Transformational Leadership Effectiveness - Essay Example

Leadership Analytical Paper Your al Affiliation Introduction Leadership effectiveness refers to the extent to which a leader’s actions produce results (Colquitt et al., 2015 p. 466). An effective leader‘s achievements in terms of achieving goals is evaluated on the basis of the performance and overall well-being of his team. Such goals include: productivity, costs, retention and so on. The leader is regarded as highly effective if he achieves great results continuously even in the face of challenges. It is quite difficult to differentiate and understand the characteristics and behaviors of a highly effective leader from an effective leader. You can identify whether someone is an effective leader or not while working with them, however, it is not easy even for effective leaders themselves to specify the attributes that make them so effective. I’ve had the privilege of working with an effective leader, named Dr. Dan, at the very beginning of my medical career. His leadership style was an integration of transformational leadership, exceptional skills, and his dynamic personality. I believe his leadership style not only inspired me at the workplace, but his influence will always stay with me for the rest of my life. Due to his highly effective leadership, he was not only revered in the organization he ran, but throughout the professional medical circles. The objective of this research paper is to analyze and investigate transformational leadership as a framework of highly effective leadership, with DR. Dan as my exemplary leader. I’ll apply my transformational leadership framework to the performance of Dr. Dan. I’ll conclude this research paper with a brief summary about highly effective leadership, in addition to the facts that I found interesting and surprising. Moreover, I’ll list the factors that have limited my ability to undertake a thorough and unbiased analysis of the leader of my choice. After my concluding remarks, I’ll reflect back on my own leadership style, its strengths and weaknesses, and the ways to improve it. Moreover, I’ll discuss the results of various self-assessments I completed throughout this course. Last but not the least, I’ll discuss the lessons I learnt during the research project as a current or future leader/manager. Transformational Leadership as my leadership choice Transformational leadership is an effective style of leadership that can be easily distinguished from traditional style, called transactional leadership. According to Yul (1999), transformational leadership refers to the practice of leadership that inspires team members and employees to rise above self interest and focus on the organization and its goals. Mackenzie et al. (2001) stress that it is a style of leadership that motivates employees through an exchange process, and this process involves extrinsic rewards, rules, and compliance. Therefore, transformational leadership influences the behavior of employee in long-term, by doing so, it increases internal motivation in exchange of extrinsic incentives that motivate only when employees are awarded, however, it does not happen frequently. As a result, these leaders appeal workers and influence their higher order needs, such as, self actualization (Srithongrug, 2011). Due to their exceptional practices, transformational leaders are considered to achieve greater success in leadership effectiveness as compared to other leaders (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Considering their influence and transforming abilities, I’ve selected transformational leadership as my leadership choice for a highly effective leader. Theoretical Framework  In order to analyze and understand why some leaders are more effective than others, we have to analyze transformational leadership style within the broader context of leadership styles and behaviors. The idea of effective leadership encompasses everything that a leader practices in order to ensure that every goal of an organization is met. In this section, I’ll analyze the broader concept of leadership styles and behaviors where transformational leadership, or to me, highly effective leadership exists. In addition, I’ll summarize main leadership concepts, theories and ideas as discussed in Colquitt, Lepine, and Wesson’s Organizational Behavior: Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace. Furthermore, I’ll define a few major ideas which include: power, tactics, influence, organizational politics, approaches to conflict, leader-member exchange or relationship, traits, decision making styles, time driven model, and transformational versus transactional leadership. Power Power refers to the ability to influence people’s behavior while resisting their unwanted influence in return. Leaders with power can influence their employees and other stake holders greatly. Transformational leadership must have power to turn supporters into leaders, those who can use their charisma and power to create blind followers. Influence Influence is defined as the use of an actual behavior that leads to behavioral or attitudinal change among others. As it will be shown later in the research paper, having influence is one of the four dimensions of transformational leadership (Judge and Piccolo, 2004). The first and foremost measurement of a transformational leader’s performance is analyzed in terms of his influence on his followers/employees. These leaders depend on various influencing tactics to ensure behavioral