The Definition of Transformational Leadership - Coursework Example

Transformational leadership The definition of transformational leadership is the kind of leadership that stimulates and inspires followers to achieve extraordinary goals and objectives, as the leader himself develops his leadership capacity. In other words, the impetus of leadership is twofold; one is achieving extraordinary task and 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 thinking and understanding the problem in an organization. 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 would not be motivated to extend their full effort to work. This achievement of challenging goals helps the leader to develop his leadership qualities and makes him better equipped to achieve hard tasks. Transformational leadership facilitates and redefines people’s vision and mission. It also renews people’s commitment and restructures their systems to accomplish a certain goal. Thus, it is a mutual relationship that stimulates and elevates follower to become leaders. In addition, it may also convert leaders to become moral agents. Transformational leadership should therefore be grounded on moral foundations. Transformational leadership has been renowned for fostering capacity development to bring higher personal level of commitment among followers in relation to the organizational objectives. For transformational leadership to take place, leaders must elevate and broaden interests for their employees. It may also occur after acceptance and awareness of purpose and mission for the specific group has been generated. The leaders may also stir his or her employees and look beyond self interests to cater for the group. Mutual capacity and commitment help in leading greater productivity and additional efforts. 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 this case, as the honorable committee is aware of the problems facing the organization. Therefore, it is recommendable that the manager should use his leadership style which can have beneficial impact on the workers by helping them to feel encouraged as they work (Bushard, 2010) Transformational leadership allows the people in charge to challenge the status quo and allow subordinates to innovate new ideas. 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 an organization as employees express their discomfort with their current supervisor without fear. 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. These leads to boredom and employees have started openly criticizing the way their immediate supervisor is leading them. It is suggested that the HR committee adopt transformational leadership approach to help in solving the problems. This will allow the workers to innovate and go about doing things in more innovative fashion which in turn will profit the firm. This can be very handy for the entire firm in that it helps in reducing costs. Therefore, it is advisable 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 which is simply the trust people have in their managers or leaders. Transformational leadership builds and maintains mutual trust among employees and their supervisor. In transformational leadership, workers are given more autonomy and voice in making decision concerning them. This makes them feel important since they their manager cares about them. This builds a harmonious relationship between employees and top management. In this case, 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 workers more autonomy, interact with them and create a situation of idealized influence eliminate misconceptions about their relationship with the management. This will solve the issue of lack of trust among employees and their immediate controlling manager (Ladino, 2008). Employee motivation is low thus affecting their commitment towards work. The management should convey the vision of the firm to employees by stating what the firm aims to achieve in the future. This will tell employees how much 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 should allow them to innovate and work in a way which is more productive and beneficial to the organization. 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. The firm should promote peaceful co-existence in that opportunities should be presented on equal basis without discrimination since the organization is comprised of people from diverse areas. However, in the recent years, the things are not as sweet as they are deemed to be in that there are reports of various conflicts among the assembly line workers. Most of these conflicts occurred between people of different ethnic identities. This can turn into a grave problem if a prompt action is not taken. The organization does not in any way support ethnic or cultural identities. The only conflict that the organization supports is the conflict among workers to become the best in the organization. The approach of transformational leadership can solve this problem since it calls for supervisor to show more individualized concern to his subordinates by understanding each employee of the organization. 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 is to treat people in way that gives them maximum satisfaction or reducing their discomfort. Therefore, the management should issue notices to all supervisors giving them clear instruction in black and white to take into account the attitude and mindset of the people before taking any decision. However, this style of leadership can also have some weakness therefore, supervisors should be 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. If the employees are allowed to innovate too much, there can be 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. Similarly, transformation leadership asks for individualized concern for different worker. This can create misconception and some employees may think that they are not being treated like 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 since they might not strive to work. Therefore, management should be aware that the approach of transformational leadership works where there is strong vigilance and worker’s control is effective (Carver, 1989). Summarily, it is rational to argue 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. It is recommended that all the immediate supervisors should start following the transformational leadership principles in order to control the resentment of worker, make them more productive and hence improve their morale which will improve the performance of the organization. There is need to effectively control workers if this style is to be successful. There should be strong vigilance of employees and strict quality control to make sure that increased productivity is not at the cost of decreased quality. Employees should be informed regularly who their leader is. SECTION B Name Course Instructor Date Recommendation on dealing with resistance to change It is recommended to the 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. However, this is not something to be scared of; there is need to know the proper techniques of dealing with this resistance if the organization needs to effectively implement the system of transformational leadership as part of our organization behavior and culture (Patti, 2000). In the first step, the organization 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 for the first time, while other may be wary about the practicality of the system. However, this resistance can be ended quickly if the organization tackles the problem using proper techniques and equipment. In the first stage, there is need to assure employees that with this new system their jobs will be safe. In the second step, there is need to use various training programs to acquaint them with transformational leadership skills to make sure that they do not fear their lack of knowledge as a possible reason to lose the job. This training should cover 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 (Russell, 1996). The organization should encourage supervisors to adapt to new system for the benefit of the organization and their own personal needs. Performance can be promoted through transformational leadership, charisma, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualized considerations. This leads to enormous changes in organizations and among individuals. This system is suitable in our current issues and culture. Thus, morality stands out as the shape of social institutions and varied cultures. References Bass, Bernard and Riggio, Ronald. Transformational Leadership. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. Print. Yukl, Gary. Leadership in Organizations. New York: Prentice Hall, 2009. Print. Robbins, Stephen and Judge, Timothy. Organizational Behavior. New York: Prentice, 2008. Print. Bushard, Andrew. (2010). Intellectual Stimulation. Retrieved 145 Feb 2012 from http://www.orgsites.com/mn/fwt/_pgg2.php3 Ricketts, Kristina G. Community of Leadership Development. University of Kentucky. “Translating Leadership Theory in to Practice. Kentucky: Wiley, 2009. Print. Ladino, Ryan J. Followership: A Literature Review of a Rising Power Beyond Leadership. Kindle Books, 2008. Print. Rouche, John. Transformational Leadership in American Community Colleges. Virginia: ERIC, 1989. Print. Carver, Deborah. Transformational Leadership. Retrieved 15 Feb 2012 from https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/187/carver8.pdf?sequence =1 Hathaway, Patti. Resistance to Change. Retrieved 15 Feb, 2012 http://www.winstonbrill.com/bril001/html/article_index/articles/451- 500/article495_body.html Russell, Tobin. Overcoming Resistance to Change. Washington, DC: Hugh Murray, 1996. Print. Huffman, Ken. Making Change Irresistible. New York: Davies-Black Publishing, 1998. Print. Read More