Transformational Leadership - Essay Example

Transformational Leadership Introduction Leadership is a process used by an individual to influence group members toward the achievement of group goals in which the group members view the influence as legitimate. Many of us have known poor leaders who promote their own image by taking credit for work done by others, who are selfish, inconsiderate, or tyrannical with followers, or who are unfair, dishonest, and threatened by competence in other people. These factors decrease our quality of life by lowering our job and life satisfaction and our commitment to organizations, while creating high levels of conflict and stress. One recent survey indicated that over 75 percent of U.S. employees are unhappy with their jobs. The primary reason given was that they were treated poorly by their boss (Howell, 2005). Some writers have argued that leadership is a romantic ideal or a convenient attribution that people use to explain why some teams or organizations succeed while others fail. The evidence is quite strong; however, that leadership is a real social process that affects important events in our lives and in organizations. Careful studies in organizations show that executive leadership can account for 45 percent of an organizations performance. Hundreds of studies show that leadership makes a difference in followers satisfaction and performance. Leadership affects the educational climate in schools, church attendance, job stress, organizational change, and military success. Effective leadership can create shared beliefs, values, and expectations in organizations and societies and can modify followers interpretations and understanding of issues and events. Much of history has been passed down through stories of key leaders. It is difficult to explain many major human events such as the independence of India without Mahatma Gandhi, the Roman military campaigns without Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar, the American civil rights movement without Martin Luther King Jr., Nazi Germany without Adolf Hitler, the Peoples Republic of China without Mao Tse Tung, the United Farm Workers without Cesar Chavez, the Jonestown massacre without Jim Jones, the Waco, Texas, disaster without David Koresh, or business debacles such as Enron without Kenneth Lay or Andrew Fastow (Howell, 2005). Transformational Leadership & Organizational Culture Organizational culture is the basic pattern of shared assumptions, values and beliefs considered to be the correct way of thinking about and acting on the problems and opportunities facing the organizations. It defines what is important and unimportant for the company. You may think of it as an organization’s DNA—invisible to the naked eye, yet a powerful template that shapes what happens in the workplace (McShane, & Glinow, 1999). An organization’s cultural beliefs and values are somewhat easier to decipher than assumptions because people are aware of them. Beliefs represent the individual’s perceptions of reality. Values are more stable, long-lasting beliefs about what is important. They help us define what is right and wrong, or good or bad in the world (McShane, & Glinow, 1999). Although theorists acknowledge that leadership occurs at all levels of the organization and that the impact of all leaders contributes to organizational performance, a fascination has always existed with the larger-than-life, earth-shaking leaders who do more than transact the mundane concerns of everyday activity. These are the leaders who foment revolutions in politics or commerce and divert the streams of history. Despite the glamour of heroic leadership and the long-standing interest of social philosophers in the subject, the scientific literature largely ignored the topic until quite recently. Research explained the dearth of research by pointing to three problems inherent in this area of study. The theme, itself, has had mystical and quasi-religious overtones that did not fit well with the sort of down-to-earth empiricism of scientific psychology. Further, the constructs that defined heroic leadership were difficult to define and operationalize. Perhaps most importantly, heroic leaders were not easily available for study. Such figures, after all, appear infrequently and are usually too busy conquering the world to fill out the necessary questionnaires. In the late 1970s and the 1980s, interest in so-called "transformational" leadership was given a boost by two coalescing factors. On the scientific front, researchers were becoming frustrated with the limitations of contemporary leadership models in explaining and predicting the powerful impact that leaders seemed to have on organizations. At the same time, increased levels of business competition stimulated interest among practicing managers in ways to improve personal and organizational functioning. Popular interest made it easier for researchers to gain access to top level leaders, and the demand for the findings of the research fueled the work of both empirical researchers and armchair theoreticians. Although we have seen a resurgence of interest recently, the roots of transformational leadership theory (so called because such leadership transforms the goals of followers from self-interest to collective achievement) were found in the writings of the turn of the century German sociologist, Max Weber. Transformational Leadership, Self-Efficacy and Work-Related Attitudes Transformational leadership can be conceptualized as consisting of charisma (idealized influence), inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Over nearly 20 years, those leaders rated higher on these transformational leadership components by their followers have been associated with generating higher levels of effort, commitment, satisfaction, and work performance both at individual and collective levels. The consistency in the pattern of positive results associated with transformational leadership is similar to the results produced over the last three decades examining collective and self-efficacy. Bass (1985) espoused a theory of transformational leadership that. The degree to which leaders are transformational was measured in terms of the leaders effect on followers. Followers of transformational leaders feel trust, admiration, loyalty, and respect toward leaders and are motivated to perform extra-role behaviors. Transformational leaders have been shown to increase followers trust satisfaction and citizenship. Leaders high in transformational behaviors achieve maximum performance from followers because they are able to inspire followers to raise their criteria for success and develop innovative problem solving skills The transformational leader-follower relationship is viewed as one of mutual stimulation and is operationalized with three distinct characteristics: intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, and inspirational motivation. Individualized consideration describes leaders acting in the role of employee mentors (Bass, 1985). Inspirational motivation describes leaders passionately communicating a future idealistic organization that can be shared. Intellectual stimulation describes leaders encouraging employees to approach old and familiar problems in new ways. The motives inherent in the full-range leadership model have been examined surprisingly little during the past 20 years of transformational leadership research. This project, therefore, tests the specific relationships between leaders sources of work motivation and the full range leadership behaviors used by leaders in the workplace. The next section reviews the motivation literature and develops the expected relationships between the variables