The Leadership Skills : Transactional Leadership

In followership there needs to be a leader that inspires and bonds followers together as a unit moving in one direction. Today’s leader has to be more than someone that was placed in a position of authority, a person with a title and a higher salary level. A real leader is found when the behaviors and attitudes of their

Over the past twenty years, an abundant body of researches have been done to review transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Burn (1978) was the first person to introduce and conceptualize the concept of transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Bass (1985) based on Burn’s concept and deepen his notion with modifications, which stated that one of the best frameworks of leadership is transformational or transactional, but not opposing to each other. Followed by Bass and Avolio (1994), they provide the idea of these two leaderships and generalize them into the development of global economic world. Bass and Avolio (1997) also suggested that there was no need to view transformational and

Organizational leadership builds on traditional theories in order to form new and exciting directions. Transactional leadership is a traditional theory, which has been used as a platform to understand leadership and further develop techniques for higher organizational performance. The three components of transactional leadership help shape and define the style, but are not always strictly adhered to. There are many advantages and disadvantages of transformational leadership. Knowing how and when to apply this style will prove useful for most successful organizational leaders. President Dwight Eisenhower was a good example of how transactional leadership could be used successfully.

Their research focused on leader and follower relationships within a strategic planning framework. Charismatic leaders are unlikely to emerge without a compelling need for organizational change. The leader conducts a SWOT assessment through which they identify performance gaps. They identify their vision of the desired future state and develop a plan to reach it. Working from a relationship based on trust and previous pertinent experience, the leader convinces the followers of the disadvantages of the current state, the advantages of the desired state and the efficacy of the plan to reach it. Personal commitment, confidence in themselves and the followers, articulating that the identified risk(s) are real, but acceptable, and passion for the effort motivate the followers towards the goal. Messaging and repetition becomes critical. Since strategic goals generally look three to five years into the future, building and maintaining the leader follower relationship is paramount to reaching the desired state (Sage Chp 7). Although not specifically stated, it seems intuitive given the type of leadership activities required and the length of time during which the leader and follower would interact that leaders could not maintain a lie throughout, especially at the surface. Anything other than authenticity and transparency would eventually be

“We all have competencies. They are the sum of our experiences and the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes we have acquired during our lifetime” (Pickett, 1998, p. 103). A successful organization will have a set of competencies defined. Having competencies identified outlines the framework of standards that a company and employees should follow. There is a tendency to list a large number of competencies when creating the standards for an organization. Companies should focus on five to seven key core competencies that are needed in order to be successful. The core competencies should encompass the growth of the company, staff, and public perception.

The ability and strength of an individual to achieve goals by supervising processes, guiding initiatives and employees is defined as Leadership skills. Valuable leadership skills include taking thoughtful decisions, allocation of resources, and the ability to delegate, inspire and communicate effectively. Other leadership traits include honesty, confidence, commitment and creativity. Leadership competencies can be used to effectively select, develop and promote leaders in an organization .The difference between Leadership Skill and leadership competency can explained as the required level of efficiency to perform a task assigned is known as skill whereas the quality to accomplish the same is called as competency. When creating leadership competencies certain factors are considered such as business strategies and future trends. To drive the use of competencies in selecting and developing leaders HR practitioners should use the business strategies. To effectively build a unique set of skills for the organization 's leaders, the firm will sustain competitive advantage. The role of a project manager has always been my interest. The position which I have always desired is a role of project manager.

As a growing debate, the question at hand is whether great leaders are born with specific leadership traits, or if one can be taught certain traits over time. According to (Wikipedia.com) the approach of listing leadership qualities, often termed "trait theory of leadership", assumes certain traits or characteristics will tend to lead to effective leadership. I believe that leadership traits such as honest, competent, initiative, inspiring, hardworking, intelligent, and the ability to lead the masses, are some of the leadership traits one should possess. Within this paper, I will examine the overall concept of leadership traits, while observing the traits that were, or can be associated with successful leaders.

According to the leader-member exchange theory the relationship between leader and the member develops over a period of time.

Out of all the different leadership theories I learned about this semester I really feel that I best relate to transformational leadership and authentic leadership theories. During the development of my personal theory I found that these theories tended to list many similar traits, and values that aligned with my own. Additionally, both authentic and transformative theories place a significant amount of emphasis on the relationship between the leader and her/his followers. The success and influence of a leader comes not from herself but from her ability to create and invoke strong relationships with their followers. Given my character strengths of sociability, integrity, assertiveness, and my drive to connect to others on a deeper level, I value both the authentic and the transformative leadership theories.

The trait leadership theory focuses on the individual leader’s personal characteristics as the basis of its investigations. It is one of the earliest leadership theories upon whose tenets many researches on leadership have been done. Although it is not very coherent, its heuristic nature has contributed to its significance in leadership research. Zaccaro and Klimoski (2002) define traits of reference to leadership as the stable personality characteristics, which result in a consistent leadership performance pattern, given different scenarios and groups. They include individual personalities, temperament, rationale, prowess, as well as cognitive abilities. Initially, the theory explored both physical and psychological characteristics that tell apart leaders from non-leaders.

While reading through Module 3, Self-Improvement, the concept I found more important is the Transactional Leadership behaviors, we learn the different types of leadership styles that are effective developing subordinates. I believe if you properly use the Transactional Leadership Behavior it will be effective to guide and motivate subordinates by establishing goals, clarifying roles and procedures. While taking the Electronic Assessment of Leadership Behaviors (e-SALB), I noticed I scored low in the management style. I believe this is due to some of my supervisors that in the past lack this leadership behavior, as at times I was not aware when I was not meeting standards due to the lack of feedback and when given the form was told to just

The Trait Approach was the 1st systematic attempt to study leadership. In the 20th century it was known as the “great man” theory. This approach takes a look at the leaders personal attributes such as but not limited to: motivation, energy, intuition, creativity, persuasiveness and foresight. Some of the traits that are essential to this list include: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. Thus it focuses mainly on the leader and not on the followers or situations. The strengths of the Trait Approach includes: 1) it is intuitively appealing, 2) it has research to back it’s theory, 3) it highlights the leader, 4) it identifies what the traits of a leader should have and whether the traits we do

For this paper, we were asked if we saw ourselves as a transactional leader or a transformational leader. This was a tough question. When I held managerial positions, I would not have my worker do anything I would not do. I would work beside my workers and encourage them along with overseeing their work. Overall I feel I am a mixture of both leader styles. I will discuss why below.

Therefore how a leader’s character or personality influences leadership. This paper will critically evaluate how useful is the trait approach to leadership. It begins with

This theory is based on the premise that there are certain personality characteristics that are essential for a person to possess in order to be a leader. The main emphasis is on what the person is in terms of a constellation of personality traits. This theory searches for that set of universal leadership traits that will assure success. Numerous traits have been suggested: courage, integrity, loyalty, charisma, ambition, intelligence, honesty, clairvoyance, persistence, arrogance, health, political skill, confidence and vision.