Transformational leadership

What is transformational leadership?

Transformational leadership is a type of leadership proposed by American political sociologist James McGregor Burns in his classic book "Leadership Theory" in the 1980s, following leadership trait theory, leadership behavior theory, and leadership contingency theory. Burns believes that traditional leadership can be called a contractual leadership, which means that within a certain system and institutional framework, leaders and followers always engage in continuous exchange. In the process of exchange, the leader's resource rewards (including tangible and intangible resource rewards) and the followers' obedience to the leader serve as conditions for exchange, and both parties complete the process of obtaining satisfaction under the constraint of a "tacit contract". The entire process is similar to a transaction, so traditional leadership is also known as transactional leadership. Transactional leadership encourages followers to appeal to their self-interest, but the process of exchange is premised on followers' obedience to the leader and does not generate a positive enthusiasm within the followers. The intrinsic motivation for their work is also limited, therefore, transactional leadership cannot bring greater progress to the organization.

Bernard M. Bass later further developed the concept of transformational leadership. His book (1985) Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations describes transformational leadership as having the following characteristics (Bass' theoretical exposition on transformational leadership is still regarded as the authoritative idea of business leadership today):

1. Transformational leadership emphasizes that leaders inspire members' work motivation and elevate their level of needs.
2. Transformational leadership values individualized care for members and their need for self actualization.
3. Emphasize guiding members to be willing to put in extra effort and exceed expected performance levels.
4. Emphasize changing or guiding high-quality organizational culture.
5. When leaders demonstrate their leadership philosophy and values, they use personal charm to attract members' sense of identification.
6. Leaders inspire their members to promote mutual growth and positive interaction between them and the organization.
7. In the process of organizational growth, it can also drive the growth of leaders and members.
8. Facilitate the improvement of organizational effectiveness and the self realization of leaders and members.

Specific content:

Overall, transformational leadership theory links the roles of leaders and subordinates, and attempts to create a process between leaders and subordinates that can enhance their motivation and moral standards. Leaders with transformational leadership optimize member interactions within the organization by setting an example of their own behavior and showing concern for the needs of subordinates. At the same time, by jointly creating and promoting the organizational vision, a transformative atmosphere is created within the organization, driving adaptive change in the process of efficiently achieving organizational goals.

Transformational leadership, as an important leadership theory, began with the classic work "Leadership" by political sociologist Burns. In his work, Burns describes a leader as an individual who can motivate followers to better achieve their goals, and defines transformational leadership as a leader who inspires higher-level needs or expands the needs and desires of subordinates by making them aware of the importance and responsibility of the tasks they undertake, so that subordinates can transcend personal interests for the team, organization, and greater political interests. Bass et al. initially divided transformational leadership into six dimensions, which were later summarized into three key factors. Avolio summarized the ways in which transformational leadership behavior occurs into four aspects: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Leaders who possess these factors typically have strong values and ideals, and they are able to successfully motivate employees to go beyond personal interests and work together towards the great goals of the team.

1. Idealized influence Idealized influence refers to behaviors that can generate trust, admiration, and following among others. It includes leaders becoming role models for subordinate behavior, gaining recognition, respect, and trust from subordinates. These leaders generally have recognized high ethical and moral standards and strong personal charm, and are deeply loved and trusted by their subordinates. Everyone agrees and supports the vision and planning he advocates, and has high expectations for his achievements in his career.
2. Inspirational motivation Leaders express their high expectations of their subordinates, motivate them to join the team, and become a part of the shared dreams within the team. In practice, leaders often use team spirit and emotional appeals to rally subordinates' efforts to achieve team goals. Thus, the job performance obtained is much higher than the performance generated by employees fighting for their own interests.
3. Intellectual stimulation It refers to encouraging subordinates to innovate and challenge themselves, including instilling new ideas, inspiring subordinates to express new insights, and encouraging subordinates to use new means and methods to solve problems encountered in work. By stimulating intelligence, leaders can inspire and change subordinates in the formation of consciousness, beliefs, and values.
4. Individualized consideration Personalized care refers to caring for every subordinate, valuing personal needs, abilities, and desires, patiently and attentively listening, and cultivating and guiding each subordinate differently based on their different situations and needs. At this point, transformational leaders are like coaches and consultants, helping employees grow while facing challenges.