and attitudinal change on others. The most effective persuasion tactics of leaders include: rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, consultation, and collaboration. Collaboration is the most frequently used tactic by transformational leaders in which both, leader and followers, work together to influence and maximize the outcomes or achieve the desired goal. Organizational Politics It refers to the individuals’ actions which are directed towards serving and furthering their own interests instead of that of organization. A leader has to be able to push and influence employees and other leaders with his or her ideas through the use of organizational politics. Such need is supported by recent research study conducted by Treadway and his fellow researchers. They assert that, to be effective, it is critical for leaders to have some degree of political skill (Treadway, 2005). Approaches to Conflict According to Colquitt et al. (2015) conflicts emerge when two or more individuals perceive that their goals or interests are in opposition (p.441). Conflict and politics is intertwined since the pursuit of someone’s own interests and gain is often breeds conflict among others’ or that of organization. In order to resolve these conflicts, leadership can use five different ways that are appropriate in different circumstances. These five ways can be viewed as a combination of two different factors. Firstly, how assertive a leader chose to be in order to pursue his goal, and secondly, how cooperative a leader is with regard to the concerns of others. The five ways to resolve conflicts include: Competing (high assertiveness, low cooperation) The competing way is most effective in the situations where leader knows that he or she is right, and quick decision is required. It takes high level of assertiveness and low levels of cooperation since the leader is well-aware of the details and outcomes. Avoiding (low assertiveness, low Cooperation) Avoiding way is not effective since it does not resolve the conflict in the first place. Moreover, it yields unfavorable outcomes for everyone involved. Accommodating (low assertiveness, high cooperation) Accommodating way is used when the conflict is not worth anything for leaders, but at the same time, very important to the other party. It is the time to show high levels of cooperation with the other party involved. Compromise (moderate assertiveness, moderate cooperation) Compromise is a frequently used form of conflict resolution that involves give-and-take. It is easy way to resolve a complex conflict which not only maintains relationship between parties, but also yields favorable evaluation for the leader. Collaboration (high assertiveness, high cooperation) Collaboration is the most effective form of conflict resolution since it yields best outcomes and favorable reactions from both parties. In this way, leader influences others to take action for the collective good rather than one’s own interests. According to leader-member exchange theory, leader and member relationship develops gradually on a dyadic basis (Colquitt et al., 2015 p. 464). The theory describes that new leader and employee relationship is generally marked by a role taking phase. During this phase, manager assigns certain role and informs the employee about expectations, and the employee tries to fulfill the assigned role and meet the expectations through his or her job behaviors. In the stage of sampling and experimentations, the leader tries to identify the talent and motivation levels of the employee. In case of some employees, role taking phase may finally be supplemented by role making phase. During this phase, employee’s expectations for the dyad blend in with leader’s expectations. During role making phase, there is a free flowing exchange in which leader provides employee with extended opportunities and resources, and employee contributes with more efforts and required performance. A highly effective leader establishes an in-depth leader-member exchange relationship on dyadic basis through this role taking and role making process (Graen, & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Trait refers to the ‘recurring regularities’ or trends in employee’s behaviors and reactions to their environment (Colquitt et al., 2015, p.278). While we are analyzing leadership and its effectiveness, it is absolutely critical to find the answer to an old age question, rather statement that “leaders are born, not made.” The early researches on this quest focused more on physical features of leaders, such as, gender, height, physical attractiveness`, charisma, and enthusiasm. On the other hand, modern research focused more directly on capability and personality. With an extensive body of a century old literature, leadership scholars believe that we cannot generalize the profile of an effective leader, in particular, from a trait perspective (Zaccaro, 2007). Most research studies revealed that traits are more predictive of the emergence of a leader (the one who becomes the leader) rather than the effectiveness of leader (how influential a leader turns out). The same is true for transformational leadership where traits are not predictive of this leader’s effectiveness. Decision-making styles identify and describe the way a leader decides as opposed to what he decides. There are a number of styles in which leaders make decisions. Starting from a high leader control and moving to high follower control, these ways are: autocratic, consultative, facilitative, and