Transformational Leadership in American Organizations - Dissertation Example

 Transformational Leadership in American Organizations Respected Sir, A new model of leadership that has gained everyone’s attention in the 21st century is that of the transformational leadership. This model is basically a paradigm of leadership. The simplest definition of transformational leadership is that it is the kind of leadership that stimulates and inspires followers to achieve extraordinary feats, as the leader himself develops his leadership capacity. In other words, the impetus of leadership is twofold; one is achieving extraordinary task and number two development of a leader. This kind of leadership differs from other theories of leadership that are transactional in nature. In transactional leadership, leaders attain the desired outcome through social exchange which is not the case with transformational leadership. Hence, in this type of leadership, the leader relies totally on his leadership prowess rather than using social exchange which enables him to lead others. (Bass and Riggio, 2005) Figure 1: The Model of Transformational Leadership Source: Yukl, 2009 As explained in the above diagram, transformational leadership is about first thinking and understanding the problem. It is also about thinking, understanding and setting the goals for employees which are challenging but can be achieved through persistent hard work and effort. This is important because without the challenging goals, employees or workers wont be motivated to extend their full effort. This achievement of challenging goals helps the leader to develop his leadership qualities and makes him better equipped to achieve hard tasks. Transformation leadership is also about talking and listening to what other people are saying. This is important as it leads to pooling of greater number of ideas which allows the transformation leader to choose the best alternative and to achieve his goals most efficiently and effectively. A transformational leader is someone who is not afraid to innovate and experiment new ideas. This is really helpful in curbing the resentment among employees and to adopt a participative decision making approach. A transformational leader is also not rigid. He is someone who is willing to learn and as a result he can help the employees with his intellectual stimulation and motivate them through inspirational motivation. (Robbins and Judge, 2008) The major components of transformational leadership include intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation and idealized influence. All of these components play an important part in the work place which is ridden by problems such as employee dissatisfaction, poor performance and low morale. In our case, as the honorable committee knows that we are also facing some problems in the assembly line and there is resentment among the controlling manager, I can recommend him to change his leadership style which can have beneficial impact on the workers. This will not only be helpful in leading the employees will be in a more effective way but will also develop the leadership qualities of the manager. (Bushard, 2010) Transformational leadership allows the people in charge to challenge the status quo and allow subordinates to innovate and experiment that energizes their effort. This style of leadership does not only identify the problem, but also provides the alternatives which are useful in solving the problem. This is summed under the intellectual stimulation component. This type of leadership is really necessary for our organization as employees have expressed their discomfort with their current supervisor. The major complaint against the supervisor was that he was too rigid to allow change. In fact, he did not like people innovating and even if their effort yielded good results, he wanted them to go by the rules of the book. Therefore, employees had no option but not innovate. These leads to boredom and employees have started openly criticizing the way their immediate supervisor is leading them. I would like to suggest, to the honorable HR committee here that a transformational leadership approach can help solve the problem. This will allow the workers to innovate and go about doing things in more innovative fashion. This would not only be more encouraging for the workers, but, it will also be more profitable for the firm, as the innovation will be carried out by people who are closer to the action. This can be very handy for the entire firm, if this helps us into reducing costs and becoming more efficient. Therefore, I would like to suggest that the supervising manager should immediately change his style of controlling people and start leading them in a way which encourages intellectual stimulation and innovation as this will solve the problem of dissatisfaction among employees, and save the firm from impending conflict. (Ricketts, 2009) The empirical research also shows that another very important aspect of the transformational leadership is the idealized influence. It is a name given to level to trust that people have in their managers of supervisors. It is transformational leadership that builds and maintains mutual trust among the employees and their supervisor. In transformational leadership, workers are given more autonomy and more voice in the decision concerning them. This makes them feel important and they start feeling that their superiors care about them. This builds a harmonious relationship between employees