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We are indebted to Daniel K. Brass and three anonymous reviewers for their guidance during the editorial process and to a host of colleagues for their feedback, conversations, and encouragement over the course of this project. Send correspondence to Cindy Emrich, Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University, 1310 Krannert Building, West Lafayette, IN 47907-131 0; e-mail: cindy~mgmt.purdue.edu.We analyzed two sets of U.S. presidents' speeches to determine whether their propensities to convey images in words were linked to perceptions of their charisma and greatness. As predicted, presidents who engaged in more image-based rhetoric in their inaugural addresses were rated higher in charisma (Study 1). Presidents who engaged in more image-based rhetoric in speeches that historians considered their most significant ones were rated higher in both charisma and greatness (Study 2). Together, these findings suggest that the successful articulation and enactment of a leader's vision may rest on his or her ability to paint followers a verbal picture of what can be accomplished with their help.sThe ability to articulate a compelling vision of a bright future is the sine qua non of charisma and greatness, two key outcomes for leaders. Charisma has been described as a magical ability (Etzioni, 1961), a certain personality characteristic (Weber, 1947), and a powerful aura (Willner, 1984). Though descriptions of charisma abound, there is consensus that charismatic leaders inspire followers "to perform above and beyond the call of duty" (House, Spangler, and Woycke, 1991: 364) by appealing to their emotions and enduring motives rather than by controlling their access to material rewards and resources. Greatness has been described as successful performance (Murray and Blessing, 1983, 1994) and general prestige or reputation (Maranell, 1970). In practice, it has been operationalized quite simply as "performance in office, omitting everything done before or after" (Bailey, 1966: 24). Much is known about charisma and greatness. Less is known, however, about how leaders articulate a vision that is sufficiently compelling to evoke attributions of charisma and greatness among their followers.House and Shamir (1993) examined eight theories of charismatic, visionary, and transformational leadership with the goal of distilling them into a single, overarching theory of charisma. Eleven behavioral dimensions emerged from this examination, but only one-visionary behavior-was represented in all eight theories. Visionary behavior involves the articulation of "an ideological goal ... that emphasizes fundamental values such as beauty, order, honesty, dignity, and human rights" (House and Shamir, 1993: 97). The skillful use of rhetoric is believed to be critical to the charismatic leader's visionary behavior (

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In this study, participants perceived the same job candidate to display more leader qualities when his potential group was a troubled one rather than a tranquil one. They described this person more favorably as a leader and falsely recognized him as having performed more leadership-consistent and fewer leadership-irrelevant behaviors in a test of recognition memory. Using Jacoby’s process-dissociation procedure, the author discovered that unconscious (rather than conscious) memory processes completely mediated this context effect—a mediation indicative of either postconscious or goal-dependent context effects in leadership perception. Previous studies have demonstrated that context affects perceptions of incumbent leaders. This study demonstrates that context also can affect perceptions of potential leaders, with a troubled context magnifying those qualities that are consistent with individuals’ implicit theories and romanticized conceptions of leadership.