8 TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
DESCRIPTION
As one of the current and most popular approaches to leadership, the transformational leadership approach has been the focus of much research since the 1980s. As its name implies, transformational leadership is a process that changes and transforms people. It is concerned with emotions, values, ethics, standards, and long-term goals. It includes assessing followers’ motives, satisfying their needs, and treating them as full human beings. Transformational leadership involves an exceptional form of influence that moves followers to accomplish more than what is usually expected of them. It is a process that often incorporates charismatic and visionary leadership.
Transformational leadership is part of the “New Leadership” paradigm (Bryman, 1992), which gives more attention to the charismatic and affective elements of leadership. In a content analysis of articles published in
The Leadership Quarterly, Lowe and Gardner (2001) found that one third of the research was about transformational or charismatic leadership. That interest has continued into the new millennium; in a follow-up review of leadership research, Dinh et al. (2014) found that interest in transformational leadership was sustained from 2000 to 2012. Similarly, Antonakis (2012) found that the number of papers and citations in the field has grown at an increasing rate, not only in traditional areas like management and social psychology, but in other disciplines such as nursing, education, and industrial engineering. Bass and Riggio (2006) suggested that transformational leadership’s popularity might be due to its emphasis on intrinsic motivation and follower development, which fits the needs of today’s work groups, who want to be inspired and empowered to succeed in times of uncertainty. Clearly, many scholars are studying transformational leadership, and it occupies a central place in leadership research. However, others (i.e., Andersen, 2015; Anderson, Baur, Griffith, & Buckley, 2017) have suggested that the interest in transformational leadership may be exaggerated and that this approach to leading may be less significant as millennials continue to flood into the workplace.
An encompassing approach, transformational leadership can be used to describe a wide range of leadership, from very specific attempts to influence followers on a one-to-one level, to very broad attempts to influence whole organizations and even entire cultures. Although the transformational leader plays a pivotal role in precipitating change, followers and leaders are inextricably bound together in the transformation process. In fact, transformational leadership focuses so heavily on the relationship between leader and follower that some (Andersen, 2015) have suggested that this bias may limit explanations for transformational leadership on organizational effectiveness.
Transformational Leadership Defined
The emergence of
transformational leadership as an important approach to leadership began with a classic work by political sociologist James MacGregor Burns titled
Leadership (1978). In his work, Burns attempted to link the roles of leadership and followership. He wrote of leaders as people who tap the motives of followers in order to better reach the goals of leaders and followers (p. 18). For Burns, leadership is quite different from power because it is inseparable from followers’ needs.
Transformational
Versus Transactional Leadership.
Burns distinguished between two types of leadership:
transactional and
transformational. Transactional leadership refers to the bulk of leadership models, which focus on the exchanges that occur between leaders and their followers. Politicians who win votes by promising “no new taxes” are demonstrating transactional leadership. Similarly, managers who offer promotions to employees who surpass their goals are exhibiting transactional leadership. In the classroom, teachers are being transactional when they give students a grade for work completed. The exchange dimension of transactional leadership is very common and can be observed at many levels throughout all types of organizations. While exchanges or transactions between leader and member are a natural component of employment contracts, research suggests that employees do not necessarily perceive transactional leaders as those most capable of creating trusting, mutually beneficial leader–member relationships (Notgrass, 2014). Instead, employees prefer managers to perform transformational leadership behaviors such as encouraging creativity, recognizing accomplishments, building trust, and inspiring a collective vision (Notgrass, 2014).
In contrast to transactional leadership, transformational leadership is the process whereby a person engages with others and creates a connection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower. This type of leader is attentive to the needs and motives of followers and tries to help followers reach their fullest potential. Burns points to Mohandas Gandhi as a classic example of transformational leadership. Gandhi raised the hopes and demands of millions of his people and, in the process, was changed himself.
