Using Charismatic Leadership Towards Reducing Criminogenic Behavior Among Youth

Recommended APA 7th Edition Citation:

Grinev, L. (2023, April). Using charismatic leadership towards reducing criminogenic behavior among youth. In Articles. WellnessToday180. https://wellnesstoday180.net/blog#articles

            Withstanding, social work case management and therapeutic services improvements are needed to reduce criminogenic behavior among youth offenders further. In turn, juvenile recidivism rates are expected to decrease by implementing effective strategies to improve communication channels, provisional resources, and stakeholder participation. By evaluating evidence-based strategies aligned with charismatic leadership, social workers could implement these strategies to have direct and mediated effects on participant outcomes on reducing reoffending by aligning or manipulating perceptions, thus realities. For example, social workers in the Close to Home agency currently use structured activities with program evaluations to determine the effectiveness of pre-defined client goals (New York State, n.d.). Ergo, embedding charismatic leadership strategies within existing organizational structures will allow social workers to expand interviewing and personality surveying of youth offenders to increase juvenile participation in active change initiatives to minimize future criminogenic tendencies.

Historical Background

Charisma is a divine personality characteristic not seen in ordinary people (Bhide, 2008). As such, charisma is interpreted to be an attribute associated with exceptional personal qualities (Bhide, 2008). In the scope of social work, as explained in Bhide (2008), charisma allows social workers to be attentive to the desires and needs of the client while utilizing available resources and stakeholder involvement. Furthermore, when social workers exhibit characteristics of charisma, these social workers can reduce crises arising from inner inadequacies by positively manipulating the intersectionality between a client’s collective psyche and emotion (Bhide, 2008).

Since charisma has historically been known to improve interpersonal relationships and skills among people and workers effectively, the phenomenon was coined by Max Weber in the early 1930s as charismatic authority (Bhide, 2008). Weber introduced charismatic authority to acts where an individual promotes humanitarian treatment of others and the self beyond standard exceptions (Bhide, 2008). Later, charismatic leadership evolved from charismatic authority in the 1990s (Bhide, 2008). Consequently, charismatic leadership retained some features of charismatic authority but expanded concepts on transforming followers’ intents and interests and social systems (Shamir et al., 1993). More contemporarily, charismatic leadership has positive impacts on boosting participants’ confidence, self-awareness, and well-being to combat discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other forms of social injustice through associated professional implementation strategies that are concerned with emotional communication sensitivities and skills, encouragement, ethical diversity, environmental trust, and goal and need obtainment (Bhide, 2008). Altogether, charismatic leadership reflects six essential components (i.e., communication, compassion, confidence, creativity, determination, and vision) that allow social workers to leverage participant and stakeholder participation and resources to benefit the participant toward case management or treatment successes (Bhide, 2008).

The Existing Evidence-Based Approach

            Ferone et al. (2014) examined the effectiveness of local leaders’ responsiveness toward minimizing juvenile delinquency offenses. Through their investigation, Ferone et al. found that existing Close to Home strategies were characteristic of having a structured decision-making process to make dispositional recommendations after inferences made by social workers after interviewing delinquent juveniles using the youth level of service (YLS) inventory, an evidence-based assessment. These decision-making processes manifested three out-of-home placement alternatives (Ferone et al., 2014). Such alternatives have allowed delinquent youth to be homed in residential facilities rather than in local or state custody to increase familial support (Ferone et al., 2014). Close to Home's case management and therapeutic services have contributed to a 55% decrease in juvenile placements and a drop in felony arrests (Ferone et al., 2014).

However, Ferone et al. (2014) expressed concerns about the increased cost per youth of providing adequate homing and therapeutic services through Close to Home against available funding and resources. Also, the conditions of and the transitions to these out-of-home placement alternatives were remarked as a concern by Ferone et al. According to Ferone et al., these factors contribute to the high chances of juvenile reoffending. Subsequently, a call to action is outlined by Ferone et al. that requires other strategies to be considered in order to expand alternative juvenile opportunities to improve better and transform existing structures to further negate juvenile reoffending chances with appropriate case management, housing, and therapeutic services offered by Close to Home. 

Considering Charismatic Leadership Strategies

            Evidence from a literature review has affirmed that charismatic leadership strategies toward the juvenile population are effective in practice. Towler (2005) conducted a study to understand youth-adult preferences on parental psychological control. Self-report measures proved that parents displaying charismatic leadership attributes were favored by Towler. Moreover, children frequently subjected to charismatic leadership modalities exhibited higher creativity, motivation, and self-conceptualization levels (Ponsombut et al., 2014). Other observations made by Ponsombut et al. (2014) explained that children under charismatic leadership influences also display higher levels of communication skills, cooperation, empowerment, information criticism capacity, referential power, self-confidence, and vision. General benefits of the effects of charismatic leadership were noted more recently by Parry et al. (2019), and similar benefits of charismatic leadership strategies have since been viewed in social work occupations, as seen in Gonzalez (2018) and Hanslik (2018).