and top management. In this case, as we are told that employees are not very happy with their immediate supervisor, a transformational leadership approach can be used as a means of bridging the gap between employees and their immediate manager. In order to create an atmosphere of trust, the manager can give the workers more autonomy, interacts with them more and create a situation of idealized influence in order to remove and misconceptions. This will solve the problem of lack of trust among the employees and their immediate controlling manager. (Ladino, 2008) As I have also heard that the employees are also low on motivation level and their desire and intensity towards their work is diminishing due to their lack of trust in their supervisor. I would like the supervisor to clearly convey the vision to employees, what he wants them to achieve and where they stand at the moment. This will tell these employees, how much more effort they need to put in to achieve not only their personal goals, but also the goals of their department and organization as a whole. In order to achieve these goals, the supervisor can allow them to innovate and work in a way which is more productive and beneficial for both the organization and the firm. Transformational leadership will also develop the leadership capacity of this supervisor, as he will achieve a target in the given timeframe. This will grow him in his leadership capacity and HR department can use him at different levels, giving him further complicated tasks which will be beneficial for the both the person and the organization. It will also be good for the HR department as they will then be saved from the time and expense of external recruitment, which can be more painful than promoting a person who is already working in the organization and knows the culture of the organization and what does the organization expects from him. As we are aware, that we are an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate in the recruitment policies. As a result, we are a team of diverse people, each performing his utmost best to turn the organization to the best and most profitable organization. However, in the recent years, the things are not as sweet as they are deemed to be. I have reports of various conflicts among the assembly line workers. The thing which is very disturbing is that most of these conflicts occurred between people of different ethnic identities. This can turn into a grave problem if quick and prompt action is not taken. I would like to state, that our organization does not in any way support ethnic or cultural identities. The only conflict that our organization supports is the conflict among workers to become the best, to become the master in what they do and to become the most productive employee in the organization. We consider all other conflicts as useless and futile and we really despise cultural conflicts. However, I believe that the approach involving transformational leadership can solve this problem. The best way to resolve these conflicts is that our supervisor needs to show more individualized concern to his subordinates. As we know that every human being is different from other, our immediate supervisors should acquaint themselves with the workers more and treat people the way he wants to be treated. They should not show any signs of favoritism to any worker, which might enhance the conflict and worsen the situation. A good way to deal with these conflicts will be treat people in way that gives them the maximum satisfaction or reducing their discomfort. Therefore, I urge the honorable board, to issue notices to all our supervisors giving them clear instruction in black and white to take into account the attitude and mindset of the people before taking any decision. The best way to treat the people is the way they want to be treated with. I would also take the opportunity to urge all our supervisors and controlling staff to show individualized concern for our employees, this will take the pressure off them, will provide them more satisfaction, and as a result we can expect them to more productive and to extend their full effort for the company’s work. (Rouche, 1989) However, this style of leadership can also have some weakness and hence our supervisors will have to be very careful in order to make sure that disadvantages of transformational leadership do not outweigh its advantages. The major disadvantage of this type of leadership is that the leader can lose the control of workers and they can go out of control. If the employees are allowed to innovate too much, there can instances of discipline violations and unethical practices. This is really bad, as this puts the reputation of the organization at stake and can lead to bad name of the organization if the employees are not controlled well enough or if the vigilance over autonomous employees is weak. Similarly, transformation leadership ask for individualized concern for different worker. This can create misconception and some employees may think that they are not being treated as well as their colleagues and this can lead to conflicts and fights among the workers working in the same department or product line. The other problem with transformational leadership is inspirational motivation. Inspirational motivation can turn into a problem when employees always look at their leader for inspiration and the leader fails to inspire them. This will be a big problem as it may lead to disruption of work and employees may rationalizing