Scholarly Leadership Theory

The scholarly leadership theory that I choose is transformational leadership as this one closely resembles the leadership shown by the president of the division. Transformational leaders are described as being capable of motivating followers to transcend their self-interests to

accomplish collective goals (Bass, 1985). Transformational leadership includes four distinct

factors: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Bass & Avolio, 2000). The idealized influence aspect aims to develop a shared vision and improve relationships with followers (Canty, 2005); while individualized consideration concentrates on identifying employees’ individual needs and

empowering followers to build

a learning climate (Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996) and mobilize their support towards goals at the organizational level (Osong, 2006). On the other hand, intellectual stimulation propels knowledge sharing in the company to generate more innovative ideas and solutions. Finally, inspirational motivation focuses on inspiring human assets, thereby setting a higher level of desired expectations for them (Ghasabeh, Reaiche & Soosay, 2015). Basically, the transformational leadership as the name suggest relates to transforming the followers to make them the better version of themselves through motivation, trust, encouragement and inspiration. The leader should be visionary, innovative, appreciates creativity not afraid to take risk, is authentic and honest as well as growth mindset.
The first strength of the president is that he is a visionary.

Transformational leadership begins with a vision. Once that vision is captured by the leader, he or she then "injects" this vision into others with motivation, enthusiasm, and encouragement (Hall, Johnson, Wysocki, & Kepner, 2012). The company was satisfied with the way we did business before the leader joined the company. When he started working, there was always encouragement to think outside the box, look for new ways to do things. He has the vision of taking the division from doing just Medicare business to all government insurance projects. He wanted the division to come up with solutions that will make it easier for customers and help the government as well. One of the example was to suggest the US government to send explanation of benefits (EOB) as electronic rather than paper to the Medicare beneficiaries. This saved the US government printing cost and prevented the mail fraud to some extent. It increased the government trust in our company and they appreciated

innovation.
The second strength of the president is the people skill.

He is very people oriented person. He wants to meet and listen to everybody. It does not matter what position you work in the company. He wants to hear everyone suggestions and ideas and encourages his management staff to do the same. He communicates his strategies for the growth of the company and vision effectively so that lay person can understand. Transformational leaders encourage good communication networks and a spirit of trust, enabling transmission and sharing of knowledge and generation of knowledge slack (Senge, 1990; Slater & Naver, 1995).

One of the example is when he came down to visit a site that was not performing well. He sent email asking for folks to join him on a luncheon where they can discuss any ideas or suggestion for improvement. The first 30 mins of the luncheon was all about sports, weather and everything else except work. He made 15 or so people that came for the luncheon comfortable. The next 30 mins was related to the work and everyone spoke except him. Some of the suggestion he got from there were implemented and the site had a big turnaround in performance within a

year.
The third strength of the president is Intelligence. He has a solid background in healthcare and can converse intelligently on that topic. He always desires to learn from the people so that he can grow his own knowledge and help others to grow their knowledge too. Transformational leadership includes intellectual stimulation, whereby leaders promote a culture in which employees will develop intelligence and rational thinking. Intellectual stimulation, in turn, fosters independent problem solving by employees (Long, Fei, Adam & Kowang, 2016).
During the launch of the first web portal, we ran into lot of issues. The customers were getting impatient with the delays. He stepped in, tried to understand basic of the project and started asking right questions. This enabled people on the team to think differently and as a result they found the root cause and fixed the problem quickly.