From Transactional to Transformational Leadership - Essay Example

Role of Leadership Course Name and Code Faculty Name Department Name Insert Your Name Insert Your Number Instructors Name 9 August 2009 Organisation main responsibility is to ensure that they fulfil the requirements that are carried by their mission and vision statements underlined by their general philosophy. Organisations come into being because of different requirements bringing people and individuals possessing different capabilities and behaviours. To succeed in their endeavours, organisation should have leaders who exhibit characteristics of good leadership. Generally, leadership is developed around getting results for the followers and the organisation. Thus, leaders will be accepted and appreciated if they can provide results without determining the strategies that have been used (Bass 1997). Thus, the aim of this paper is to discuss the role of leadership, and bringing into consideration the similarities and differences between transactional and transformational leaders. One major role for a leader is to ensure that they increase the value of stakeholders e.g. increases in profits or payment of dividends. Moreover, the stakeholders such as the employees, shareholders, customers, employees and suppliers should be satisfied and failure may result in a leader being in trouble. An effective leader should understand the environment in which the organisation operates. A leader should envisage what is happening, able to see opportunities and to see threats before they occur. Leaders should be strategic analysers using past information (mistakes and successful strategies) resulting into the development of future effective strategies. Opportunities are impacted by the requirements of micro and macro environment, and thus leaders should create complex interactions to ensure that the opportunities are maximised will the threats are minimised (Burns 1978). Moreover, leaders should formulate and implement winning strategies. Organisations obtain profits through creating value for the customer. A leader should understand and correlate the ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ of the organisation in ensuring that the aims of the organisation are achieved. Strategies that have been formulated may be successful or winning but extent of success is determined by the way that these strategies are implemented. During the implementation phase, a leader should ensure that the strategies align to the requirements of the organisation, and ensure that performance management is guaranteed. Thus, formulation of the strategies and implementation should be ensured and this likely determines the capability of an effective leader (Hiebert and Klatt 2001). Leaders should be able to monitor results and make appropriate adjustments to these strategies. Effective leaders should understand that it is hard to find a perfect strategy that is executed flawlessly. Thus, leaders should understand these imperfections and thus should lay down strategies of monitoring outcomes systematically and thoroughly, at the same time being prepared to make appropriate adjustments or to change completely the strategies. Complexities may make the requirement of changing or altering the strategy such as legislations or competitor’s change of approach towards providing value to the customers. Thus, effective leaders usually are supposed to understand the frailty of strategic plans, they understand that they can make adjustments mid-course or they may completely change into embracing superior solutions (Hiebert and Klatt 2001). Generally, the leaders should be everywhere when the implementation period occurs and determining the reason why some customers did not buy for the second time a product, why they view the organisation with scepticism and develop strategies to rectify these shortcomings. Leaders should be able to develop and implement organisation requirements for a short and long term simultaneously. The leader should understand the happenings in the environment to determine the type of measures and strategies that should be taken to ensure sustainability; for example decreasing costs not only for short term but also for long term strategic goals. Nevertheless, apart from the consideration the leader provides to the organisation, the leader should understand that the employees are the major assets of the organisation and thus should be motivated towards contributing into the success of the organisation. An effective leader should have certain qualities that ensure that the success of the organisation balances with the abilities and requirements of the employees. A leader should be able to persuade, influence, and bring all the employees into a coherent form to ensure that the organisation goals and objectives are achieved. This means that a leader should have good communication skills, ability to organise the teams and coming together to ensure that the goals are achieved (Schyns and Meindl 2006). A leader should understand different people views or view something differently and thus requires understanding of their views. Therefore, a leader should listen to different views and propositions in fulfilling certain missions and hence the leaders should be versatile. A leader’s personal qualities should be emulated e.g. courtesy, punctuality and trustworthiness. This will provide the leader will easiness in organising, planning and specifying duties and ensuring that inter and intra personal conflicts are prevented (Schyns and Meindl 2006). Moreover, a leader should motivate the employees utilising appropriate mechanisms in ensuring that the requirements of the organisation are achieved. Leaders should define and lay down guidelines that ensure appropriate motivational strategies are factored into the organisation; strategies such as rewarding and recognition. These motivational strategies should put into consideration employees individual needs and ensuring that motivational strategies are successful (Miner 2005). To achieve and fulfil their roles, leaders usually embrace different types of leadership theories. These leadership theories revolve on behaviour, transformation, trait, charisma and situations. Each of these leadership theories and models has their own cons, pros, limitations and assumptions. Transactional and transformational leadership are some of the examples of theories that are common and applicable to daily management of organisations. Transactional leadership is determined by the relationship between the leaders and followers and is usually associated with rewards and punishments to reach the deserved goals. On the other hand, transformational leadership in creating valuable and positive changes to their followers (Goethals and Sorenson 2006). Transformational leaders try to ensure that the employee appreciates each other, encourages harmonious working and morale. From these definitions, these two theories have similar and different ideologies in accomplishing leadership requirements. Transactional leadership is based on the relationship between the followers and the leaders as a two way process in term of exchange and mutual influence. The leaders accumulate power through their personalities and positions but their authority is controlled by the expectations of follower’s expectations. Transformational leadership initiates relationship that raises followers’ expectations of motivation and morality. Hence, transformational leadership induce images of extraordinary individuals while transactional leadership conjures managerial image. Moreover, the transactional leaders do not change the ideologies, norms, belief and language of the organisation; maintaining status quo but the transformational leaders change the culture of the organisation through introducing new goals and beliefs. Additionally, the transformative leaders trust their subordinates and give them space to breathe and develop (Goethals and Sorenson 2006). However, the similarities are to ensure that the organisation is successful through achieving the required goals and objectives. Each approach tries to ensure that the employees are motivated and thus resulting in high esteem contributing towards the success of the organisation. Generally, leadership is an important requirement in any organisation. The requirements of leaders include bringing together employees with different views into ensuring that the organisation achieves its goals. Some of the roles that are played by leaders include formulating and implementing strategies, brining together resources that are an organisation and developing frameworks of gauging the outcomes. Moreover, the leaders should ensure that they have good personal qualities that can be embraced by other staff, which include communication skills, trustworthiness and punctuality. Leadership can be viewed in terms of theories in which some of the theories are the transactional and transformation leadership. Translational leadership is build on leaders and employees exchanging rewards and punishments while transformational leadership is changing the approach that employees have with each other and the general operation of the organisation. References Bass, BM (1997) From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. New York: Prentice Hall Publishers. Burns, J.M. 1978, Leadership. New York. Harper & Row. Goethals, G. and Sorenson, G., 2006, The Quest for a General Theory of Leadership. New York: Edward Elgar Publishers. Hiebert, M. and Klatt, B., 2001, The Encyclopaedia of Leadership. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishers. Miner, J. 2005, Organisational Behaviour I, New York: M.E. Sharpe Publishers. Schyns, B. and Meindl, J., 2006, Implicit Leadership Theories, London: IAP Read More