delegative (Colquitt et al., 2015 p. 278). The most critical dimension of a leader’s decision making is the consideration of whether leader decides for him or her frequently, or he or she involves others in the process of decision making. In the delegative style, leader grants an individual or a group of employees with the authority of taking decision within some sort of specified conditions. In facilitative style, leader presents the problem in front of the group of employees and asks for agreement on certain solution, in doing so; leader makes sure that his or her own opinion of the resolution gets no more attention than anyone else. Consultative decision making refers to the act in which leader presents the problem in front of other individual or group of employees and asks for their opinions and suggestions before finally making the decision himself/herself. Autocratic style leader takes decision on his own, without any kind of consultation from the individual or group of employees. It is evident that employee’s participation and involvement in the decision making process leads to greater employee satisfaction at job (Miller & Monge, 1986). Time-driven model of leadership is an extensive guide that offers advice to leaders on effective management of their choice of decision making styles among other factors to consider during decision making process (Colquitt et al., 2015, pp. 469-471). This model suggests that there are seven factors that work together to make one decision making style more effective than other in any particular situation. These factors include: decision significance, leaders expertise, shared objectives, teamwork skills, importance of commitment, likelihood of commitment, and employee expertise. Vroom (2000) argues that today’s leadership must shift their focus from autocratic, consultative, facilitative, and delegative and rather concentrate on the combination of these seven factors for effective decision making in any given situation. From transformational leadership research studies, it is evident that it is composed of four major dimensions (Caillier, 2014). First is the idealized influence in which leader stresses a collective vision and earns respect and recognition from members through his or her actions. Second is inspirational motivation in which leader demonstrate high expectations, and therefore, challenge and inspire employees to accomplish certain roles and responsibilities. The third one is individualized consideration refers to the situation when leadership provides special attention to either all or some specific employee’s (in need or capability of achievement) by working as a coach or mentor. The last component is intellectual stimulation in which leaders encourage rational thought process; challenge the status quo; and it finally leads to creativity and innovation (Bass & Riggio, 2006). In traditional transactional methods, leadership stresses “carrot-and-stick” approaches to motivate its members. There are three dimensions of transactional leadership which include: contingent reward, administration by exception-active and by exception-passive. Contingent reward refers to the point where a leader establishes constructive exchange or deal with members. Moreover, the leader establishes the expectations to be met and the rewards in case of succeeding. In most cases, management by exception refers to the extent to which leader takes counteractive measurements that depend on the outcomes of leader-member transaction (Judge & Ronald, 2004). Howell and Avolio (1993) observed that the difference between management by exception-active and management by exception-passive is inherent in the leadership’s intervention timings. The active leaders adopt a proactive approach where they monitor employee behavior, anticipate conflicts, and take corrective steps before it’s too late to take action. On the other hand, passive leader does not take action and wait until small problems becomes conflicts. Transformational leadership is considered to have a strong positive influence on the level of employee commitment. Employees with such leadership are inclined to possess higher levels of Affective Commitment and Normative Commitment for their organization (Meyer et al., 2002). It means that employees feel and exhibit stronger emotional connection with their organization which, thus translates into a stronger sense of responsibility to be present and productive at work. It is important to observe that why it happens. Judge and Piccolo (2004) observed that employees with transformational leadership experience higher levels of job satisfaction as compared to other employees. For instance, members of transformational leader’s team feel more optimistic and less frustrated during the workday which enhances their commitment to the working terms and performance. In this way, transformational leadership influences performance in a moderately positive way. Moreover, these employees exhibit higher levels of Task Performance and become involved in Citizenship Behavior. It is because these employees have higher levels of motivation as compared to other employees (Colquitt et al., 2015, p. 484). Due to heir higher levels of motivation, they feel empowered and self-confident; therefore, they set and accept more challenging roles and responsibilities. Furthermore, they strongly trust their leader which translates into enhanced input from them regardless of the fact that they are rewarded immediately nor not. According