Today there are two major approaches to leadership. One of these opposing ideas aims at more efficient processes, the second one aims to change the status quo and looks for new ways of thinking. Which side do you feel is the right for you? The business2community.com introduced these concepts.
Transactional leadership
Leaders are in their positions because they are simply more competent than their subordinates. Therefore they should be making decisions, allocating tasks and setting goals to employees. These leaders like to introduce clear benchmarks for performance and they make expectations very comprehensible. They provide constructive feedback and employees always know when improvement is necessary. They assume that employees are motivated by self interest and not by a sense of purpose. That is why they deploy various kinds of rewards and punishments.
Decisions stem from the organizational culture and the focus of their effort is devoted to making things faster and cheaper. Transactional leadership doesn’t promote a major challenge to the current setting. This approach focuses on increasing the efficiency of currently existing processes and maintaining order. This approach to leadership is suitable when all the company processes that produce desired results are already in place. In this model the key challenge is just to make them run more smoothly and less costly.
Transformational leadership
On the other side, transformational leaders want to inspire their employees and share the need to succeed. Their vision drives the efforts of the whole team. In such a setting a project is perceived more like a journey, not solely as a process that needs to be done. When new values or new attitudes are needed to succeed, change is welcomed by transformational leaders.
A unit where every member is an expert in his area, is how the transformational approach to leadership views a team. The result is that every member of the team is expected to take part in planning.
-jk-