The impact of transformational leadership on employees:

There is ample evidence to show that every factor of transformational leadership behavior, including leadership torque, intellectual motivation, and personalized consideration, is closely related to job performance and can predict employee job performance. In fact, transformational leadership behavior encourages subordinates to achieve difficult goals, solve problems from new and diverse perspectives, and promote employees' self-development. As a result of leadership influence, employees, driven by their commitment to their leaders and genuine work motivation, will work twice as hard based on their own level of development and the potential significance of achieving goals and completing tasks, ultimately leading to exceeding expected performance. That is to say, transformational leadership behavior can help subordinates achieve maximum performance by guiding them to go beyond self-interest and instilling common organizational values.

Transformational leadership behavior has a direct impact on employees' sense of organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. From a causal perspective, these indicators can predict employees' job performance. Koh et al. found that transformational leadership behavior of school leaders has no direct effect on students' academic performance, but it indirectly affects students' academic performance by influencing teachers' sense of organizational commitment. It can be inferred that there may be some buffering or mediating variables between transformational leadership behavior and performance. The research results of Podsakoff (1990) showed that subordinates' trust in their leaders as a mediating variable can better explain the impact of leadership charisma on employees' organizational citizenship behavior. Transformational leadership behavior has a direct impact on subordinates' perception of roles and task allocation, which subsequently affects subordinates' perception of the effectiveness of the leader. The effectiveness perception of transformational leaders depends on the leader's communication ability, as well as employees' perception of roles, task clarity, and communication openness in the process of achieving organizational goals.

How to become a successful transformational leader

The implementation of values management must lead to a change in corporate culture. The role of transformational leadership is indispensable.

In the process of implementing cultural change, people need to play different roles such as drivers, initiators, agents, promoters, and "customers", and manage the complex situation of the change process in their own unique ways.

The role of change leaders should not be underestimated. Every successful enterprise, regardless of its size or industry, has a truly transformative leader behind it.

Transformational leaders seamlessly integrate the three values in the three-dimensional model of value management by applying economic values at the organizational level, ethical values, and emotional development values within the organization.

In cultural change, the responsibility of leaders can be summarized as helping and prompting people to change their way of thinking and doing things at work. This type of person is often gradually familiarized and recognized by everyone, and becomes the best leader candidate, which is a long-term development process; Only a very small number of people possess this qualification and can achieve certain success.

In the process of organizational cultural change, to legitimize value management, leaders need to possess certain traits (bringing new ways of thinking and doing things under the guidance of value management), but these traits are not achieved overnight, but need to be gradually developed.

——At the level of personal development, a leader must adopt and defend the values that employees see as the lifeblood of the organization. They should be honest and transparent (keep their promises), have upright character, and be trustworthy. In the process of implementing value management, the credibility of leaders comes from clearly articulating their own and the organization's values.

He must get used to taking action without clear regulations and control systems. He must be able to survive in an environment of high uncertainty and significant risks. A leader must know how to evaluate and enhance the maturity of themselves, colleagues, and partners (maturity refers to the degree to which a person is willing and capable of taking responsibility for their actions and decisions). Mature leaders or managers must know how to help others survive in complex, uncertain, and ambiguous environments, and lead by example.

He must understand his strengths and weaknesses, objectively evaluate himself, and constantly reshape and improve himself. In case of conflict, they must know when and where to get help and communicate effectively with others. If personal temperament conflicts with professional interests, they must recognize and be able to control their personal temperament. Being honest with oneself, although painful, is also necessary.
In addition to sports, training and practice can also be used in professional activities to improve people's ability to adapt to the environment. This ability is closely related to people's confidence, self-esteem, and flexibility in learning.

When making decisions, there is often no time or need for long-term rational analysis. A key characteristic of a true leader is that they know when to trust their intuition, which often depends on personal experience.

