Transformational Leadership: Do Great Leaders Share the Same Traits?
“The transforming leader looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower.”
-James MacGregor Burns
Scholars over the years have studied personality traits that you are born with and develop in childhood the traits of a great leader. In recent times, scholars have shifted to study core competencies, which sets of behaviors and processes leaders adapt and can modify. Companies are investing a great deal of time and money to understand ways to access peoples core competencies and provide leadership development for their future leaders.
Not only are companies investing in this area for future leaders but so are the University’s. The quote from James MacGregor Burns’s, the book entitled Leadership served as my textbook for my semester-long course on transformational leadership. Throughout the semester, students were to choose a leader, past or present, and draw conclusions about his or her leadership style and present it to the class. The leaders discussed, more often than not, were historical figures and rarely did a student choose recent or current leaders. Towards the end of the semester, I started wondering why the interest in past leaders? It’s obvious that leadership plays a major role in an organization’s success or failure in today’s business world. So how is it that transformational qualities are relevant for leaders today, especially in the workplace?
The Four Basics of Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is based off of a mutual relationship between a leader and his or her employees. Four main components the transformational leader strives to achieve are:
- Idealized Influence-a leader’s behavior becomes a role model for employees
- Inspirational Motivation-includes a leader’s sense of team spirit, enthusiasm, passion, and optimism; leaders motivate employees to dedicate themselves to the organization’s vision
- Intellectual Stimulation-a leader must question old assumptions, reframe problems, support creativity and innovation, and look at new ways to make decisions
- Individualized Consideration-a leader pays attention to individual’s needs, seeks to develop followers by mentoring and coaching employees to reach their full potential
These four components are essential when it comes to transforming an organization and empowering employees. The transformational leader is quick to adapt to changes within an organization. Along with this, he or she dedicates time and effort into translating the organization’s vision and mission to each employee, to motivate, inspire, and unify the organization as a whole.
Studies Show
Transformational Leaders are sought after in the business world today more than ever. Studies have shown that managers and staff that take on a transformational leadership approach have a positive influence on the overall success and performance of an organization. A study from Boyle & Associates Inc stresses the importance of transformational leaders during “periods of significant change, adversity, competition, and economic instability.” Given our nation’s economic state, it is imperative for leaders of organizations to empower employees and teams, lead by example, and approach business strategies, decision making methods, and problem-solving routines from different perspectives.
The Transactional Leader
The counter to a transformational leader is the transactional leader. Transactional leaders believe that people are motivated by reward/punishment and feel that employees should be happy to cede all authority and responsibility to a leader. The strictly transactional leader is unable embody qualities like empowerment and development of employees, whereas the transformational leader will realize certain situations call for a transactional style of leadership.
The main difference between the two styles, however, is that the relationship between transactional leaders and employees is centered on goals and rewards, such as increases in pay and moving up in an organization. For strictly transactional companies, the overall outcome is simply a “prescription for mediocrity.” (Boyle & Associates, Inc)
It’s true that leaders of the past give us insight as to what works and doesn’t work for leadership styles. More importantly, though, I think we need to look at what constitutes successful leaders today. By studying transformational leaders and their successful organizations, we understand how to transform employees and organizations in order to continue looking forward to drive success.
This is part 1 of 2. Check back soon for part 2.
Great short explanation of the most effective style of leadership that empowers leaders in teams. I look forward to the next article.
Seems to be that the right leadership style is the one that gets the organization to its goals. Today we’re focused on transformational leadership because so many of us are at the higher levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If we were further down the hierarchy, we might be much more responsive to incentives and rewards. This stuff is not simple — I really like HL Menchen — “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is obvious, simple — and wrong.”
Very nice article. At Innovision Global, we designed our Certified Leadership Practitioner (CLP) program to help grow transformational leaders. We know it is not just a passing fad, it is the future and the only way to do business. It is necessary to be able to lead people into the cooperative & collaborative business model that is the future of business.
And women must be part of the equation in bringing in this new way of doing business because they simply do not have enough seats at the corporate boardroom table and we need their keen insight, compassion, creativity and the strength only women can provide. For too long, women have been shut out of the higher levels of business only to the detriment of our future. NOW is the time to give them their rightful place, at the top where we can all share equally in the future of this planet.
I liked the article. Transformational leadership requires the leader to be transforming and evolving as well.
at Vistage International we offer coaching and mentoring for leaders to experience the transformation themselves, so they can focus on being transformational vs. spending most of the time dealing with transactional leadership.
I have personally experienced the outstanding results delivered by teams when they feel the transformational leadership.
We all know that leadership is the projection personality and character, from my experience good leaders are generally good role models who lead by example and bad leaders do the opposite and are self absorbed. Transformational is a great form of leadership, however, a good mix of both transformational and transactional leadership will get the best out of people, its all well and good that Leaders display display the 4 Basic leadership behaviours but there has to be more to it, I personally like being rewarded or provided with incentives, and if have done wrong then, yes, I should be punished as this will help me not make the same mistake twice, hence assist with my learning and development in the work place.
Different management styles are best suited to different situations. When it comes to front-line supervisors of minimum-wage employees, for example, a transactional leadership style can be more effective. Shift supervisors at a fast food restaurant will be much more effective if they are concerned with ensuring all of the various stations run smoothly, rather than spending their time thinking up better ways to serve hamburgers. On the other hand, CEOs or sales managers can be more effective if they are transformational leaders. Executive managers need the ability to design and communicate grand strategic missions, passing the missions down to transactional leaders for implementation of the details.