According to the online Oxford Dictionary, leadership is “the action of leading a group of people or an organization.” But what makes someone a leader? To put is simply, a leader is someone that motivates and inspires those around them to achieve a common goal or vision. That may sound fairly simple, but not everyone is a leader. And there are several different leadership styles to consider. The two most common styles are transformational and transactional leadership. Transformational leadership is generally defined as a leadership style that causes change. This unique leadership style focuses on four key behaviors: Influence through a vision, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. (Burns, L. R., et. al.). That all sounds great, but what does it mean? Leaders utilizing transformational leadership will start out by showing their team a vision of the future. This vision tells the team their purpose; that is, what they are there for. This is generally done by ensuring that the team understands and believes in the values of the organization, which motivates them to work toward fulfilling their purpose. The next step in this process is encouraging creativity amongst the members of the team. And finally, the leader must motivate each team member by focusing on their individual strengths and weaknesses. It is important that each team member is inspired to carry out the purpose in his or her own way. Just like everything else in
They constantly practice integrity and commitment. Transformational leaders seek to engage and re-engage their followers with a high level of commitment to the vision. While transformational leaders seek to transform organizations, they simultaneously seek to transform the followers.
As Northouse (2015) explained, transformational leadership is a process that can change and transform the emotions, values, ethics, standard, and long term goals of the people. It also involves transforming followers to accomplish more than what is expected of them. The four factors that are closely associated with transformational leadership includes being an idealized influence or charisma leaders who act as strong role models, have a high standard of moral and ethical conduct, and deeply respected by his or her followers. A leader who can inspire and motivate their followers to be part of a shared vision of the organization. A leader who can also stimulate followers to become more creative and innovative, and provide the necessary coaches and advice to the followers (p.167).
Additionally, " Transformational Leadership inspires wholeness of being, so your thoughts, feelings and actions are consistent. It is about leading with an integrity and authenticity that resonates with others, and inspires them to follow. Not only does it inspire others to follow, but to become leaders themselves" (Cox, 2007, p. 10).
Devine and Winter (2012, p. 25) state, “there is nothing magical about leadership, and there is nothing magical about teaching it or learning it.” They go on to define leadership as the ability to influence those who work for you to want to accomplish and strive to reach organizational goals and objectives. Those who influence others must understand the theories of motivation so that these theories can be applied, communicated and taught in order to motivate followers (Devine and Winter, 2012). Different from supervision, leadership implores the desires of those around you to want to succeed in meeting a goal through you the leader’s motivational abilities.
The transformational style of leadership focuses on the team’s performance as a whole, it encourages everyone to think of the group as a whole and rather not just themselves. Transformational leaders aim to make their team members better people by encouraging their self-awareness, it’s all about moving forward in a team and not just several individuals in one group. An example of transformational leadership would be within the army where as a team you all have to move forward and stick together in a group
As the study of leadership has expanded over the past decades, a general shift in the paradigm of leadership style has begun to occur. The male dominated workforce has started to give way to a far more diversified workplace, with increasing numbers of women and minorities in leadership positions. This shift, resultantly, is causing a move away from the traditional leadership styles, with more focus given to contemporary leadership theories. For example, in a recent TED Talk Roselinde Torres discussed the shortcomings of leadership styles that were effective twenty years ago, but are now proving to be lacking (Horvath, 2014). In her speech, Torres suggests that a transition away from traditional leadership styles could increase the performance and diversity of organizations. The divisive effects of this transition is significantly apparent in the American fire service, as the profession continues to move from a homogeneous workforce into a culture striving for diversity. As more women continue to rise into leadership roles within the fire service, the influence and impact of transactional versus transformational leadership contributes to the effectiveness of minority leaders. This paper will reflect on how this influence relates to the effectiveness of female leaders within the fire service.
Transformation leadership requires a leadership style that will collaborate with employees to move an organization forward. It is important
Transformational leaders’ focus is on the relationship of the leader with subordinates through encouragement, understanding, enthusiasm, and spur, while considering the individual. The leader motivates, possesses
Being a transformational leader is a great humane leadership theory, which believes in inspiring people to do excellent work through example of a leader’s personality. A transformational leader’s main goal is to inspire followers to share their values, and connect with their vision. The four components to be a transformational leader are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration.
Leadership is a fundamental aspect of an organization. A good leadership approach that suits the organizational will determine and indicate how successful the company will be in dealing with challenges that the organization may encounter whether internal or external. One such type of leader is a transformative leader. Transformational leadership is distinguished by its capacity to promote the idea of “innovation and change. Transformational leadership is a manner that encourages subordinates to excel in performing their job and to move far beyond their personal goals and attain targets that benefit the organization as a whole. The literature has proposed that there is a solid correlation between transformational leadership and followers performances.
Transformational leadership taps into the motives of followers in order to reach their goals, while transactional focuses on the exchanges that occur between leaders and followers (Northouse, 2013). The branches of the military in general would be considered transactional leadership organizations. This type of leadership encourages followers to perform tasks at a high level in order to achieve advancement or increase in pay or rank. Conversely, transformational leadership would be focused on creating a connection between the leader and the followers, in order to perform tasks in such a way as to increase the feeling of morality in both the leader and the follower (Northouse, 2013). Panorama did not exhibit any behavior that tried to motivate Bailey to feel a connection to him. Instead, Panorama tried to intimidate, coerce, and punish Bailey to execute the tasks he was required to perform.
A TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER is a person who stimulates and inspires followers to achieve extraordinary outcomes (Robbins, 2007)It has been shown to influence organisational members by transforming their values and priorities while motivating them to perform beyond their expectations (Rowold, 2007)Increased levels of job satisfaction & reduced turnover intentions are consequences of transformational leadership. It is all about leadership that creates positive change in the followers whereby they take care of each other’s interests and act in the interestsof the groupas a whole (Warrilow, 2012)
A transformational leader treasures the feelings and respect, the loyalty among their followers and workers and emphasizes the significance of commitment with projects and group work. (Veiseh, Esfandyar, Mohsen, & Vahid, 2014, p. 113-124). Transformational leaders have a kind of initiative style that can motivate positive changes in the individuals who take after.
Before explaining the differences between transactional and transformational leadership, I want to explore each of the two leadership styles through details. According to the definition, transactional leadership is focusing on managing and supervising subordinators by setting up specific tasks and expectations. In most cases, this kind of leadership is based on a system of rewards and punishments, which could also motivate employees to work hard. On the other side, transformational leadership is trying to help every individual achieving his or her potential and make the whole group energetic and enthusiastic by working together with the followers. Instead of telling employees what to do and when to do, transformational leaders are more likely to be open mind so that followers feel free to contribute new ideas as well as solutions.
Transformational leaders chalk out and conceive parameters for their respective team. They make sure that the members understand the job at hand and the role that each has to play. They give impetus to creativity and out of box thinking. They make the members understand and practice the essence to learn and share and mutual care. Both Nelson Mandela and Steve Jobs did that.