Transformational Leaders Enhance Followers’ Job Attitudes and Proactive Behavior

The leadership model where the leader works with the team to recognize the modifications and create a vision to guide the members is referred to as transformational leadership. James MacGregor Burns, a leadership expert, and presidential biographer was the first person to introduce the concept of transformational leadership among people. According to MacGregor, transformational leadership is the model where leaders and followers through their combined efforts motivate each other and advance to a higher level. Later, researcher Bernard M. Bass developed Burns’ original ideas which are now known as Bass’s Transformational Leadership Theory. According to Bass, transformational leaders gain trust and respect from the followers due to the impact they have on them. They have four distinct behavior, also known as the four I’s which are individualized consideration, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, and intellectual stimulation.

• Idealized Influence:  This permits the leader to act as the role model for the employees based on their ethical and moral performance and behavior in an organization.

• Inspirational motivation: The leader acts as an engaging vision or the optimistic potential to motivate the workers.

• Intellectual stimulation: This encourages the leaders to consider employee’s ideas and motivate them to work on them even though it involves risk.

• Individualized consideration: This plays an important role in determining the mentoring capability of the leader for every individual in an organization.

In present times, transformational leadership has emerged to be a well-known subject matter in the fields of management, political science, psychology, and sociology. Transformational leaders are considered to possess high moral and ethical values that provide a vision and mission to the members/ employees to follow and have respect and admiration for the leader.

Transformational leadership works to improve the motivation, morals, and enactment of members through a range of approaches such as linking the follower’s project involvement to project or corporate identity. Besides, the leader challenges members by giving them greater ownership in the workplace based on their strengths and weaknesses. As a result, this allows the leader to align employees with activities that increase their effectiveness. It is also essential to appreciate the skills that can be led by transformational leadership in a work organization. Transformational leaders are mentally and emotionally strong as they quickly adapt to the changing situations, share knowledge, control themselves, and inspire others while leading a working group. According to an article in Psychology Today written by a psychologist and leader, Ronald E. Riggio, “Research evidence clearly shows that transformational led groups have higher levels of performance and satisfaction than groups led by other types of leaders”. Hence, transformational leadership plays a substantial role in employee creativity.

Furthermore, the transformational leadership impacts the management of an organization as the leader attracts the subordinates to the vision. The followers then ask the leader for the consultation; however, try achieving the goal through their full potential. The transformational leaders are more compassionate and encouraging for the employees or followers. They have power and command to promote loyalty in an organization. Through the charisma, the leader influences their workers through engaging with them, developing deep feelings for them, and having high hopes and confidence in them. This inspires and motivates the workers to stay strong, focused, and work towards their goal. The leader looks at each difference in the growth and performance of each employee and tries to elevate their performance to higher levels and make everyone accountable for their tasks.