Leadership Styles

Leadership is essentially an art of influencing and motivating people to achieve the common
goals. There are two types of leadership styles:

 Transactional Leadership:
This type of leadership style is more concerned with managing the ongoing work or
operations part (routine work) of the business. They motivate subordinates get the current
work done and reward them on showing performance. These types of leaders do not play a
role to set the organization strategically to transform in to the next stage from its current
stage. They usually do not have that long term vision, instead look for current status or have
a short term vision. Usually this leadership style limits itself to organizational boundaries and
is authoritative in nature.
 Transformational Leadership:
Transformational leadership style is usually not interested in day to day organizational or
operational work. They do not have focus on short term vision. Usually their focus is on
organizational long term vision about where they want to see this organization to be in next
few years and focus to align the strategies that will help sail the organization to that level.
These leaders set goals and influence subordinates to reach higher performance levels, while
providing opportunities for personal and professional growth for each employee. This works
well at the workplace that requires creativity and innovation.

Communication styles:
Transactional leaders tell their subordinates what to do. They establish the policies and
procedures, define the steps required to produce a product or service according to established
methods. This implies no deviation and remains within certain boundaries.

Transformational leaders have great communication skills. They are kind of charismatic

leaders who know how to influence people. Their messages are authentic, inspiring, very
clear and consistent which enables them to catch their followers' attention and get their buy-
in during important organizational changes and new initiatives. They treat others with
compassion, respect & easily connect with others.

Impact:

Both type of leadership works in certain work environments. It depends on what is the need
of the organization at any point of time and make use of appropriate leadership style then.

Transactional leadership is based on a system of rewards and penalties, it does not offer
much in terms of inspiration, to motivate people to go beyond the basics. Followers of
transactional leaders might get complacent and develop a tendency to achieve minimal
 expectations only that would help them avoid penalties. The success of such leadership
depends on the level of satisfaction the leader and followers have in following this system of
performance based appraisals. Thus, the expected causal chain where leadership style
positively affects employee motivation, which translates into improved employee and
organizational performance, does not seem to be applicable to transactional leadership.

Transformational leadership on the other hand is all about inspiration, motivation &
intellectual stimulation. Transformational leaders articulate and share an attractive vision
with the employees for the esteemed organization and use emotions to demonstrate optimism
and enthusiasm. When an inspirational message is delivered by a transformational leader,
certain needs in subordinate employees may become activated and if employees are able to
satisfy their activated needs, this results in increased motivation to perform at work. This
type of leadership empower the followers, support & challenge them from time to time to
achieve the extraordinary results. There is no authority or give & take relationship that plays
role here. 

References:
 An article “The Effect of Transactional Leadership on Employees Performance - Case Study
of 5 Algerian Banking Institutions’ written by Brahim, Ali Bousbia; Ridic, Ognjen; Jukic,
Tomislav and published by Economic Review: Journal of Economics and Business.

 Article published in Writepass Journal named – “The Impact of Transformational Leadership

on Employee Motivation’ on Jan 19, 2014.

 An article in Journal of Psychology in Africa, 2019 named ‘Transformational and

transactional leadership effects on communication styles’ by El-Roy Crews , Marissa
Brouwers* and Jan C. Visagie