Episode 6: Who Leads You?

Описание: Episode 6: Healthy charismatic leadership involves being willing to learn from others, instituting checks and balances, maintaining a sense of humor and a sense of humility, being responsive to complaints and corrections, and treating people well and respectfully.

When the charisma of a person or group is healthy, people are drawn to it and invigorated by it.

When it’s not, their choices get tangled up with the leader’s need for total devotion and control. Breaking away from toxic charismatic authority is hard work, but it can be done, and people can learn how to identify – and support – healthy authority and healthy groups.

SIGNS OF HEALTHY CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY

 The leader or group has behavioral checks and balances in place.
 The leader has healthy empathy and a realistic self-image.
 Members are treated as valuable individuals; they are not disciples, servants, or pawns.
 The leader has a sense of humor and a humane leadership style.
 Members retain their identities, family relationships and responsibilities, and private lives.
 The leader or group values and promotes members’ ideas and beliefs.
 Members have the right to question, doubt, and challenge the charismatic authority.
 The leader or group deals responsibly with conflicts and challenges; there is no belittling, punishing, or shunning.
 Members have the freedom to come and go as they please.
 The leader or group considers and promotes other ideas, other beliefs, and other groups.
 The leader encourages critical thinking and questions.
 The group is open to the outside world and to nonbelievers.

People who are under the sway of a charismatic authority figure are being manipulated, certainly. But in most cases, they are also finding a sense of purpose, meaning, and pride as they work diligently to demonstrate their perfect devotion. These are worthy things; however, when they’re directed at the bottomless pit of an unhealthy person’s needs, perfect devotion only serves to trap followers in a web.

Unhealthy charismatic leadership treats others as means to an end and requires unquestioning devotion to the leader’s (or group’s) beliefs, desires, and demands.

SIGNS OF UNHEALTHY CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY

• The leader or group has an inflated sense of importance and connection to greatness.
• Members must idealize and revere the leader and the ranking leadership.
• The leader claims special powers, knowledge, and lineage – or may claim to be divine.
• Members are often publicly shamed or berated for not living up to the ideals of the leader or group, or for not meeting the needs and/or demands of the leader or group perfectly enough.
• The leader’s needs, ideas, and desires are overriding; they delegitimize and erase the needs, ideas, and desires of group members.
• Some members are granted access to an inner circle with special privileges and special access, and often, these people can break the group’s rules without punishment.
• The leader can do or say almost anything without repercussions; there are no checks or balances on his or her behavior.
• The leader has complete control over the group’s belief system, rules, and norms – none of which can be questioned.
• The leader belittles all other belief systems and any other leaders who may be functioning in the leader’s realm (e.g., other New Age leaders if the leader has a New Age philosophy).
• Members must display complete obedience and devotion to the leader or the group.
• The leader takes credit for anything good that happens, and blames members for anything bad that happens.
• The leader treats questions and challenges as threats, and he or she may see enemies everywhere – inside and outside the cult.
• Members who challenge the authority of the leader or leadership group are punished, publicly humiliated, shunned, or kicked out, and may be portrayed as enemy traitors.

This video mentions the book Missing the Solstice by Karla McLaren: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6TRWRBZ

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