cBecause of the major shifts in all aspects of organizational life, a new kind of leadership is emerging.
It is the kind of leadership that enables the exploration of new and innovative ways to drive value and deliver real results in an ever-changing business environment. This new leadership allows individuals and organizations to thrive at the edge of chaos, inspiring the innovation and creativity needed to develop new products and technologies, even new business models that can lead to sustainable competitive advantage in the new economy. This new form of leading is called “transformational leadership”.
The spirit of transformational leadership is founded in the ethos of pioneering, innovating and the exploration of new dimensions of human endeavor.
The competency of transformational leadership is founded in the ethos of pioneering, innovating and the exploration of new dimensions of human endeavor.
The competency of transformational leadership provides leaders and managers with a whole new way to energize and enliven individual contributors to deliver their best effort and ideas to organizational objectives as a matter of personal expression and professional espirt décor.
From the behavior standpoint, transformational leadership begins with self-development and extends to the coaching and developing of others. It is about making sure that the people around you have the tools and resources they require to do their best work.
It is about taking personal responsibility to remove the barriers that inhibit the optimal sustainable performance of people who follow you. This kind of leadership is about recognizing the explicit and implicit value of individuals, networks, and relationships and providing energy and inspiration for others to achieve the mutual aim of the enterprise.
The key directional ideas of transformation leadership are:
• Open Systems: This idea is about recognizing the interconnections and inter-relationships between just about everything. It’s about creating synergies between people, process, an technology. It’s about influence vs. control.
• Chaos: This idea points to the sheer magnitude of interconnections, relationships, and dependencies that defy categorization and manipulation. It is also about the natural order inherent in seemingly chaotic events that can be harnessed as a source of creativity, innovation, and inspiration.
• Willingness: is about influence, confluence, and synergy vs. domination, control of willfulness. To be willing is to attract and allow things (people, process, technology, opportunity) to self-organize vs. imposing order and “making things happen”.
• Defiance: This is about standing in the face of opportunity, at the edge of what is possible, and doing everything humanly possible (ethically and morally correct) to achieve goals that drive the mission and fulfill the vision of the organization.
Leaders who bring about important changes are said to exercise transformational leadership. In recent years transformational leadership has become a major new emphasis in studying leadership partly because so many organizations need to be transformed.
In study of leadership charisma is a special quality of leaders whose purposes, powers and extraordinary determination differentiate them from others. A key dimension of Charismatic leadership is that it involves a relationship between the leader and the people being led. The beliefs of the group members must be similar to those of the leader, and unquestioning acceptance of and affection for the leader must exist. The group members must willingly obey the leader, and they must be emotionally involved both in the mission of the leader as well as their own goals. Finally they must have a strong desire to identify with the leader.
Transformational leaders are the ones who motivates individual more than the individual expects himself to perform. This results in an overall development of the leader and the following. It also raises hierarchy of need from satisfaction towards self-actualization.
Transformational leadership has four components:
• Idealized influence: having a clear vision and sense of purpose. Such leaders are able to win the trust and respect of followers.
• Individual consideration: paying attention to the needs and potential for development of their followers, delegating, coaching and giving direction and constructive feedback.
• Intellectual stimulation: actively soliciting new ides and new ways of doing things.
• Inspiration: Motivating people, generating enthusiasm, setting an example, being keen to share the load.
Charisma and Transformational leadership are closely intertwined, though all charismatic leaders may not be transformational. The specific characteristics of transformational leaders listed below apply to leaders in general.
• VISION: A transformational leader offers an exciting image of where the organization is headed and how to get there. A vision is more than a forecast because it describes an ideal version of the future of an entire organization.
• MASTERFUL COMMUNICATION SKILLS: To inspire skill, he transformational leader uses colourful language and exciting metaphors and analogies.
• ABILITY TO INSPIRE TRUST: Group members and constituents believe so strongly in the integrity of transformational leaders that they will risk their careers to pursue the chief’s vision.
• ABILITY TO MAKE GROUP MEMBER FEELS CAPABLE: One technique for helping group members feel more capable is to enable them to achieve success on relatively easy projects. The leader then praises them and gives more demanding assignments.
• ENERGY AND ACTION ORIENTED: Like entrepreneurs, most transformational leaders are energetic and serve as a model for getting things done on time.
• EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIVENESS AND WARMTH: A key characteristics of transformational leaders is the ability to express feelings openly. Non-verbal emotional expressiveness, such as warm gestures is also characteristic of transformational leaders.
• WILLINGNESS TO TAKE PERSONAL RISKS: Transformational leaders are typically risk takers, and risk taking adds to their charisma. Richard Branson of the virgin group is an exemplary risk taker in his buying and selling of companies.
• USE OF UNCONVENTIONAL STRATEGIES: Part of being creative is to use unconventional strategies to achieve goals.
• SELF – PROMOTING PERSONALITY: transfor-mational leaders are hardly diffident; they toot their horns and allow others to know how important they are.
• PROPENSITY TO EMERGE DURING RISIS: Early formulations of transformational leadership emphasized that the transformational leader arises in response to a crisis. Such emergence is more evident with political and union leaders because they may arise to power when economic conditions are at their worst.
• MINIMUM INTERNAL CONFLICT: Transformational leaders are confidant and determined that they are right, even though setbacks. They appear to have less internal conflict between their emotions, impulses, and feelings and their consciences than do most people. Because they are convinced they are right, they experience less guilt than do most people.
Also, they act as change agents, they believe in people, have a strong set of values life long learners, and above all they are visionaries.
Eg. Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhai Tata (1904-1993)
• JRD Tata has been one of the greatest builders and personalities of modern India in the twentieth century.
• He assumed Chairmanship of Tata Sons Limited at the young age of 34; but his charismatic, disciplined and forward-looking leadership over the next 50 years and more, led the Tat Group to new heights of achievement, expansion and modernization. Under his stewardship, the number of Tata ventures grew from 13 to around 80, encompassing steel, power generation, engineering, hotels, consultancy services, information technology, art and culture, consumer goods, industrial products, etc.
• He was the pioneer of civil aviation in India. In 1932, he introduced air transport in the country – the enterprise later became Air India.
• He implicitly followed the principles of business ethics of the great visionary Jamsetji Tata, his ideal. He also personally crusaded for issues that he felt were imperative for India’s development – family planning, women’s education, and spread of literacy. The 100% successful family welfare schemes at Tata Steel and the various educational programmes for all, directly emanate from JRD Tata’s insight.
• Government of India conferred the highest civilian award of the land , Bharat Ratna to JRD Tata in 1992.
• For all his colossal achievements, JRD Tata was a modest, sensitive man, forever espousing the cause of his employees. His natural love for people endeared him to all….. across the entire spectrum of society.
The distinct skills that characterized him as a transformational leader are:
Anticipatory skills: foresight into a constantly changing world.
Visionary skills: a process of persuasion and example by which a person or leadership team induces a group to take action in accord with the leaders purposes or more likely the shared purposes of a large group.
Value-congruence skills: the need of corporate leader to be in touch with the employees economic, safety, psychological, spiritual, aesthetic and physical needs in order to engage people on the basis of the shared motives, values and goals.
Empowerment skills: the willingness to share power and to do so effectively.
Self understanding: introspection and assessment of ones and others goals.
How Transformations take place
The leader:
Raises People’s Awareness
The transformational leader makes group members aware of the importance and values of certain rewards and how to achieve them. He/She might point to the pride, workers would experience, should the firm be number one in its field. At the same time, the leader should point to the financial rewards accompanying such success.
Helps people look beyond self interest
Transformation al leader helps the group members look to the “big picture” for the sake of the team and the organization.
Helps people search for self fulfillment
The Transformational leader helps people to go beyond the focus on minor satisfactions to a quest for self-fulfillment.
Helps people understand need for change
Transformational leader must help group members to understand the need for change both emotionally and intellectually. The problem is that change involves dislocation and discomfort. An effective transformational leader recognizes this emotional competent to resisting change and deals with it openly. Organizational change is much like a live transition. Endings must be successfully worked through before new beginnings are possible.
Invests managers with sense of urgency
To create the transformation, the leader assembles a critical mass of managers and imbues in them the urgency of change. The manager must also share the top leaders vision of what is both necessary and achievable. To sell this vision of an improved organization, the transformational leader must capitalize on available opportunities.
Is committed to greatness
Business can be an opportunity for individual and organizational greatness. By adopting this greatness attitude, leaders can ennoble human nature and strengthen societies. Greatness encompasses striving for business, effectiveness such as profits and high stock value as well as ethics and emphasis on ethical leadership instills a desire for customer service and quality and fosters feelings of proprietorship and involvement.
