely or partially from home or in mobile forms of work. At the same time, the so-called gig economy is growing. This involves the flexible allocation of short-time work to freelancers or part-time workers in the low-wage sector via online platforms. Both trends are accelerating the digitization of work. However, compared to face-to-face conversations between people in the same place, communication through digital channels offers fewer opportunities to motivate people and show charisma. This presents managers with new challenges. How charismatic leadership tactics (CLTs) and the choice of communication channel (text, audio or video) affect employee performance is the subject of a study by Petra Nieken, Professor of Human Resource Management at the Institute for Management of KIT.

Charismatic leadership tactics can be learned and observed objectively

A charismatic leadership style can be learned; Researchers speak of charismatic leadership tactics, which include verbal, paraverbal, and nonverbal devices such as metaphors, anecdotes, contrasts, rhetorical questions, tone of voice, and gestures. CLTs can be observed and measured objectively. They can be selectively changed in randomized controlled trials.

“Managers can use the entire CLT range in personal discussions. Digital communication reduces the possibilities of signaling charisma,” says Nieken. “Depending on the communication channel, visual and/or acoustic cues may be missing. The question is whether people’s performance suffers or whether they adjust their expectations to the chosen channel.”

In the first part of their study, Nieken conducted a field test with text, audio and video communication channels, in which a task description was presented neutrally in one case and using as many CLTs as possible in the other case. In the neutral case, video messages resulted in lower performance than audio and text messages. In contrast, in the CLT case, there were no significant performance differences.

“The results show a positive correlation between video communication and charismatic communication, the charismatic video led to a better performance than the neutral video,” explains Nieken. “So we can see that the most important thing for managers is to present a consistent impression when using the video channel.”

Traditional charisma questionnaires do not predict employee performance

In the second part of her study, Nieken had the various cases evaluated using classic questionnaires such as the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and compared the results with those from the first part. The charisma found in the questionnaires correlated with the use of CLTs but not with staff performance. “Conventional questionnaires like the MLQ are not suitable for predicting how people will behave in mobile work situations, in the home office or in the gig economy,” concludes Nieken.