to Effelsberg et al (2014) a negative aspect of transformational leadership is that employees may adopt unethical ways to promote organization’s accomplishment. Transformational leadership has this inherent quality that influence employees and members to rise above their personal interest and serve “the greater good” (Bass, 1998, p. 41).However, while emphasizing on greater good, the extent and limits for external stakeholders and rest of the world remains ambiguous. It is because the “good” for organization and its internal stakeholders can confront with the “good” for others, such as, external stakeholders or community at large. Some activities may prove beneficial and profitable for organization, but practicing them is unethical, thus damaging for the real “greater good”, for instance, bribery, false accounting, hiding product defect, and concealing environmental pollution. Contingency factors are internal or external elements that affect organization’s overall design. Both transactional and transformational leadership is influenced by these contingency factors (Colquittet al., 2015, p. 511). Any average company has an excessive number of contingency factors that influence its overall design, such as, people, size, strategy, and technology. In addition, these factors play critical role in structural decisions and formation of contingency theory. A class of behavioral theory, Contingency theory argues that there is no best possible way to lead accompany or to run an organization. It explains that the best course of action is defined by the factors that influence an organization which, of course, are diverse in nature. Leadership must be able to identify the problem, and apply best possible solution in accordance to their organizational design, and improve decision making. An analysis of Dr. Dan as a transformational leader Dr. Dan returned to his third world country after graduating from Howard University, he completed specialization in General Surgery. In the beginning, he started working with government; however, he soon realized that there is a lot of corruption there. After a lot of his efforts in vein, he requested early release which was granted. Then, he started his own private practice with an ambition to provide best medical facilities to people of his city and others as well. As a result of his determination and diligent quest for excellence, his hospital became the most renowned one not only in city, but in the country. The hospital has sixteen physicians at moment who cure hundreds of patients. Due to the dynamic leadership and management of Dr. Dan, the hospital is recognized by the American Organization of Blue Hospital and Cross-Blue Shield. The later is a U.S. based insurance company that allows patients from outside U.S. hospital to obtain inpatient and outpatient medical care in United States. Despite strong and renowned international competitors, the hospital won the contract to provide medical services to people at oil pipeline projects. It is remarkable that a man from third world country raised an institution to a level of excellence that competed and won with international organization. He achieved this excellence because he was a transformational leader. We can easily apply four dimensions of transformational leadership to Dr. Dan. Idealized Influence Firstly, Dr. Dan has strong influence on those who idealize him for his efforts and leadership. They considered him the one who brought new standards and skills to the country and aspire to be a part of his venture. Moreover, influenced by Dr. Dan’s determination, they put their best efforts in making the hospital a success. Second Inspirational Motivation Dr. Dan motivated his employees and fellows because of his charismatic leadership. Under his influence, they took inspired actions to serve the “greater good” of organization, in particular, and hospital, in general, in its true sense. He served as a true torch bearer of a higher cause that raised the level of confidence and trust among employees. Intellectual Stimulation Dr. Dan asserted that the hospital’s mission is huge. His higher levels of ethics and standards provided meaningful work that created a sense of purpose in the mind of every employee. It motivated employees and inspired their higher brain. Dr. Dan encouraged creativity by questioning status quo and commonly prevalent beliefs and assumptions in the profession. It created higher levels of association and standards of the organization. Individual Consideration In addition to working towards collective benefit of the organization, Dr. Dan responded to individual needs of his employees, fellow leaders, and supporters. While concentrating on individual employee’s needs and capability for accomplishment, Dr. Dan achieved remarkable performance and productivity level. He is the true transformational leader, who instilled the higher levels of performance, motivation levels, morale, and devotion of employees, leaders, and followers alike. With all of his brilliance, Dr. Dan’s lack of business objectives in comparison to his philanthropic aspiration became a hurdle in actualizing his full potential. He was immensely generous as he never refused to cure any patient who was unable to pay the bills. Very often, he used to personally cancel the bills of those who were extremely poor. In other cases, he was known for reducing the bills to an affordable level. He provided personal support for underprivileged and deprived groups of society, in particular, orphans and