The qualities of transformational leaders and what distinguishes them from transactional leaders

Customized Thought

Customized Thought is the extent to which a leader attends to each follower’s needs and is a guru, teach or guide to the follower. This leader attends to the concerns and needs of each follower and delivers support and is empathic of each person’ situation and background. When a leader displays customized thought they are also responsive to the sole aptitudes that each follower brings to the workplace and support them in emerging and indicating these key skills and behaviours. This leads the follower to aspire to develop further and they show core motivation when performing their work.

Inspirational Motivation

Inspirational Motivation is the degree to which a leader articulates an appealing vision that inspires and motivates others to perform beyond expectations. Leaders who use inspirational motivation have high standards and expectation for their followers. They are optimistic about follower ability to meet goals and they always provide meaning to their followers through showing the importance of all duties and responsibilities. In fact, they are able to motivate their followers to have a strong sense of purpose so they provide purpose and meaning to drive their group forward. This encourages followers to invest more effort in their tasks and to be optimistic about the future and to invest in their own abilities.

The result of this project could go a long way towards changing the way business schools train their students. We hope this project will have a direct effect on how managers are trained in the future. What you are doing today is going to have an impact on your own future. As you go through the exercise, I really want you to be as creative and imagine as you can don’t be afraid to take risks. Trust your instincts (Howell & Frost, 1989).

Idealized Influence

Transformational leaders who exhibit Idealized influence are role models for their followers because they engage in high ethical behaviour standards. Followers identify with and want to emulate, those leaders. These leaders usually have very good moral values of conduct, and can be considered doing the right thing. Believers are deeply respected, who usually place a great deal of trust in them. They provide followers with a sense of vision and mission.

Intellectual Motivation

Scholarly Inspiration is the degree to which transformational leaders challenge standards, face challenges and request adherents' thoughts. They perceive supporters through incitement, inventiveness, and development. The leader bolsters and works together with the followers as they attempt new methodologies and create imaginative methods of managing organizational issues. The leader urges adherents to thoroughly consider things all alone and urges devotees to think freely with the goal that followers become self-ruling.

(Annette, 2019)

Transactional Leadership focus on deviation management and corrective action

These are the four main factors of Transformational Leadership. Transformational Leadership has been contrasted with Transactional Leadership (Bass, 1985). The active transactional leader, through an exchange with subordinates, emphasizes the giving of rewards if subordinates meet to agree upon performance standards. Thus, active Transactional Leadership emerges from a rational-legal relationship, whereby leaders gain compliance from their followers through an exchange of goods. There is empirical evidence that transformational leadership is more effective than transactional leadership. In contrast to managers who use transactional methods such as providing contingent rewards in exchange for effort, transformational leaders are more effective in mobilizing their followers to exert extra effort (Bass & Avolio, 1993). In the military, transformational leaders are more effective in leading teams than transactional leaders (Longshore, 1988).

Transformational leaders are positive role models regardless of hierarchy

Transformational Leadership is evident at all ranks of an organization. Managers can use allowing language to gain a promise from their subordinates. There is no doubt that CEOs who are transformational have an important effect on the performance of their organization essentially for they are seen as affirmative role models whose conducts are rivalled through all levels of the organization (Waldman, et al., 2001). Fruitful CEOs also practice “management by walking around” and use language that is appropriate for a particular, individual, group, or department. Transformational leadership can cross hierarchical echelons so is transparent on the shop floor as well as at the top of the hierarchical chain (Bass & Avolio, 1993).

Transformational Leadership increases (financial) performance

 Transformational Leadership also found a positive association between Transformational Leadership and organizational effectiveness (Lowe, et al., 1996).Transformational had higher financial performance in their firms compared to those who were described as transactional (Avolio, et al., 1991). Transformational leaders are effective in the vision and mission that they disseminate throughout the organization.

Organizational visions that were effectively written and communicated throughout the organization and contained attributes of future orientation and challenge affected subsequent venture growth (Banum, et al., 1998).

   

(Annette, 2019)

Transactional Leadership shortcomings and weaknesses

Be aware that Transformational Leadership and other leadership approaches that rely on a similar set of assumptions (e.g. charismatic leadership and authentic leadership) have considerable shortcomings and weaknesses. We will have a look at three of these shortcomings and introduce some alternative leadership concepts you should be aware of.

