Great (transformational) leadership=charisma+vision

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to develop measures of charisma and vision and to examine their influences on follower-level outcomes in four countries, namely, India, Singapore, the UK, and the USA. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The authors conducted a series of three studies. In the first study, conducted in Singapore, an open-ended questionnaire was used to gather statements of charisma and vision for developing charismatic and visionary categories or themes. The second study, also conducted in Singapore, involved constructing items to represent various categories or themes of charisma and vision, collecting data, and performing factor analyses to develop dimensions of charisma and vision. The third study validated the measures of charisma and vision developed in the first two studies across national samples drawn from two Asian (India and Singapore) and two Western countries (the UK and the USA), and examined the relationships of charismatic and visionary dimensions with motivation, satisfaction, cooperation, and performance of employees. Findings ‐ One major dimension of charisma, social sensitivity, and two key dimensions of vision, daring/change-seeking and expertise/knowledge, universally emerged across all four countries. Social sensitivity showed highly significant positive relationships with motivation and satisfaction of followers across all four countries. The daring/change-seeking leadership was highly positively related to motivation, satisfaction, cooperation, and performance of employees in the UK and the USA only. Expertise and knowledge showed relatively stronger relationship with follower outcomes in India and Singapore than in the UK and the USA. Originality/value ‐ The study identifies charisma and vision as two basic components of transformational leadership, develops new measures of these constructs, and examines their relationships with follower-level outcomes.