French And Raven's Five Characteristics Of Transformational Leadership

Leadership has many definitions even though these definitions are merely a change of words (Northouse, 2016). The definition that covers most examples of leadership is the ability to influence your subordinates in such a way that your subordinates follow your orders and see the vision you have for your team (Northouse, 2016). Leaders are not born, however some of the characteristics that allow a follower to lead one day may be inherited (Storsletten, 2015). Leaders are obtained from the environment of the individual, such as when the son of the King eventually takes the throne (Northouse, 2016).
Therefore, while leaders become leaders as a rite of passage, the characteristics and skills differ from person to person. A healthy organization

This is where transformational leadership has its merits. Furthermore a leader being able to guide their team to a successful resolution of the crisis benefits the organization as a whole (Haskell, 2014). French and Raven’s five forms of power according to Northouse (2016) shows that the forms of power that work best for a leader in a crisis are referent power, expert power. This is because the ability to lead with knowledge of what must be done and why you must follow orders given by your superiors during a crisis is central to achieving a successful outcome in a crisis (Haskell, 2014). Other forms of power such as coercive do not work, and legitimate power does work mostly at the higher levels of management because they are tasking the particular department that handles the crisis with getting the job done successfully (Northouse,

How a leader can promote ethics in a healthy organization is a measure of true power within that organization (Shafie, 2014). According to Shafie (2014), a culture of appreciation that recognizes employee efforts which are critical to the company for achieving its strategic objectives. So one tool that leaders can use is a program of recognition. However, leaders also use the recognition program to target areas of low recognition in order to target additional training (Shafie, 2014). When an organization has high core values and maintains these values it often results in high performance within an organization (Shafie, 2014). Therefore, a leader can utilize the powerful influence they have to train and guide their team maintaining the highest of standards (Shafie, 2014). One thing to note is that once employees believe in an organization’s mission statement, and are trained to achieve the highest standards, employees will perform well because they believe in the reason for what they do (Storsletten, 2015). Therefore, it is important for employees to feel like they belong. Using reverent power (Northouse, 2016), a leader obtains the ability to influence their team simply because they trust him or her implicitly. Employees gain a sense of trust because they actually believe their leaders have their best interests at heart (Northouse,