It is the kind of leadership that enables the exploration of new and innovative ways to drive value and deliver real results in an ever-changing business environment. This new leadership allows individuals and organizations to thrive at the edge of chaos, inspiring the innovation and creativity needed to develop new products and technologies, even new business models that can lead to sustainable competitive advantage in the new economy. This new form of leading is called “transformational leadership”.
The spirit of transformational leadership is founded in the ethos of pioneering, innovating and the exploration of new dimensions of human endeavor.
The competency of transformational leadership is founded in the ethos of pioneering, innovating and the exploration of new dimensions of human endeavor.
The competency of transformational leadership provides leaders and managers with a whole new way to energize and enliven individual contributors to deliver their best effort and ideas to organizational objectives as a matter of personal expression and professional espirt décor.
From the behavior standpoint, transformational leadership begins with self-development and extends to the coaching and developing of others. It is about making sure that the people around you have the tools and resources they require to do their best work.
It is about taking personal responsibility to remove the barriers that inhibit the optimal sustainable performance of people who follow you. This kind of leadership is about recognizing the explicit and implicit value of individuals, networks, and relationships and providing energy and inspiration for others to achieve the mutual aim of the enterprise.
The key directional ideas of transformation leadership are:
• Open Systems: This idea is about recognizing the interconnections and inter-relationships between just about everything. It’s about creating synergies between people, process, an technology. It’s about influence vs. control.
• Chaos: This idea points to the sheer magnitude of interconnections, relationships, and dependencies that defy categorization and manipulation. It is also about the natural order inherent in seemingly chaotic events that can be harnessed as a source of creativity, innovation, and inspiration.
• Willingness: is about influence, confluence, and synergy vs. domination, control of willfulness. To be willing is to attract and allow things (people, process, technology, opportunity) to self-organize vs. imposing order and “making things happen”.
• Defiance: This is about standing in the face of opportunity, at the edge of what is possible, and doing everything humanly possible (ethically and morally correct) to achieve goals that drive the mission and fulfill the vision of the organization.
Leaders who bring about important changes are said to exercise transformational leadership. In recent years transformational leadership has become a major new emphasis in studying leadership partly because so many organizations need to be transformed.
In study of leadership charisma is a special quality of leaders whose purposes, powers and extraordinary determination differentiate them from others. A key dimension of Charismatic leadership is that it involves a relationship between the leader and the people being led. The beliefs of the group members must be similar to those of the leader, and unquestioning acceptance of and affection for the leader must exist. The group members must willingly obey the leader, and they must be emotionally involved both in the mission of the leader as well as their own goals. Finally they must have a strong desire to identify with the leader.
Transformational leaders are the ones who motivates individual more than the individual expects himself to perform. This results in an overall development of the leader and the following. It also raises hierarchy of need from satisfaction towards self-actualization.
Transformational leadership has four components:
• Idealized influence: having a clear vision and sense of purpose. Such leaders are able to win the trust and respect of followers.
• Individual consideration: paying attention to the needs and potential for development of their followers, delegating, coaching and giving direction and constructive feedback.
• Intellectual stimulation: actively soliciting new ides and new ways of doing things.
• Inspiration: Motivating people, generating enthusiasm, setting an example, being keen to share the load.
Charisma and Transformational leadership are closely intertwined, though all charismatic leaders may not be transformational. The specific characteristics of transformational leaders listed below apply to leaders in general.
• VISION: A transformational leader offers an exciting image of where the organization is headed and how to get there. A vision is more than a forecast because it describes an ideal version of the future of an entire organization.
• MASTERFUL COMMUNICATION SKILLS: To inspire skill, he transformational leader uses colourful language and exciting metaphors and analogies.
• ABILITY TO INSPIRE TRUST: Group members and constituents believe so strongly in the integrity of transformational leaders that they will risk their careers to pursue the chief’s vision.
• ABILITY TO MAKE GROUP MEMBER FEELS CAPABLE: One technique for helping group members feel more capable is to enable them to achieve success on relatively easy projects. The leader then praises them and gives more demanding assignments.
• ENERGY AND ACTION ORIENTED: Like entrepreneurs, most transformational leaders are energetic and serve as a model for getting things done on time.
• EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIVENESS AND WARMTH: A key characteristics of transformational leaders is the ability to express feelings openly. Non-verbal emotional expressiveness, such as warm gestures is also characteristic of transformational leaders.
