Transformational leadership styles focus on team-building, motivation, and collaboration with employees at different levels of an organization to accomplish change for the better.
What is Transformational Leadership?
Transformational leaders set goals and incentives to push their subordinates to higher performance levels while providing opportunities for personal and professional growth for each employee.
Ultimately, transformational leaders can develop a very powerful influence over followers.
4 factors of transformational leaders Inspiration, Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation, Idealized Influence, and Individualized Consideration
Transformational leadership may be found at all levels of the organization, including teams, departments, divisions, and organizations.
Such leaders are visionary, inspiring, daring, risk-takers, and thoughtful thinkers. They have a charismatic appeal.
However, charisma alone is insufficient to change the way an operator is.
Transformational leaders transform followers’ personal values to support the organization’s vision and goals by fostering an environment where relationships can be formed and by establishing a climate of trust in which visions can be shared.
Transformational Leadership Definitions
Bass and Avolio developed Burns’ (1978) ideas and posited the formal concept of transformational leadership.
Their work was built not only upon the contribution of Burns but also those made by Bennis and Nanus (1985), Tichy and Devanna (1986), and others.
Bass (1990b) specified that transformational leadership “occurs when leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group, and when they stir their employees to look beyond their self-interest for the good of the group.”
Bass (1990a) stipulates that this transcending beyond self-interest is for the “group, organization, or society” (p. 53).
In essence, transformational leadership is building commitment to organizational objectives and empowering followers to accomplish those objectives (Yukl, 1998). The result, at least in theory, is enhanced follower performance.
Burns (1978) considered leaders to be either transformational or transactional, while others view leadership as a continuum, with transactional leadership at one end and transformational leadership at the other.
Bass (1990a) said that transactional leadership occurs when leaders “exchange promises of rewards and benefits to subordinates for the subordinates’ fulfillment of agreements with the leader.
According to Daft (2002), the transactional leader recognizes followers’ needs and then defines the exchange process for meeting those needs. Both the leader and the follower benefit from the exchange transaction.
Transactional leadership is based on bureaucratic authority, focuses on task completion, and relies on rewards and punishments.
Transformational leadership differs substantially from transactional leadership. It is concerned more about progress and development.
Furthermore, transformational leadership enhances the effects of transactional leadership on followers.
TQM and Transformational Leadership Theory
According to transformational leadership theory, leaders who wish to have a significant impact on their organizations must take a long-term perspective, work to stimulate their organization intellectually, invest in training to develop individuals and groups, take risks, endorse a shared vision and values, and focus on customers and employees individually.
This model differs a little bit from the leadership of TQM. Many of its aspects, like the emphasis on vision and focus on customers and employees as individuals, are right out of the TQM playbook; others are generally consistent with TQM.
If leaders are sometimes transformational in a TQM organization, then it would help achieve the desired TQ organization because they play an important role in promoting total quality.
Four Elements of Transformational Leadership
Avolio, Waldman, and Yammarino (1991) established four primary behaviors that constitute transformational leadership. To bring major changes, transformational leaders must exhibit the following four:
- Inspiration Motivation
- Intellectual Stimulation
- Idealized Influence
- Individualized Consideration
Inspiration Motivation
The foundation of transformational leadership is promoting a consistent vision, mission, and values to the members. Their vision is so compelling that they know what they want from every interaction.
Transformational leaders inspire and motivate others by “providing meaning and challenge to their followers’ work.” The team’s spirit is “aroused” while “enthusiasm and optimism are displayed.”
The transformational leader builds relationships with followers through interactive communication, which forms a cultural bond between the two participants and leads to a shifting of values by both parties toward common ground.
The leader inspires followers to see the attractive future state while communicating expectations and demonstrating a commitment to goals and a shared vision. Idealized influence and inspirational motivation are usually combined to form charismatic-inspirational leadership.
Intellectual Stimulation
Such leaders encourage their followers to be innovative and creative.
They encourage new ideas from their followers and never criticize them publicly for the mistakes committed to them.
Transformational leaders stimulate their followers’ efforts “to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions, reframing problems, and approaching old situations in new ways.”
Followers’ mistakes are not publicly criticized, and creativity is openly encouraged.
Transformational leaders solicit their followers’ ideas and creative solutions to problems, thereby including followers in problem-solving.
The intellectually stimulating leader encourages followers to try new approaches but emphasizes rationality.
Idealized Influence
They believe in the philosophy that a leader can influence followers only when he practices what he preaches. The leaders act as role models that followers seek to emulate.
Such a leader always wins the trust and respect of their followers through their actions.
Idealized influence is the charismatic element of transformational leadership in which leaders become role models who are admired, respected, and emulated by followers.
Consequently, followers demonstrate a high degree of trust in such leaders. Idealized influence in leadership also involves integrity in the form of ethical and moral conduct.
Developing a shared vision is integral to the idealized, transformational leader’s role.
It helps others look at the futuristic state while inspiring acceptance through aligning personal values and interests to the collective interests of the group’s purposes.
Transformational leaders are also willing to take and share risks with followers.
Individualized Consideration
Leaders act as mentors to their followers and reward them for creativity and innovation.
The followers are treated differently according to their talents and knowledge.
The transformational leader disburses personal attention to followers based on the individual follower’s needs for achievement and growth.
To do this, the leader acts as a mentor or coach, developing followers in a supportive climate to “higher levels of potential.”
The considerate leader recognizes and demonstrates acceptance of the followers’ differences in terms of needs and desires. By doing this, the transformational leader fosters two-way communication through effective listening.
The leader develops followers by delegating tasks and then unobtrusively monitoring those tasks–checking to see if additional support or direction is needed.
The net effect of individualized consideration and other transformational leadership behaviors is the empowerment of followers.
Conclusion
A transformational leader goes beyond managing day-to-day operations and crafts strategies for taking his company, department, or work team to the next level of performance and success.
For example, several research studies have documented the power of transformational leadership in establishing value congruency and trust.
Followers respect and trust transformational leaders, so they confirm their values to those of the leaders and yield power to them.
The transformational leader articulates the vision clearly and appealingly, explains how to attain the vision, acts confidently and optimistically, expresses confidence in the followers, emphasizes values with symbolic actions, leads by example, and empowers followers to achieve the vision.