Transformational Leadership In Ender's Game

Over eighty years after aliens almost wiped out the human race, international military forces are in the midst of training an army of children in anticipation of a third invasion. As a result of a government-mandated genetic experiment, six year-old Ender Wiggin emerges as the one who is destined to lead the army. Ender is whisked away to an elite military school in outer space to begin his training to become the most genius military leader in history. It is here that Orson Scott Card’s acclaimed military science fiction novel, Ender’s Game, begins. Card’s chronicles of Ender’s journey through Battle and Command School serve as a paradigm for the behaviors exhibited by a transformational leader while touching upon organizational behavior concepts, including the ethics and employee empowerment. The transformational leadership in Ender’s Game provides a model for how a great leader can achieve organizational success, and in Ender’s case, save Earth and the human race from ultimate destruction.

In the late 20th century, the concept of transformational leadership first surfaced in the field of organizational behavior through James MacGregor Burns’ political analysis work. Burns (as cited in Givens, 2008) described transformational leadership as “when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.” The relationship between the leader and the follower is closely considered when leadership is characterized in this manner. Burns elaborates (as cited in Pearson, 2012), “In the broadest terms, transformational change flows not so much from the work of a great man who single-handedly makes history, but from the collective achievement of a ‘great ...

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Givens, R.J. (2008). Transformational leadership: The impact on organizational and personal outcomes. Emerging Leadership Journeys, 1(1), pp. 4-24. Retrieved from http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/elj/issue1/ELJ_V1Is1_Givens.pdf

Hacker, S., Roberts, T. (2004) Transformational leadership – Creating organizations of meaning. Wilwaukee, WI: The American Society for Quality. Retrieved from http://app.knovel.com/hotlink/toc/id:kpTLCOM001/transformational-leadership

Pearson, C.S. (2012). Transforming leader: New approaches to leadership for the twenty-first century. Williston, VT: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Retrieved from http://0-site.ebrary.com.catalog.lib.cmich.edu/lib/cmich/docDetail.action?docID=10562061