• WILLINGNESS TO TAKE PERSONAL RISKS: Transformational leaders are typically risk takers, and risk taking adds to their charisma. Richard Branson of the virgin group is an exemplary risk taker in his buying and selling of companies.
• USE OF UNCONVENTIONAL STRATEGIES: Part of being creative is to use unconventional strategies to achieve goals.
• SELF – PROMOTING PERSONALITY: transfor-mational leaders are hardly diffident; they toot their horns and allow others to know how important they are.
• PROPENSITY TO EMERGE DURING RISIS: Early formulations of transformational leadership emphasized that the transformational leader arises in response to a crisis. Such emergence is more evident with political and union leaders because they may arise to power when economic conditions are at their worst.
• MINIMUM INTERNAL CONFLICT: Transformational leaders are confidant and determined that they are right, even though setbacks. They appear to have less internal conflict between their emotions, impulses, and feelings and their consciences than do most people. Because they are convinced they are right, they experience less guilt than do most people.
Also, they act as change agents, they believe in people, have a strong set of values life long learners, and above all they are visionaries.
Eg. Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhai Tata (1904-1993)
• JRD Tata has been one of the greatest builders and personalities of modern India in the twentieth century.
• He assumed Chairmanship of Tata Sons Limited at the young age of 34; but his charismatic, disciplined and forward-looking leadership over the next 50 years and more, led the Tat Group to new heights of achievement, expansion and modernization. Under his stewardship, the number of Tata ventures grew from 13 to around 80, encompassing steel, power generation, engineering, hotels, consultancy services, information technology, art and culture, consumer goods, industrial products, etc.
• He was the pioneer of civil aviation in India. In 1932, he introduced air transport in the country – the enterprise later became Air India.
• He implicitly followed the principles of business ethics of the great visionary Jamsetji Tata, his ideal. He also personally crusaded for issues that he felt were imperative for India’s development – family planning, women’s education, and spread of literacy. The 100% successful family welfare schemes at Tata Steel and the various educational programmes for all, directly emanate from JRD Tata’s insight.
• Government of India conferred the highest civilian award of the land , Bharat Ratna to JRD Tata in 1992.
• For all his colossal achievements, JRD Tata was a modest, sensitive man, forever espousing the cause of his employees. His natural love for people endeared him to all….. across the entire spectrum of society.
The distinct skills that characterized him as a transformational leader are:
Anticipatory skills: foresight into a constantly changing world.
Visionary skills: a process of persuasion and example by which a person or leadership team induces a group to take action in accord with the leaders purposes or more likely the shared purposes of a large group.
Value-congruence skills: the need of corporate leader to be in touch with the employees economic, safety, psychological, spiritual, aesthetic and physical needs in order to engage people on the basis of the shared motives, values and goals.
Empowerment skills: the willingness to share power and to do so effectively.
Self understanding: introspection and assessment of ones and others goals.
How Transformations take place
The leader:
Raises People’s Awareness
The transformational leader makes group members aware of the importance and values of certain rewards and how to achieve them. He/She might point to the pride, workers would experience, should the firm be number one in its field. At the same time, the leader should point to the financial rewards accompanying such success.
Helps people look beyond self interest
Transformation al leader helps the group members look to the “big picture” for the sake of the team and the organization.
Helps people search for self fulfillment
The Transformational leader helps people to go beyond the focus on minor satisfactions to a quest for self-fulfillment.
Helps people understand need for change
Transformational leader must help group members to understand the need for change both emotionally and intellectually. The problem is that change involves dislocation and discomfort. An effective transformational leader recognizes this emotional competent to resisting change and deals with it openly. Organizational change is much like a live transition. Endings must be successfully worked through before new beginnings are possible.
Invests managers with sense of urgency
To create the transformation, the leader assembles a critical mass of managers and imbues in them the urgency of change. The manager must also share the top leaders vision of what is both necessary and achievable. To sell this vision of an improved organization, the transformational leader must capitalize on available opportunities.
Is committed to greatness
Business can be an opportunity for individual and organizational greatness. By adopting this greatness attitude, leaders can ennoble human nature and strengthen societies. Greatness encompasses striving for business, effectiveness such as profits and high stock value as well as ethics and emphasis on ethical leadership instills a desire for customer service and quality and fosters feelings of proprietorship and involvement.