Recommended Methodologies

            Understanding the effects and implications of embedding charismatic leadership strategies into existing organizational structures could consider other quantitative methods or introduce qualitative methods that enable researchers to gain testimony from clinicians or social workers and studied youth to determine experimental effectiveness. On the one hand, an alternative quantitative method could compare interviewing strategies and outcomes of an evidence-based assessment provided by the Missouri Youth Services Institute (MYSI) to the YLS. Alternating, changing, or combining quantitative interviewing modes could provide social workers with more juvenile delinquent worldviews that could increase case management and therapeutic outcomes.

On the other hand, qualitative research in the scope of phenomenology would allow social workers to more adequately reveal a juvenile delinquent’s cultural and social origins (Hu, 2015) and multiple realities that have influenced their meaning-making processes (Killam, 2015). Such qualitative approaches could complement charismatic leadership with cognitive-behavioral therapeutic (CBT) interviewing strategies outlined in Stewart (2018) to decrease juvenile delinquent recidivism rates. Doci et al. (2015) and Klebe et al. (2021) correlated that effective leadership strategies, such as charismatic leadership, are effective in accelerating and obtaining health-related goals, which is contingent on juveniles' well-being in the scope of social work on reducing recidivism. Regardless, qualitative methods can provide social workers with categorical, patterned, or thematic analyses to inform proper decision-making further to meet the goals and needs of at-risk youth (Killam, 2015). Indeed, Bongkushtit (1974) presented that observations of mental concepts towards abilities, capacities, habits, liabilities, propensities, and habits will disclose mental concepts and functioning to improve performances under Ryle’s concept of the mind.

Theoretical Support

Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory powerfully aligns with charismatic leadership strategies in inquiring about participant responses. Similar to charismatic leadership strategies, LMX theory seeks to gain participants’ perceptual insights (i.e., metaperceptions) and self-projections (i.e., realities) influenced by power dependencies in role exchanges (Yuan et al., 2022). Bolton (2005) similarly remarked that disclosures and interviewing would produce communicative, dramaturgical, normatively regulated, and teleological actions. In other words, charismatic leadership and LMX theories focus on instilling deep leadership commitments known as self-projection biases from influential social factors, including leaders’ job responsibilities and organizational status (Yuan et al., 2022). Hence, charismatic leadership using postulates from LMX theory becomes an instrumental strategy for social workers to moderate resources, raise goal awareness, and sustain favorable client relationships to achieve desired outcomes (Yuan et al., 2022).

Further support for the effectiveness of charismatic leadership strategies in case management and social work roles can be inferred from Iyer and Achia (2021) that found that leaders can increase members’ levels of collective hope by appropriately mitigating collective action and emotional responses. Goal achievement from leader-member interactions, such as those of social workers with clients, requires leaders to embrace sympathetic strategies (Iyer & Achia, 2021). Per Bolton (2005), these achievements would be most reflective of the four actions presented by theory of communication action. Since charismatic leadership is characterized by accelerating communications and compassion, appraisal theories advocate that charismatic leadership can increase member participation toward collective change (Iyer & Achia, 2021). Thus, social workers utilizing charismatic leadership strategies are expected to have better case management results with clients.

Likewise, Arminio et al. (2022) focused on emotional drives within social justice activism and advocacy but in the scope of substantive theory. Meaning-making of everyday experiences is pertinent to substantive theory, much like charismatic leadership strategies, to navigate difficult situations and systematic powers that bring about marginalization (Arminio et al., 2022). As determination and vision are two facets of charismatic leadership, substantive theory can sustain that charismatic leadership in social work can bring about social change in systematic realms, such as the juvenile justice system. Entirely, social workers are expected to be a vehicle of social change for individuals and communities under the core value of the importance of human relationships and challenge social injustice through ethical principles of social service (National Association of Social Workers [NASW], 2021). Therefore, by implementing charismatic leadership strategies in social workers’ case management concerning criminogenic youth, exploring youths' viewpoints of marginalization, privileges, and systematic powers will assist in optimizing treatment successes (Arminio et al., 2022)

Conclusion

Thoroughly, it can be adequately proposed that charismatic leadership strategies can increase social workers’ treatment successes with criminogenic youth in reducing recidivism by creating close sympathetic relationships with youth while increasing stakeholder and youth participation and resources, which Bhide (2008) similarly suggested. Still, more insights are needed to understand the barriers and facilitators that may impact the effectiveness of charismatic leadership strategies for social workers. Investigations should determine which leadership strategies are currently active and if it is feasible to transition to strategies parallel to charismatic leadership appropriately. Feasibility may depend on demographic and socioeconomic variables as it is unknown whether charismatic leadership is effective among all populations of criminogenic youth. Additionally, charismatic leadership may only mitigate some influencing criminogenic factors rather than desired broad, holistic efforts. Nevertheless, charismatic leadership strategies are expected to be effective towards reducing juvenile recidivism rates following proper implementations and training as charismatic leadership strategies have significant utilization within social work applications as supporting evidence-based feedback systems and interventions, such as CBT interviewing, provides effectiveness with criminogenic youth on reactions and success rates.

References

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