street children. His humanitarianism is highly appreciated and regarded in his social and professional circle. His former secondary school has dedicated a building of library after his name. It is an eloquent testimony of Dr. Dan’s services for humanity and his leadership. Dr. Dan is the one leader that influenced me and my professional career. He taught me what it means to be a leader and transform the world around. Conclusions The role of a highly effective leader is never-ending. It is an ongoing learning experience in which every step needs to follow the direction of meeting organizational goals. Effective leadership takes diverse action and decision making on personal and organizational level. The effective decision making include, right combination daily of behaviors and an optimal blend of Transactional and transformational behaviors. It is absolutely critical to understand various leadership concepts and theories in order to practice them, such as, power, organizational politics, influence tactics, approaches to conflict management, traits, decision making styles, leader member exchange, transactional and transformational leadership, and time driven model. Transactional leadership provides “carrot-and-stick” methods to motivate employees, on the other hand, transformational leadership instill a shared vision, and challenges them to reach a higher purpose that results in higher satisfaction and achievement. My choice of leadership is transformational since it achieves not only greater effectiveness, but also greater satisfaction. In my personal and professional life, I found Dr. Dan to be a highly effective and transformational leader. As a result of my observations, research and analysis, I will continue to focus on transformational leadership style while avoiding its unethical aspects. Reflections In my first week, I stated that my objective to pursue an MBA is to become an excellent leader in my field. I always find effective leadership as transforming. Therefore, my choice of leadership is transformational leadership because it jells quite well with my long-term goals and vision to improve society. The following is a reflection on the results of self assessments that I have completed during the course of this study: Core job characteristics Assessment: (Colquitt et al., 2015, p. 110). My Satisfaction Potential Score (SPS) of 210 implies that this job is satisfying and enjoyable for me. I consider this job to be a learning ground to identify and enhance my leadership skills which will always be with me in the realization of my full potential as a leader. My short term goal is associated with my current organization is to strengthen and improve it. Type A behavior pattern assessment: (Colquitt et al., 2015, p. 144) I scored 41 for this assessment which implies that I am type B person. The results completely agree with my personal opinion about me-an introvert type B. It is a fact that type A’s are more likely to become managers. However, introvert Type B personalities expresses their strengths by getting things done in a clear and firm manner, though they have to work harder to communicate that. It is believed that quiet leaders often transform their organizations by fighting with challenging situations and by keeping an eye on future needs and their fulfillment (Bradberry & Greaves, 2012). The meaning of money assessment (Colquitt et al., 2015, p. 175) The assessment revealed that I hold multidimensional views on money. I believe that money should be able to provide you with a comfortable life, in addition positively influencing people and community around you. My approach towards money clearly transcends any single faucet of money and it jells well with my choice of leadership- transformational leadership and my determination to make a change in society. Political Skills (Colquitt et al., 2015, p. 440) It is the ability and potential to understand various ways that influence and achieve personal and organizational objectives. This assessment analyzed two aspects, firstly, networking ability-an ability to identify and make contact, second, social astuteness- the ability to observe others’ behavior and understand and interpret from their behaviors. I scored 9 in networking abilities which is a below average score. Typically, a score of 18 and above is considered above average. For social astuteness, I scored 16 which are below average since a score above 19 is considered to be above average. My assessment revealed that I lack in both aspects of my political skills. The score is a clear revelation of my lack of trust on people. After my assessment, I realize that I’ve to work on this area of my expertise since it is vital for my path towards transformational leadership. Initiating structure and consideration (Colquitt et al., 2015, p. 473) This assessment test examined my performance in a leadership role. I scored 43 for initiating structure. The score that is higher than 38 indicates an active leader who plays a vital role in directing people while working in a group, in addition, planning, prioritizing, scheduling, and working on new ideas are certain other dimensions that such leaders explore. I scored a 39 for consideration. Typically, a score of 40 or more is considered high. So, it implies that I am prone to create a good working environment that exhibits strong two-way communication, and compassion for others in my team. However, it is critical for me to concentrate on improving this dimension of my leadership skills. Read More