Leadership styles. Leaders tend to occupy centre stage in organisational life and many of us use leader in attempts to make sense of organisational behaviour. There is also a strong tendency to focus the blame on the leader if the organisation fails

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Samiul Ali

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Leadership Styles

Leadership is a concept which consists of the leader and followers’, yet there is no agreed definition to this.  There are nearly as many definitions given to leadership as there have been authors defining this (Bass, 1990).  However, all definitions emphasis on the leader’s ability to influence and supports followers in achieving the vision.   Leaders tend to occupy centre stage in organisational life and many of us use leader in attempts to make sense of organisational behaviour.  There is also a strong tendency to focus the blame on the leader if the organisation fails.  This is evident, taking the recent economic meltdown where Chief Executive Officers of banks are held accountable for the country going into recession.  

Research carried out by the Hay Group (HR Zone, 2008) claims leaders who take a long term orientation, engage the team to create a secure and energising climate; leads to improved bottom line performance by 30%.  An approach to engage the team can be done through explaining the why behind the what, showing an interest in the team by understanding what motivates them.  They also can involve their team in decision making and build capability to enable effective delegation and trust.  This research highlights the importance trust within the leader and their ability to influence. Influence is a similar concept to motivation because both terms consider the impact the leader has on followers.  This navigates to the main themes of this essay, how transformational and transactional leadership styles are linked to trust and motivation and the impact it of them on followers.  

It’s important to understand the concept of trust what trust is before applying it to leadership.  Trust in the leader- follower relationship; means they can rely on each other and both have good intensions for one another (Cook and Wall, 1980).  Therefore, the leader will get things done through trusted influence (links to motivation).  An example of this can be seen in Barack Obama's fundraising team, who made constant attempts to persuade people to buy Obama towels/t-shirts/memorial pencils in order to raise funds without no personal financial gain but help Obama get victory (BBC News, 2008).  Supporters of Obama didn’t actually have any concrete evidence of his leadership skills yet trusted him to lead.  There are many evident reasons for this in his speeches.  For example, he offered hope by saying “America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this”.  Obama built faith in people by understanding how people felt and responded to their needs; hope and faith encouraged people to trust him.  Furthermore, he clarifies the rewards of his victory such as workers’ tax cut, paid sick days, world class education for all children and most of all his commitment to serve the country.  Together with trust, these factors encouraged and motivated followers to vote for him and ultimately this gave Obama victory.  

Burns (1978) introduced transformational and transactional leadership styles; both taking a contrasting approach to influence followers.  One great differentiating factor between them is how the reward followers, which links into their motivation towards the vision (Blanchard and Thacker, 2007).  A transactional leader motivates followers by reaching to their self-interest and exchanging benefits.  Therefore, leaders may provide pay and other attractive benefits in return for their effort to achieve assigned tasks.  The leaders influence is attached to legitimate authority and respect for rules and traditions (Pierce & Newstorm, 2008).  This approach is perhaps reflective of bureaucratic organisations where there is limited autonomy and can inhibit productivity as employees are not encouraged to think outside the box.  However, this may not be suited for today’s and tomorrow’s strategic business environment where thinking outside the box is a competitive advantage.  Lack of autonomy can decrease motivation.  Furthermore, lack of autonomy can signify the leader does not trust the followers to work independently and using their initiative.  The more trust the leader places on followers, the less he/she feels the need to control.  It becomes a social exchange relationship.  How can followers trust their transactional leader if he/she does not trust them?  However, a sound psychological contract is present in a transactional leader and values are related to the exchange process, such as honestly fairness and mutual exchange (Burns).  

Conversely, “intellectual stimulation”, an essential tool to develop transformational leadership skills; allows followers to develop creativity which transactional leader lacks in.  Intellectual stimulation helps followers to question assumptions and to generate more creative solutions to problems (Bass and Avolio, 1990).  The vision provides the framework for followers to see how they connect to the leader, the organization, each other, and the goals’.  Once they have this big picture view and are allowed freedom from convention they can creatively overcome any obstacles in the way of the mission (Gosling et al, 2007).  Furthermore, the idea of enhancing knowledge also increases followers’ motivation levels.  Jamail (2009), a leading motivational speaker adds knowledge creates confidence and when a person is confident, he or she is more motivated to take action: (Knowledge + Confidence = Motivation).  

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An important element of transformational leadership is the inclusion of individualized consideration.  Individual consideration occurs when leaders are focused on developing people and responds according to their needs (Bass, 1985).  This has practical evidence within organisations today.  Managers are encouraged more and more to focus on enhancing knowledge and skills of employees and the term career is a widely used term signifying, constant development towards promotion.  Furthermore, Skills secretary John Denham said: "We know that those companies that invest in development of employees are best equipped to weather tough economic times, and are also best placed to capitalise on opportunities ...

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