Transformational Leadership is too static and oversimplifies corporate life

Corporate life is usually much more complex and requires a leadership approach that is capable of dealing with this complexity (Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001). Complexity leadership is an alternative leadership approach that focuses on the full range of social interactions in organizations instead of leader-follower relationships only.

Transformational Leadership overemphasizes the "Great Leader"

Transformational Leadership is a strong, charismatic a leader that steers the organizations through tough times towards an attractive future. This overemphasize on the positive outcomes generated by the "Great Transformational Leader" is another shortcoming of the Transformational Leadership approach (Alvesson & Einola, 2019). One direction to mitigate this shortcoming is a shift in focus from individual leaders towards leadership teams. In addition, Transformational Leadership is part of the "positive leadership" tradition which has come under fire by practitioners and scholars alike due to its over-reliance on ideologies instead of scientific rigour (Alvesson & Karreman, 2015).

The Transformational Leadership model is flawed

Scholars have started to criticize the theoretical foundation and operationalization of Transformational Leadership as flawed. One of those arguments is that the building blocks of Transformational Leadership lack a clear definition and are rather vague. In addition, van Knippenberg & Sitkin (2013) argue that tools to measure Transformational Leadership and its effects on (organizational) performance do not meet scientific standards in terms of validity.

Conclusion

On the foundation of Transformational Leadership, those behaviours that differentiate transformational leaders from transactional leaders and shortcoming associated with Transformational Leadership. There are four main components of Transformational Leadership: Individualized Consideration, Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, and Idealized Influence. Each of these components is positively related to individual and organizational performance. Transformational leaders enable their followers to go beyond expectations whereas transactional leaders merely provide contingent rewards in exchange for effort and are less effective than transformational leaders.

References

Alvesson, M. & Einola, K., 2019. Warning for excessive positivity: Authentic leadership and other traps in leadership studies. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(4), pp. 1-50.

Alvesson, M. & Karreman, D., 2015. Intellectual Failure and Ideological Success in Organization Studies: The Case of Transformational Leadership. Journal of Management Inquiry, 25(2), pp. 139-152.

Annette, T., 2019. CQ Net. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ckju.net/en/dossier/qualities-transformational-leaders-and-what-distinguishes-them-transactional-leaders
[Accessed 17 June 2020].

Avolio, B. J., Yammarino, F. J. & Bass, B. M., 1991. Identifying common methods variance with data collected from a single source: An unresolved sticky issue. Journal of Management, 17(3), pp. 571-587.

Banum, J. R., Locke, E. A. & Kirkpatrick, S. A., 1998. A Longitudinal Study of the Relation of Vision and Vision Communication to Venture Growth in Entrepreneurial Firms. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(1), pp. 43-54.

Bass, B. M., 1985. Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. New York: Free Press.

Bass, B. M. & Avolio, B. J., 1993. Transformational Leadership: A response to critiques. M.Chemers & Ayman (Eds)Leadership theory and research: Perspectives and directions., 34(6), pp. 49-80.

Howell, J. M. & Frost, P. J., 1989. A laboratory study of charismatic leadership. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 43(2), pp. 243-269.

Knippenberg, V. D. & Sitkin, S., 2013. a critical assessment of Charismatic Transformational Leadership Research: Back to the Drawing Board? In. The Academy of Management Annals, 7(1), pp. 1-60.

Longshore, J. M., 1988. The associative relationship between transformational and transactional leadership style and group productivity.Doctoral dissertation Nova University, FL: Fort Lauderdale.

Lowe, K. B., Kroeck, K. G. & Sivasubramaniam, N., 1996. Effective Correlates of Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A meta-analytic review. Leadership Quarterly, 7(3), pp. 385-425.

Marion, R. & Uhl-Bien, M., 2001. Leadership in complex organizations. Leadership Quarterly, 12(4), pp. 389-418.

Waldman, D. A., Ramirez, G. G., House, R. J. & Puranam, P., 2001. Does leadership matter?CEO leadership attributes and profitability under conditions of perceived environmental uncertainty. Academy of Management Journal, 44(3), pp. 134-143.