Role Of Transformational Leadership

The Role of Transformational Leadership to Leaders and Followers

Leadership can be described as an important quality of a person, a vital attribute for an organization or a key source for an effective team towards attaining success. In these ways, leadership occupies its space in different fields and proves to be important in several aspects. The role of a leader is very important in a management field in terms of taking the organization towards success or failure, as Drucker (1985) defines "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things".

According to Cox (2001), the leadership has been classified into two types: Transformational and Transactional. This differentiation was initially made by Downtown (1973, as cited

A position has been adopted for transformational leadership in this essay and the facts are described and clearly articulated. The first point of criticism review the morality and misleading of power by transformational leadership. Bass (2006) explains the classification in transformational leadership as socialized and personalized characteristics in the book "Transformational leadership". The leaders using their abilities to inspire and lead their followers to a wrong path are termed to be pseudo transformational leaders. They possess similar elements as that of transformational leaders, but the motive would be personal and exploitative. It depends upon the individual characteristics in determining or choosing their motive and path, the concept of transformational leadership cannot be blamed. People regarding pseudo transformational model were discussed in the previous section; some examples of leaders who led a constructive path of transformational leadership are Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela

The significant feature of transformational leadership is that, it concentrates the development of follower and tries to enrich their personality. It encourages and involves inspiring followers to commit to a shared vision and goal of the organization. A transformational leader encourages others to become leaders; as a result the entire organization will be filled with people possessing effective leadership qualities, Kelly (2003). Furthermore, transformational leader motivates his followers to be innovative in problem solving and develop follower's leadership qualities by coaching, mentoring and providing both challenge and support. According to (Leithwood, as cited in Cashin et al, 2000, p.1) Transformational leadership is that which: helps to redefine an individual mission and vision, thereby renewing their commitment and restructure the system for accomplishing the goal. This result in a mutual co-ordination within a leader and follower, where the follower grooms his qualities of leadership and the leader transform himself as a moral agent. Hence transformational leadership must be grounded in moral