Growth and changes are inevitable in the IT sector. Still, transformational leadership can inspire the worker to make the change happen by fostering a company culture of accountability, ownership, and workplace autonomy.
Transformational leadership meaning:
Transformational leadership is a leadership type in which leaders encourage, inspire, and motivate employees to innovate and create new things that will help grow and shape the company's future success. This is accomplished by setting an example at the executive level with a strong sense of corporate culture, independence, and employee ownership in the work zone.
If you are wondering about Transformational leadership meaning, then you should know it is a management style designed to give employees more room to be creative, look to the future, and find new solutions to old problems. Transformational leaders inspire and motivate their workforce without micromanaging- they trust and train employees to take control in decision making. Training in transformational leadership allows the employees to become better leaders. “Leadership is not about control. Leadership is about influence.”
Transformational Leadership Model:
The transformational leadership model helps and encourages leaders to demonstrate authentic, strong leadership with the idea that employees will be very much inspired to follow.
This concept of transformational leadership was started by James V. Downton in 1973 and was expanded by James Burns in 1978. After that, researcher Bernard M. Bass further developed this concept.
While Bass' model dates to the 70s, it is still an effective leadership practice today. This practical leadership style never changes. It is especially vital to fast-paced tech industries where innovation and agility can make or break the company.
Transformational leadership characteristics
According to Bass, these are the critical points of a transformational leader that sets them apart from other leadership styles.
The Transformational leadership characteristics are:
- Encourage, motivates, and positive development of the followers
- Amplifies moral standerd in the organization and encourages all the others
- Prepares an ethical work environment with clear values, priorities, and standards.
- They help build the company's culture by encouraging employees to move from an attitude of self-interest to a mindset where they are working for their common good.
- Holds and emphasizes authenticity, open communication, and cooperation.
- They provide coaching and mentoring and allow the employee to make decisions and take ownership of the task.
Transformational leadership does not provide any certificate that you can hang on the wall. As a leader, you will learn about transformation and ways to implement it. It will help you be prepared for your upcoming challenges in your personal as well as professional life. Life coaching certification can help you achieve some of the transformational leadership characteristics.
Transformational Leadership in IT:
Although transformational leadership can be applied to every industry like- healthcare, government agencies, and education, it is increasingly important for IT companies to embrace digital transformations. To adapt to the rapidly changing technology, you need innovation and strong leadership to stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive.
As leaders in IT, CIOs are responsible for setting an example as transformational leaders especially considering they are primarily responsible for digital transformation in their organization.
By researching a little bit, you can find that 40% of the CIOs are the leaders of digital transformation in their company, while 34% say they are responsible for innovation. Inspiring and motivating the employees is the most critical piece of the puzzle that must be solved first because success depends on everyone buying into and embracing growth and change.
While there is a need to keep an eye on future growth, whether it is security, new technology, or shifting platforms, not every part of the business will be profitable by only transformational leadership. Some of the processes, procedures and future projects require more structure, consistency, and reliability; This I called transformational leadership.
Transactional vs. Transformational Leadership:
Transactional leadership is completely opposite of transformational leadership. It relies on motivating employees by rewards and punishments. It requires supervision, oversight, organization, and performance by monitoring.
This leadership model does not try to innovate, but it makes things more consistent and predictable over time.
Errors and faults are closely monitored, and the overall goal is to create an efficient and routine procedure. This business style is required by organizations that need a structured and standard business model. Businesses that want to remove chaos or inefficiency. But it doesn't allow for innovation or the process in which transformational leadership works.
On the other hand, transformational leadership supports an agile environment, especially where failure carries less risk. If you want to maintain and develop a current product to remain consistent and error-free, you do not want to hinder that process and growth of future updates and improvements. “Transformational leaders are like the roots of a tree. They may not be visible, but they keep the tree alive.”
Transactional leadership creates a constant development process, while transformational leadership leaves people free to develop new ideas and look for future products, services, and pictures. Life coaching certification helps you gain all these features needed in transformational leadership.
Training and Certification:
Though transformational leadership skills are considered to be soft skills, there are plenty of resources, certificates, and training programs aimed at transformational leaders. You can get certificates on transformational leadership through online certification programs.
Transformational leadership is a process in which a group, someone, takes control of the situation by conveying a clear vision of the group's goals, a marked passion for the work, and the ability to make the whole group feel confident and energized. This is the person who is called the transformational leader.
Transformational leadership is a leadership process by which you can inspire positive changes in the group and those who follow this. Transformational leaders are very much passionate, energetic, and enthusiastic. The leaders are involved and concerned in this process, but they are also very much focused on each member of the group with the aim of success for all.
Components:
Bass also suggested that there were four different components of the Transformational Leadership:
Intellectual stimulation:
Transformational leaders challenge the status quo and encourage creativity among the group members. The leaders try to encourage the group members to explore a new way of doing things and new opportunities for learning.
Individualized Consideration:
Transformational leadership involves offering support and encouraging the individual followers. To make a good and supportive relationship, transformational leadership always keeps the line of communication open for all because they want the followers to feel free to share any ideas. The leader mentors and coaches each of the followers by trying to understand their needs, background and situation. This helps them to tackle each of the cases at an individual level sensitively.
Inspirational Motivation:
A leader helps motivate a follower through his words and actions. It is by this that the follower gets to know about the value, integrity and honesty of the task at hand. Inspirational leaders know how to connect with people at an emotional level. The right words, correct action, the right steps help them guide the team members and bring out the best from within them.
Idealized Influence:
Transformational leaders act as role models for their followers. Because the followers trust and respect their leaders. So, what are some common signs of a transformational leader? Groups led by this type of leader tend to be successful and loyal. They give a lot to the team and care deeply about the group's ability to accomplish their goals. Turnover tends to be very low as transformational leaders can inspire a great deal of commitment in their followers.
Effects:
In the classical text, Transformational Leadership, authors Bass and Riggio explained:
"Transformational leaders are those who help their team to achieve their goals, and both become successful. Transformational leaders always try to help followers to grow and develop their skills. By aligning the objectives and goals of the individual followers, they empower the followers to grow with the organization."
Research shows that the groups who did their work under a transformational leader's supervision and control tend to be more successful and satisfactory. Their success is that transformational leaders think that their followers can do their best, leading the group members to feel inspired and empowered.
Leadership experts suggest that having a strong, clear, and positive vision can make the company grow more and more with time.
If you want to transform your vision to reality you will have to rake the right steps to make that happen. Transformational leadership will help achieve your objectives easily. The main goal of transformational leadership is to transform followers into greater leaders.
Conclusion:
This study suggests that a transformational leadership style, which both conveys a sense of trust and meaningfulness and individual challenges and develops employees, also has a positive effect on the well-being of the employees.
Transformational leadership behaviour helps inspire people by motivating them, influencing them through positive attitude and actions.
Transformational leadership must be used by a strong-willed leader. It is one of the best styles of leadership that any leader can implement today. As per research it has been found that the results are essential and can help companies to develop leadership training programs that can be used to teach transformational leadership skills.
Acquiring communication skills such as resolving conflicts in the workplace and recognizing the needs of employees are an essential part of transformational leadership. Every organization should hire a transformational leader for its well-being.
You can find many places that can teach you how to be a Transformational Leader but only some of them are good at that. Matrrix can be the best example for that.
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