Transformational Leadership

Graphics courtesy of The Scientific WorldOpens in new window The leadership frameworks discussed in the previous literatureOpens in new window are all useful in different situations, however, in today’s world of work, transformational leadership is often the most effective style to use.

Transformational leaders have integrity and high emotional intelligence. They motivate people with a shared vision of the future, and they communicate well. They are also typically self-aware, authentic, empathetic, and humble.

Transformational leaders inspire their team members because they expect the best from everyone, and they hold themselves accountable for their actions.

They set clear goals, and they have good conflict-resolution. This leads to high productivity and engagement.

Whereas transactional leaders try to get people to do exceptional things—significantly higher levels of intrinsic motivation, trust, commitment, and loyalty—that can produce significant change and results.

Transactional leadership is laissez-faire leadership, in which a leader fully delegates responsibility to others. This type of leader has little involvement with followers, almost no control over the task, and little interest in making decisions unless forced into it.

Transformational leaders are influenced by two factors:

1. Individual characteristics. The personalities of such leaders tend to be more extroverted, agreeable, proactive, and open to change than nontransformational leaders. (Female leaders tend to use transformational more than male leaders do.)
2. Organizational culture. Adaptive, flexible organizational cultures are more likely than are rigid, bureaucratic cultures to foster transformational leadership.

The reality is that leadership is not a “one size fits all” thing; often, and as noted earlierOpens in new window, leaders must adapt their approach to fit the situation. This is why it is useful to develop a thorough understanding of other leadership frameworks and styles; after all, the more approaches a leader is familiar with, the more flexible they can be.

The Most Effective Leaders Are both Transactional and Transformational

It is important for leaders and those responsible for developing leaders to understand that transactional leadership is an essential prerequisite to effective leadership, and the best leaders learn to display both transactional and transformational styles of leadership to some degree.

Research suggests that transformational leadership leads to superior performance when it augments, or adds to, transactional leadership.

Four Key Behaviors of Transformational Leaders

It has been suggested that transactional leaders are dispassionate, while transformational leaders excite passion, inspiring and empowering people to look beyond their own interests to the interests of the organization.

They appeal to their followers’ self-concepts—their values and personal identity—to create changes in their goals, values, needs, beliefs, and aspirations.

Transformational leaders have four key kinds of behavior that affect followers. The four kinds of behavior are:

1. Inspirational motivation: Inspirational motivation promotes commitment to a shared vision of the future.
2. Idealized influence: Idealized influence is behavior that gains the admiration, trust, and respect of followers.
3. Individualized consideration: Individualized consideration creates mutual respect or trust and a genuine concern for the needs and desires of others.
4. Intellectual stimulation: Intellectual stimulation encourages people to view problems from a different perspective and to think about innovative and alternative ways to address them.

Now let’s take a closer look at each of these.

1.     Inspirational Motivation

Transformational leaders have charisma, a form of interpersonal attraction that inspires acceptance and support. At one time, charismatic leadershipOpens in new window—which was assumed to be an individual inspirational and motivational characteristic for particular leaders, much like other trait-theoryOpens in new window characteristics—was viewed as a category of its own, but now it is considered part of transformational leadership.

A leader with charisma, then, is more able to persuade and influence employees and to make others feel comfortable and at ease than someone without charisma.

A transformational leader inspires motivation by offering an agenda, a grand design, an ultimate goal—in short, a visionOpens in new window for the organization. It has been suggested that inspirational motivation is a critical skill for effective leadership.

2.     Idealized Influence

Transformational leaders are able to inspire trust in their followers because they express their integrity by being consistent, single-minded, and persistent in pursuit of their goal. Not only do they display high ethical standards and act as models of desirable values, they are also able to make sacrifices for the greater good.

3.    Individualized Consideration

Transformational leaders don’t just express concern for direct reports’ well-being. They actively encourage them to grow and to excel by giving them challenging work, more responsibility, empowerment, and one-on-one monitoring.

4.     Intellectual Stimulation

Transformational leaders are gifted at communicating the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats so that direct reports develop a new sense of purpose.

Employees become less apt to view problems as insurmountable or “that’s not my department.” Instead they learn to view them as personal challenges that they are responsible for overcoming, to question the status quo, and to seek creative solutions.