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Transformational Leadership Theory James Mcgregor Burns

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Santosh Katwal
Prof. Dr. Addisu Mengesha
MGT 521
12 June 2016

Transformational Leadership Approach
Leadership expert James McGregor Burns defined transformational leadership as a process where "leaders and their followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation." As we have major traditional approaches like the trait, behavioral, and the situation approaches but newer approaches seem to offer more by adding factors that inspire and motivate people to perform beyond their normal levels. In this case transformational leadership transforms employees to pursue organizational goals over self-interests. Research shows that the transformational leadership approach has several positive results and its positively associated with (1) measures of organizational effectiveness (2) measures of leadership effectiveness and employee job satisfaction (3) more employee identification with their leaders and with their immediate work groups (4) commitment to organizational change and (5) higher levels of intrinsic motivation, group cohesion, work engagement, setting of goals consistent with those of the leader, and proactive behavior.

Three important implications of transformational leadership for managers, as follows.
1. It Can Improve Results for Both Individuals & Groups: You can use the four types of transformational behavior just described to improve results for individuals—such as job satisfaction, organizational

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