Topic: Leadership, Motivation
Publication: The Leadership Quarterly
Article: Speech imagery and perceptions of charisma: The mediating role of positive affect
Blogger: James Grand
The qualities that define charismatic leaders
such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry Ford, and Winston Churchill have
intrigued organizational scholars for years.
Research such as that pursued by Naidoo and Lord in the latest volume of
The Leadership Quarterly (2008, Vol.
19, Iss. 3) ensures that such efforts will continue. In their work, Naidoo and Lord sought to
examine the effects of speech imagery and individuals’ emotional states on
perceptions of charisma and overall leadership effectiveness. Speech imagery can broadly be defined as content
that “paints a picture” and arouses emotional responses in listeners. For example, take the following high imagery
quote delivered by Theodore Roosevelt:
"Far better it is to
dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
Stirring, no? That’s exactly what Naidoo and Lord found—an orator delivering a speech was seen as
more charismatic and a better leader
when the content was spoken using high versus low imagery words.
Furthermore, greater speech imagery created stronger positive emotions in listeners,
which significantly contributed to ratings of charisma and leadership. Lastly, listeners’
ratings of leader charisma decreased
during descriptions of a negative event (i.e., a problem facing the audience),
but later increased during
descriptions of the speaker’s positive vision (i.e., a potential solution).
So, the moral of the story—a picture’s worth a
thousand words, even when you paint it with your mouth. And if you’re looking for just the right
words to spark that vision, check out Martindale’s (1975) Regressive Imagery
Dictionary or Friendly et al.’s (1982) Toronto Word Pool for a list of words
that have been empirically rated for imagery and concreteness to help you win
over that next crowd (or country, as the case may be).
Friendly, M.,
Franklin, P. E., Hoffman, D., & Rubin, D. C. (1982). The Toronto word pool:
Norms for imagery, concreteness, orthographic variables, and grammatical usage
for 1,080 words. Behavior, Research
Methods, and Instrumentation, 14, 375−399.
Martindale, C.
(1975). Romantic progression: The
psychology of literary history. Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
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