Another good example of transformational leadership can be observed in the efforts of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who raised awareness around the world regarding global climate change. Thunberg began her activism by sitting outside the Swedish parliament every school day, holding a sign reading
Skolstrejk för klimatet (“School strike for climate”). This inspired an international movement, and Thunberg spoke in public and to political leaders and assemblies, where she criticized world leaders for their failure to sufficiently address the climate crisis.
In the organizational world, an example of transformational leadership would be a manager who attempts to change a company’s corporate values to reflect a more humane standard of fairness and justice. In the process, both the manager and the followers may emerge with a stronger and higher set of moral values. In fact, Mason, Griffin, and Parker (2014) demonstrated that through transformational leadership training, leaders were able to enhance their self-efficacy, positive affect, and ability to consider multiple perspectives. Their findings suggest that transformational leadership can result in positive psychological gains for both leader and follower.
Pseudotransformational Leadership.
Because the conceptualization of transformational leadership set forth by Burns (1978) includes raising the level of morality in others, it is difficult to use this term when describing a leader such as Adolf Hitler, who was transforming but in a negative way. To deal with this problem, Bass (1998) coined the term
pseudotransformational leadership. This term refers to leaders who are self-consumed, exploitive, and power oriented, with warped moral values (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Pseudotransformational leadership is considered
personalized leadership, which focuses on the leader’s own interests rather than on the interests of others (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). Authentic transformational leadership is
socialized leadership, which is concerned with the collective good. Socialized transformational leaders transcend their own interests for the sake of others (Howell & Avolio, 1993).
In a series of four experimental studies, Christie, Barling, and Turner (2011) set forth a preliminary model of pseudotransformational leadership that reflected four components of transformational leadership discussed later in this chapter:
idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and
individualized consideration. This model helps to clarify the meaning of pseudotransformational leadership. It suggests that pseudotransformational leadership is inspired leadership that is self-serving, is unwilling to encourage independent thought in followers, and exhibits little general caring for others. Pseudotransformational leaders have strong inspirational talent and appeal but are manipulative and dominant and direct followers toward the leader’s values. This type of leadership is threatening to the welfare of followers because it ignores the common good.
To sort out the complexities related to the “moral uplifting” component of authentic transformational leadership, Zhu, Avolio, Riggio, and Sosik (2011) proposed a theoretical model examining how authentic transformational leadership influences the ethics of individual followers and groups. The authors hypothesize that authentic transformational leadership positively affects followers’ moral identities and moral emotions (e.g., empathy and guilt) and this, in turn, leads to moral decision making and moral action by the followers. Furthermore, the authors theorize that authentic transformational leadership is positively associated with group ethical climate, decision making, and moral action. In the future, research is needed to test the validity of the assumptions laid out in this model.
Transformational Leadership and Charisma
At about the same time Burns’s book was published, House (1976) published a theory of charismatic leadership. Since its publication, charismatic leadership has received a great deal of attention by researchers (e.g., Conger, 1999; Hunt & Conger, 1999). It is often described in ways that make it similar to, if not synonymous with, transformational leadership.
The word
charisma was first used to describe a special gift that certain individuals possess that gives them the capacity to do extraordinary things. Weber (1947) provided the most well-known definition of charisma as a special personality characteristic that gives a person superhuman or exceptional powers and is reserved for a few, is of divine origin, and results in the person being treated as a leader. Despite Weber’s emphasis on charisma as a personality characteristic, he also recognized the important role played by followers in validating charisma in these leaders (Bryman, 1992; House, 1976).
In his theory of charismatic leadership, House suggested that charismatic leaders act in unique ways that have specific charismatic effects on their followers (
Table 8.1). For House, the personality characteristics of a charismatic leader include being dominant, having a strong desire to influence others, being self-confident, and having a strong sense of one’s own moral values.
In addition to displaying certain personality characteristics, charismatic leaders demonstrate specific types of behaviors. First, they are strong role models for the beliefs and values they want their followers to adopt. For example, Gandhi advocated nonviolence and was an exemplary role model of civil disobedience. Second, charismatic leaders appear competent to followers.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory and Practice, 9th Edition. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc. ISBN: 1544397569