As a transformational leader, this is a tough task. Not only does it require a lot of physical and emotional investment - often collapsing at critical moments - but it also requires perseverance and determination. Leaders not only need to set an example for their colleagues, but also like coaches, they must be ready to take on this job or responsibility and help employees grow if they are overwhelmed.

Leaders must also possess highly proficient interpersonal and public communication skills.
He also needs to have a strong ability to withstand pressure. If leaders are troubled by excessive pressure, the entire process of organizational change will also be affected.

However, they will be extremely excited by new challenges, seeing new environments and problems as opportunities to accumulate experience and learn, and confident in their ability to reverse unfavorable situations, change strategies or policies to fully leverage their strengths.

——In terms of perspective, he needs to explore qualities. If he doesn't want to maintain the status quo, he must dare to try things outside of his job scope. Leaders need to have a genuine interest in everything within the organization. They need to step out of the office and talk to everyone else in the organization, and listen to their voices. In addition, leaders also need to pay attention to the situation of customers, suppliers, and competitors in their own industry, other industries, and even other countries.

Leaders must establish sound communication channels and information systems, which can be formal or informal. He needs to monitor events happening within the organization in real-time, while also maintaining a high level of sensitivity to external factors such as industry, politics, economy, and social environment. This requires them to constantly learn political skills and build their own professional and social networks.

For effective leaders, it is necessary to have a comprehensive understanding of the different activities at all levels within the organization to ensure that employee values align with organizational values.

Transformational leaders also need to have foresight and be good at anticipating the possible outcomes of implementing different policy guidelines.

Innovation power. A dynamic leader is always looking for new ways to do things, thinking backwards from seemingly impossible perspectives, and willing to spend time sitting down for creative thinking.

——Consolidate and develop collaborators. One is to stimulate and maintain enthusiasm. To achieve this, leaders must establish emotional bonds with their colleagues and have high expectations for them, giving them the courage and passion to make changes. This requires leaders to have empathy or be able to understand things from the perspective of other colleagues, while planning exciting future prospects. When stimulating employee enthusiasm, using rhetorical devices such as metaphors and symbols can be very helpful.
To enhance maturity. Leaders must know how to evaluate and improve the maturity level of their subordinates, as well as their ability to act independently and make independent judgments. Leading by example is the best way for leaders to influence the maturity level of their work partners.

Listen carefully. Leaders must have sufficient time to listen individually or collectively to the ideas of collaborators, including other key figures in cultural change - drivers, agents and promoters, and consultants. Listening is essential for teamwork, so that leaders can validate their ideas and ensure that action plans are feasible before making decisions. Learning how to listen is the key to building values that truly matter to employees.
Activate creativity. If transformational leaders want other employees to achieve their goals and succeed, they must create an atmosphere of innovative thinking and constant experimentation in the senior team, allowing and encouraging employees to learn from their mistakes to grant authorization. Emphasizing empowerment means that leaders must constantly ask themselves, 'Why do I have to do these things?' 'Who else can do these things?' This requires leaders to abandon the pursuit of perfect performance and the need to personally innovate on every important task.

The behavior of transformational leadership includes four parts:

The first part is leadership charisma. Leaders become typical examples of subordinate behavior and gain recognition from subordinates. Charismatic leaders are capable, confident, and determined.

The second part is about inspiring behavior. They optimistically articulate their achievable vision to their subordinates. Use emotional appeals and team spirit to rally subordinates' efforts to achieve team goals.

The third part is intelligent stimulation. Encourage subordinates to innovate and challenge themselves, including instilling new ideas, inspiring subordinates to express new insights, and encouraging subordinates to use new methods and techniques to solve problems encountered in their work.

The fourth part is personalized care. Care for every subordinate and value personal growth.