their lack of effort and may not strive to achieve more. Therefore, I would like to put it to the honorable HR committee that an out and out approach of transformational leadership is not acceptable and this style of leadership only works where there is strong vigilance and worker’s control is effective. (Carver, 1989) In the end of this report, we can safely conclude from the above discussion that one way of solving all the problems that are prevailing among the assembly line is by changing the style of leadership that the supervisors are currently using. I recommend all the immediate supervisors to start following the transformational leadership in order to control the resentment of worker and to make them more productive and to improve their morale which will better for the entire organization and leads towards more harmonious and productive work environment. However, as discussed and before, there needs to be effective control over worker if this style is to be successful. There needs to be strong vigilance of employees, strict quality control to make sure that increased productivity is not at the cost of decreased quality. Employees are also need to be regularly told who their leader is and they also need to be checked to make sure any ethnic conflicts do not occur. (2000 Words) SECTION B: To: THE HR COMMITTEE From: Type your name here Dated: July 14, 2010 Subject: RECOMMENDATION ON DEALING WITH RESISTANCE TO CHANGE Respected Sir(s), I would like to foretell the respected HRD committee that changing to transformation leadership might not be a very easy process, and the HR committee may face resistance from both the employees and supervisors to in the implementation of the system. However, this is not something to be scared of; we just need to know the proper techniques of dealing with this resistance if we are to effectively implement the system of transformational leadership as part of our organization behavior and culture. (Patti, 2000) In the first step, we might face resistance from the supervisors when trying to implement this system. This resistance will occur due to the fact that the supervisors might not be very knowledgeable about transformational leadership. Many of them will be hearing the term first time, while other may be wary about the practicality of the system. However, this is resistance can be ended quickly, if we tackle the problem, using proper techniques and equipment. In the first stage, we need to take them into confidence by telling them even if they do not know about the new system their jobs are safe. In the second step, we need to use various training programs to acquaint them with transformational leadership to make sure that they do not fear their lack of knowledge as a possible reason to lose the job. This training should cover their other misconception about the new systems. It should be focused to tell them that they will not lose control of the employees and their authority will not diminish as a result. Instead, they should be told benefits of the programme and should also be told about what needs to be done if they think they are losing control and should be given them tips on making that they are more vigilant and do not lose control of employees. (Russell, 1996) The other form of resistance will come from workers who might also think that the new system is going to reduce their voice in the organization. They also need to be told the benefits of the new system. This will be particularly important in regaining their trust and employees will not fear the new system. However, they also need to be told that their jobs are safe and nothing drastic is going to happen which may diminish their performance and lead to bad result or performance. (Huffman, 1998) In the end of this report, we can safely conclude that the most important thing to handle the resistance to change is by taking both the supervisors and employees into confidence. This should encourage them to participate more actively in the system and will make sure that the system does not flop, but instead it should take the organization towards new heights and streamline the processes with the organization. This will be beneficial in the organization making progress and improving the quality and productivity of workers. (500 Words) References: 1. Bass, Bernard and Riggio, Ronald. (2005). Transformational Leadership. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 2. Yukl, Gary. (2009). Leadership in Organizations. Prentice Hall 3. Robbins, Stephen and Judge, Timothy. (2008). Organizational Behavior. Prentice 4. Bushard, Andrew. (2010). Intellectual Stimulation. Retrieved on 14 July 2010. http://www.orgsites.com/mn/fwt/_pgg2.php3 5. Ricketts, Kristina G. (2009). Community of Leadership Development. University of Kentucky. “Translating Leadership Theory in to Practice. 6. Ladino, Ryan J. (2008). FOLLOWERSHIP:A Literature Review of a Rising Power Beyond Leadership 7. Rouche, John. (1989). Transformational Leadership in American Community Colleges. ERIC 8. Carver, Deborah. (1989). Transformational Leadership. Retrieved on July 14, 2010. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/187/carver8.pdf?sequence=1 9. Hathaway, Patti.(2000). Resistance to Change. Retrieved on July 14, 2010. http://www.winstonbrill.com/bril001/html/article_index/articles/451-500/article495_body.html 10. Russell, Tobin. (1996). Overcoming Resistance to Change. Hugh Murray. 11. Huffman, Ken.(1998). Making Change Irresistible. Davies-Black Publishing Read More