The transformational leadership is the management model best valued by organizations who have already achieved success and also by those who today seek to develop long-term in rapidly changing environments.
A fundamental leadership style that has been established in companies for more than 40 years and whose use continues to grow. For this reason, and because executive coaching helps to turn this model into observable and trainable behaviors, we have analyzed it from four key questions: what is transformational leadership, what are its characteristics and its dark areas, and what is its journey.
Transformational leadership is a way of leading people and achieving business results that is articulated around six key concepts: change, vision, inspiration, commitment and trust and around leadership and coach skills such as listening, recognition, feedback, trust, generosity, commitments, requests and offers.
The main differentiating element of transformational leadership is that guarantees the success of the organization through individual motivation. Thus, beyond day-to-day strategies and operations, transformational leadership is committed to developing the potential of teams and accompanying employees to enhance their growth, aware that doing so is equivalent to transforming the company.
In this individual motivation, the leader finds a transforming vehicle and generator of affective ties between people and the organization and find a way to incorporate and engage inspiring and creative people who focus their performance on teamwork.
Above all, transformational leadership is proactive and seeks to change the culture of the organization. Let's say that your ultimate goal is change. It is a model that mobilizes, develop talent to seek their full potential, is aimed at promoting innovative ideas based on inspiration and empowerment and is based on spaces of trust that develop creativity.
In transformational leadership, motivation arises from putting group interests ahead of personal ones, and team results arise from being inspired by the vision and committed to shared goals and values..
In addition, in this context, where autonomy is prioritized when making decisions and where error is experienced as an opportunity for learning, the collaborator feels respected, intellectually stimulated and more committed and, from an individual choice, seeks to be their best version.
On the contrary, transactional leadership, whose ultimate goal is efficiency, is part of the culture of the organization and promotes leaders who monitor, control and motivate through rewards and punishments and who comprehensively manage through performance and results.
As a consequence, the traditional model generates cultures focused on standardizing procedures, establishing clear rules for decision-making, and avoiding errors. Here, the motivation of the participants is in their own interest (aligned with the organization) and the teams achieve goals driven by positive and negative recognition and rewards..
In order to continue facilitating the development of the most successful organizations, the model proposed by transformational leadership has evolved in its four decades, (James MacGregor Burns, 1978).
Transformational leadership has incorporated substantial improvements contributed by several authors and their studies, in which they have analyzed the less desirable effects of transformational leadership, what we could call "The dark side of transformational leadership".
Its main risks have to do with its proximity to another type of leadership, charismatic leadership, in which we would find outgoing, friendly and trustworthy leaders, They convey confidence and are passionate and persuasive. Attractive, yes, but to which experts recommend keeping your distance.
These are some of the less positive features of the charismatic leadership and that the transformational leader must, therefore, avoid:
In contrast to this charismatic leader, the leaders who can best transform and inspire positive changes in organizations have coherence and humility among their strengths..
These modest leaders are most effective as they focus their attention on team performance, are willing to admit mistakes, and allow themselves to learn from others..
Transformational leadership proved effective long ago and continues to do so today. Transformational leadership is likely to be especially helpful now as we are faced with much more changing environments where the speed with which technologies evolve requires agile and different responses that are only possible from committed and led teams to foster creativity and innovation.
Specifically, transformational leadership finds its space and its maximum capacity for influence when it comes to managerial levels. In teams of more technical category, it seems that a more transactional type of leadership is more viable.
Although certain transformational leadership distinctions, closer to what leadership is in coaching, are always useful and open up new unexplored territories at the most technical levels..
Thus, in our experience, for leaders of style and transactional capacity (we say capacity because their capacity is always limited by what the company allows), learn distinctions or transformational leadership skills such as listening, recognition, feedback, trust , generosity, commitments, requests and offers, etc. It facilitates, at least, great advances in the management of their teams, more tranquility and motivation and an improvement in communication and the environment that even leads to improvements in customer evaluations.
Ultimately, transformational leadership is not only the present, it is the future. Like coaching, this model is here to stay: transformational leadership is effective and produces extraordinary results.
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