Transformational Style of Leadership

• Originator: James V. Downton in 1973 and further expanded by James Burns in 1978.
• Leaders and followers make each other advance to a higher level of moral and motivation.
• Later, in 1985, Bernard M. Bass expanded:
• Bass’s Transformational Leadership Theory.
• According to Bass, transformational leadership can be defined based on the impact that it has on
followers. Transformational leaders, Bass suggested, garner trust, respect, and admiration from their
followers
• Transformational leadership is a leadership style that can inspire positive changes in those
who follow.
• Leaders are energetic, enthusiastic, and passionate.
• Not only are these leaders concerned and involved in the process, but they are also focused on helping
every member of the group succeed.
• Trust employees and motivate them without micromanaging.
• Leader works like a mentor and train people to take their authority over decision in the assigned jobs.
• Gives room to employees to be creative, look to the future and find new solutions to old problems.
• Primary goals of transformational leadership is to inspire growth, promote loyalty, and
instill confidence in group members.
 Four main elements of Transformational Leadership
• Intellectual stimulation: Leaders:
• To help to create change, it is important to challenge long-standing belief in the
organization and push the status quo by encouraging innovation, creativity,
critical thinking and problem solving.
• Not only challenge the status quo but also encourage creativity among followers.
• Encourages followers to explore new ways of doing things/ new opportunities to
learn that inject innovation in the organization.
• Individualized consideration: Leadership:
• Develop a feeling of sense of independence and ownership in the overall business
goals.
• Everyone has a unique quality which needs to be mentored and so that they can
contribute to the growth of the organization.
• Involves supporting and encouraging individual followers.
• To foster supportive relationships, transformational leaders keep lines of
communication open so that followers feel free to share ideas and so that leaders
can offer immediate recognition of the unique contributions of each follower.
• Inspirational motivation: Leaders:
• have a clear vision that they can articulate to followers.
• leaders also help followers experience the same passion/ motivation to fulfill
these goals.
• Focus is on creating a strong sense of purpose rather than attempting to
motivate them through fear.
• Idealized influence: Leader
• Lead by example and look as a role model- positively influences others
through a commitment to trust, transparency and respect.
• Leading by authenticity motivates employees to pick up the behaviour and
feel inspired to maintain the high standard of performance
• Because followers trust and respect the leader, they emulate this individual
and internalize their ideals
 Traits of Transformational Leadership
• Embracing change
• Assumes the effect of change and ready to handle the challenges.
• Encourage participation and communication
• Take ideas without judgment or knee-jerk reactions.
• Active listening skills
• Adaptability
• Able to cope up with technological changes.
• Authenticity and genuineness
• Creativity
• Emotional Intelligent
• Collaboration with empathy.. Self motivated, resilient and able to build trust and
respect.
• Inspirational
• Leader focus on the well being of followers and the organization instead o taking a me-
first approach.
• Trains of transformational leadership…contd.
• Open minded
• Proactive problem-solvers
• Self awareness
• Supportive
• Willingness to take responsibility
• Willingness to take well-informed risks
• Fostering an ethical environment with clear values, priorities and
standards.
• How to apply transformational leadership
• Lead by example
• Value your team members
• Challenge your team
• Maintain transparency
 Effects of Transformational Leadership
• Better performance
• Better well being
• Sense of empowerment
• Less heavy handed management approach
• Employees feel freer to experiment and suggest new ideas and approaches.
• Employees focus more on organizational interest than self interest.
• Innovation and creativity
• Strong bonding with organization as employee develops commitment
and loyalty towards organization.
• Strong level of Unity
• Leader unites the organizational in a common sense.
 Pitfalls of Transformational Leadership

• Transformational approach is considered as best approach but that does not

mean panacea for all problems.
• Big picture vision is always not paired with detailed directions of how to get
there.
• Too grand vision/ High pressure leads to burn out.
• Some times changes can be disruptive. Change should not be for sake of
change.
• A lot of creativity and innovation required for success.
• Requires continuous engagement of leader with employees which is time
consuming.
• Where short term goal-
• Transactional approach is more suitable as it improve group cohesion in short term and
commitment.
• Short term goal – transactional approach is better else it may create chaos.
 Transactional v/s Transformational
Motivates using reward and Motivates using enthusiasm and
punishment charismatic inspiration
Focused on compliance Focused on commitment
Tends to focus on short terms goals More focused on long term success
Use extrinsic rewards and punishment- Use intrinsic rewards – esteem, pride
pay promotion, censure etc. etc.

Supervision, oversight, organization, Trust and motivate without

and performance monitoring micromanaging. Leader works like
friend, philosopher and guide.
Best suited to organization requires Support agile environment (like IT/
routing and structure area where Digital) specially where failures carries
business wants to reduce chaos or less risk.
inefficiency.