The theories related to transformational leadership include the theory of charismatic leadership, the theory of vision leadership, the theory of hierarchical needs, the theory of moral cognitive development, and the theory of facilitative leadership. The following are respectively explained:

Theory of Charismatic Leadership

The word charisma originates from the Greek word and means extraordinary gift, such as exceptional wisdom, precognitive ability, etc. The Charm Theory suggests that followers attribute a leader's specific behavior to heroic or exceptional leadership. The focus of its research is to distinguish charismatic leaders from those who lack charisma from the perspective of followers. According to its research results, charismatic leaders usually have the following traits: confidence, adherence to ideals, good expression, and behavior that is different from ordinary people. This type of leader is usually able to make good use of their talents and unique personality traits to influence their followers through communication skills and image building, such as MacArthur, Mother Teresa, etc. As can be seen from the above, charismatic leadership refers to a leader possessing special and extraordinary abilities or personality appeal, and members can feel this trait of the leader and develop emotional attachment to it. Transformational leadership emphasizes that leaders use personal charisma to inspire members' trust and compliance with the leader, indicating that charisma theory is an important foundation of transformational leadership.

Theory of Visionary Leadership

Nanus (1992) formally introduced the term "visionary leadership" in his book "Visionary Leadership" and emphasized that among all leadership functions, leaders have the most profound impact on vision. Many leadership studies have also found that effective leaders are often visionary leaders (Bennis&Nanus, 1985; Blunberg&Greenfield, 1980; Deal&Kennedy, 1982). Nanus (1992) believes that vision leadership refers to a reliable, authentic, and attractive future for an organization, representing the direction of all goal efforts that can make the organization more successful and better. Direction can make an organization more successful and better. Long term vision includes the organization's long-term plans and the vision of future development, serving as a bridge between the current and future of the organization. For leaders, it provides goals for action and helps them transcend the current situation to achieve organizational improvement and growth. In the process of organizational development, visionary leaders often offer insightful ideas and drive members to take new actions to achieve new goals, and are therefore often seen as innovators or role models of ideals.

Theory of hierarchical needs

Psychologist Maslow (1970) believed that human behavior is caused by its needs, which are divided into five levels (from low to high): physiological needs, safety needs, love and belongingness needs, esteem needs, and self actualization needs 

Theory of Moral Development

Kolberg proved from the development process of moral cognition in psychology that human moral concepts can gradually improve; He divided the development of human moral cognition into three stages: pre customary moral period, customary moral period, and post customary moral period. Six stages: avoidance of punishment and obedience orientation stage, relative utilitarian orientation stage, seeking recognition orientation stage, compliance with regulations orientation stage, social rule of law orientation stage, and universal theoretical orientation stage.  Among them, it shows that humans have an instinct to pursue high-level moral consciousness, that is, human moral cognition has an instinct to seek goodness, which can serve as the foundation for transformational leadership in enhancing the moral consciousness level of its members.

Theory of facilitative leadership

Conley&Goldman (1994) argue that catalytic leadership is essentially the creation and management of a tense atmosphere,

It motivates organizations to shift from a bureaucratic orientation to a visionary orientation, while catalyzing leaders to break down existing social classes and develop and create new leadership structures. In terms of leadership philosophy, catalytic leadership emphasizes "collaboration" and empowerment among organizational members, and uses this to enhance the ability of all members to adapt and solve problems, enabling them to actively participate in the promotion of organizational affairs and thereby improve organizational efficiency. During this process, leaders who catalyze leadership only need to maintain on-the-job training for organizational members and regularly monitor organizational goals. In terms of the source of leadership power, catalyzing leadership stems from the mutual relationships and synergy among members, therefore catalyzing leadership values informal negotiation and communication. In the process of innovation, due to limitations in human, material, and resource resources, the prerequisite tasks cannot be complete. Therefore, leaders must also carefully evaluate new plans and decide on the timing of action. In addition, due to organizational transformation, conflicts and divisions are inevitable, so leaders must create and utilize opportunities to eliminate disputes. In summary, successful leadership is the ability to motivate organizations to share a vision and balance process and product, activity and action.

Leithwood (1992) believes that catalytic leadership helps explain how transformational leadership can help organizational members develop cooperative relationships, empower members, and effectively solve problems. According to the above theory, transformational leaders believe that as people grow older, they will gradually tend towards goodness, and through the personal charm of the leader, they can attract members' sense of identification; And take a forward-looking vision as the action goal to elevate the level of members' needs, stimulate their work motivation, and encourage them to put in extra effort to achieve goals beyond expectations.