Transformational leadership is one of the most highly sought-after styles of leadership. Not only does transformational leadership create a more positive workplace experience, but it also has numerous benefits for organizations, as well as improving employee motivation, performance and engagement.
Transformational leadership can improve the morale of employees and inspire them. Moreover, they help create a workplace culture in which employees work not only for their self-interests but also for the broader collective goals. I was hoping you could find out the 4 I’s of transformational leadership and the key characteristics in this article.
What Is Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership helps leaders create positive change in the workplace. This leadership style contrasts with the more common transactional leadership style, which is based upon a reward and punishment system to ensure that employees remain compliant and motivated. Instead, transformational leadership relies on an individual’s personality traits and ability to inspire and influence others.
Transformational leadership motivates employees through inspiration. It is one of the most coveted leadership styles because it provides a high payout to organizations and employees, boosts morale, and increases motivation, job performance, and satisfaction.
The 4 I’s
There are four key elements of transformational leadership, often called the ‘4 I’s’.
Inspirational Motivation
Effectively communicate with all team members to inspire and motivate them. Such a leader can clearly explain the vision for the organization and share this with their employees, using simple language which is accessible to everyone. More importantly, leaders can increase team collaboration, cohesion, optimism, and passion for successfully achieving the organization’s common goals through inspirational motivation.
Individualized Consideration
The transformational leadership style’s core is a genuine interest in followers’ needs, development, and feelings. As such, transformational leaders will pay a great deal of personal attention to employees, increasing trust and improving relationships within the organization.
Idealized Influence
Transformational leadership sees employees’ needs as a top priority. They are dedicated to embedding the qualities they seek in their teams by being good role models. As such, these leaders can gain their followers’ trust, admiration, and respect.
Intellectual Stimulation
Empower employees by allowing mistakes, encouraging employees to use their voices, and encouraging upward and bottom-up feedback. In this way, leaders can support and stimulate their followers’ creativity and innovation.
The Key Characteristics of Transformational Leadership
Being able to inspire effectively, motivate a workforce, and enhance job performance and satisfaction are highly desirable qualities for any leader. Yet, some key components of the transformational leadership style stand out compared with other leadership styles.
1. Identifying Intrinsic Motivation
The core of the transformational leadership style is the belief that followers should make every team member feel valued. They will take the time to find out what motivates each employee and take steps towards supporting them to achieve their aims and their broader organizational goals. Furthermore, they will inspire employees to invest in themselves and their self-growth and development.
2. Creating a Positive Ethical Climate
The ethical climate and moral standards of a company are critical. Transformational leadership seeks to establish and uphold a positive ethical environment in the workplace. To this end, an employee’s moral standards and behaviors may be more scrutinized than their performance.
Crucially, transformational leaders ensure that the workplace culture aligns with the organizations’ core values. They must use consistent workplace communication to ensure that all team members work towards the same shared goal and that everyone is on board.
3. Persuasion and Articulating Clearly
Change can be difficult for people, and there are times when individuals may be resistant to it, particularly if they don’t fully understand the reasons or logic behind it. Unfortunately, in some cases, leaders themselves don’t fully understand the reasoning behind specific changes, which makes it challenging to get employees on board.
However, leaders can clearly articulate the reasoning behind specific actions and decisions. They can communicate this reasoning to employees in a straightforward and easy-to-understand way. Moreover, they can explain how the changes are beneficial not only to the organization but also to the individual employees themselves too.
4. Prioritizing Coaching and Mentoring
Personalization is a fundamental aspect of transformational leadership. As such, leaders should make coaching and mentoring employees a priority. Through ongoing coaching, leaders can help employees build their self-confidence and trust and solve their problems. As a result, not only will individuals be able to continue to grow, but leaders will also be able to create a more skilled team.
5. Maintaining Effective Communication and Transparency
Trust is one of the essential elements that leaders need to cultivate with their teams. To achieve this, leaders must maintain transparency with their employees. This includes maintaining consistent and regular communication with employees about the organization, how it’s doing, and where it’s heading.
6. Encouraging Employees To Share Their Voices
Transformational leaders encourage employees to make their own decisions and share their voices within the workplace. Unfortunately, communication still tends to flow one way in many organizations primarily. Yet, transformational leaders value employees’ opinions and encourage them to share these by engaging in more comprehensive company dialogue. Additionally, transformational leaders create an environment and space in which employees feel safe to express their concerns and speak up, as well as to raise concerns and share their ideas or come up with their solutions and ideas.
7. Creating a Cooperative Workplace
It is the responsibility of leaders to ensure harmony in the workplace. One of the critical characteristics is their ability to create cohesion and passion within teams, helping to create an environment in which all employees are working towards achieving a shared goal. They can clearly explain the organization’s goals to employees and support them in achieving these. Effective leaders can promote cooperation through constant and regular organizational and interpersonal communication.
8. Promoting The Collective Goal
For an organization to succeed, it’s essential that everyone is on the same page and working collaboratively towards those same shared goals. While transformational leadership promotes a personalized approach, it also emphasizes the benefits of collaborative team success instead of individual success.
Leaders can bring teams together more collaboratively and look beyond self-interest to achieve a more significant mutual good. They can accomplish this by emphasizing the importance and value of individuals to the broader team and organization as a whole.
Essential Personality Traits
Transformational leadership is a highly desirable approach for both organizations and followers alike. However, it is also heavily influenced by an individual’s personality traits. Among leaders’ most critical personality traits are agreeableness, extraversion, and high self-esteem.
Agreeable individuals tend to find it easier to show consideration for others, which can help leaders to develop idealized influence over their employees. By showing compassion and understanding to their followers, agreeable individuals can gain the trust and admiration of their employees.
Similarly, extraversion is a beneficial personality trait because individuals who possess it find it easier to be charismatically expressive. This makes it easier for leaders to be influential and persuasive, which helps them inspire better and motivate their followers.
High self-esteem is another favorable personality trait for transformational leaders to possess. If individuals have high self-esteem and a sense of self-worth, including feeling capable and valuable, they will better assess their strengths and weaknesses. Similarly, they will find it easier to do the same for others and transmit more enthusiasm and confidence to their employees.
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Conclusion
Transformational leadership is a highly valuable style and approach that offers a range of benefits to individuals and organizations. It can be highly effective and lead to a more positive, collaborative, and harmonious workplace where employees feel individually valued while working towards a common goal. By assessing your current sense of self-worth and leadership style, you, too, can develop and improve your leadership skills to lead with confidence while inspiring others.
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