of interest. Bass Transformational Leadership Theory The movement toward broadening the definition of charismatic or transformational leadership, making it more appropriate to the setting of complex, formal organizations, and answering the call to develop quantitative tools to study it, was given an enourmous boost by the research program of Bernard Bass and his colleagues. Because of its scope and importance, that research is discussed at length here. The initial impetus for the development of a theory and measurement tool for transformational leadership was an open-ended, informal discussion with 70 senior executives attending a leadership training workshop. Asked if they had ever encountered a leader similar to the transformational type, that is, a leader who aroused them to transcend selfish interests for the benefit of the mission, the executives described a number of characteristics of such leaders. Subsequent discussions, critical incident interviews, and written protocols collected from administrators and military officers in several countries and from diverse types of organizations eventually resulted in the development of a survey instrument, the multifactor leadership questionnaire. Initial and confirmatory factor analyses of responses to the measure revealed a reasonably stable factor structure that included seven leadership behavior factors that became the basis for the model. The factors fall into three categories of transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and nonleadership factors. Transformational Leadership Factors Charisma Charisma (idealized influence) reflects follower perceptions that the leader is extremely trustworthy and is capable of achieving an important vision. A sample item from this factor is, "Has my trust in his or her ability to overcome any obstacle." Inspirational Motivation This factor overlaps with charisma, but is conceptually and sometimes statistically distinct from it. This factor reflects the quality and emotional appeal of the leaders vision rather than the degree to which the rater identifies with leader. This factor is similar to Bennis and Nanus ( 1985) concept of "shared meaning" through which the follower is induced to share the leaders goal. A leader might be able to secure high levels of commitment from a subordinate to an inspiring vision, even if the leader is not seen as particularly gifted. Bass and Avolio ( 1993) compared the ability of the relatively less charismatic Lyndon Johnson and the more charismatic John Kennedy to elicit support for a visionary goal. Intellectual Stimulation Intellectual stimulation assesses the extent to which the leader both encourages the follower to question past ideas and supports the subordinate for thinking independently and creatively. Here we see a dramatic divergence from earlier charismatic models ( House, 1977; Weber, 1947) in which it is the leader, exclusively, who breaks with the past and thinks creatively for his or her followers, not with them. Clearly, this is charisma for a modern era in which follower needs include growth and independence as well as security and meaning. Individualized Consideration. This factor measures the degree to which the leader treats each follower in a way that is equitable and satisfying, but differentiated from the way other followers are treated. This concern is similar to both Hollanders ( 1978) emphasis on equitable exchanges and Graen and Scanduras ( 1987) recognition that dyadic exchanges vary within a single work unit. Another aspect of this factor is that the leaders behaviors raise the maturity of the subordinates needs by providing challenges and learning opportunities. Leadership and social distance The relationship between leadership and social distance is important. Different characteristics ascribe to `distant as opposed to `close/nearby leaders, with the former being described as possessing a more ideological orientation and a strong sense of mission, which can be expressed with rhetoric, courageously, and with little concern for personal criticism or sanction. There are, perhaps, echoes here of the earlier `Great man notions of leadership. In contrast, `nearby or `close leaders were seen as, `sociable, open and considerate of others, having a sense of humor, having a high level of expertise in their field, being dynamic and active, and as `having an impressive physical appearance, being intelligent or wise; they were also seen as `setting high performance standards for themselves and their followers, and being original or unconventional in their behavior. Characteristics such as `visionary, `charismatic or `transformational, which are the central theme in most of the US approaches, are similar to those of `distant leaders. The most recent validation studies of transformational leadership, as operationalized in the MLQ, identified one over-arching transformational factor of `inspirational leadership, or `charisma. The importance of social distance in relation to the attribution of `charisma in leaders has been a subject of debate. For some, social distance is a necessary condition for the attribution of charisma, since proximity might reveal their frailties, with their subordinates being unable to build `an aura of magic about them. Since charisma is a product of interpersonal relationships and can be attributed by an individual to their immediate supervisor, it is not the monopoly of top leaders in an organization. Given the prominence and importance of the association between `charisma, and being `visionary and `inspirational, to the concept of transformational leadership in the existing leadership literature, and the debate relating to social distance, our investigation was designed such that it illuminated how `nearby transformational leadership is perceived in the UK. Conclusions Although transformational leadership is usually treated as a separate and distinct, qualitatively different type of leadership, an argument can be made that many of the components of transformational leadership are present in other approaches. The sense of the leader as uniquely gifted and faithful to an important mission fits well with idiosyncrasy credit notions in which leader legitimacy is based, in part, on the leaders competency to accomplish group goals and his or her loyalty to those goals. The leaders ability to project a high level of self-confidence resembles the confidence in self and followers that was reported as a result of leadership match. The extent to which the leader motivates and challenges subordinates and helps them to grow intellectually as unique individuals is present in the emphasis on subordinate development in several theories, such as path-goal theory, situational leadership theory, and vertical dyad linkage theory. What is unique about the transformational perspective is the extent to which a transcendent vision is the source of motivation for followers and the degree to which followers can meld their personal identity with that mission. The power of the vision may emerge from a particular confluence of forces that include the leaders ability to articulate the vision clearly and compellingly and the followers special susceptibility to the message, which might be caused by aspects of the environment (e.g., dangerous and unpredictable times) or strong personal needs (e.g., for a sense of life purpose or identity). Reference: Jon P. Howell, 2005. Understanding Behaviors for Effective Leadership, 2/E., New Mexico State University. Dan L. Costley, New Mexico State University, Deceased. Publisher: Prentice Hall. Copyright: 2006. Steven L. McShane, Mary Ann Von Glinow, 1999. Organizational Behavior. Mcgraw-Hill College; Package edition. Read More