High-Moral Trusting Transformational Leaders, Charismatic-Transformational Leadership, and Charismatic Leadership

Leadership is an evasive phenomenon with problematic constructs; transformational leadership (TL) is defined by its results, which charismatic leadership (CL) may also achieve. Adding charisma to TL’s attributes generated the concept of charismatic-transformational leadership (C-TL). Unfortunately, C-TL mixes contrary practices: Charismatic leaders (CLrs) distrust followers’ faculties, minimize their discretion and power, distancing from followers, seek own adoration and unquestioning obedience, and use morally neutral/immoral practices, while Burns’ (1978) TL is high-moral and uses contrary practices, but the rarity of bidirectional longitudinal studies and the wide use of MLQ eclipsed C-TL’s mixing of contrary practices. Longitudinal bidirectional studies found that high-moral follower-trusting TL transformed collective communes and automatic processing plants by means of ascending mutual trust spirals and innovation-prone cultures without CL practices, suggesting discerning TL from CL and C-TL by adding the prefix H-MT (high-moral trusting). Suggestions for further study of H-MTTL are offered