The content of this essay is about my research on the theory of transactional leadership based on one of the manager that I managed to observe. The manager that I had the chance to observe through my past experience and knowledge was Mr. Ooi Chin Keat, where he was the manager of a Sales and Marketing Department of a Furniture Company in Malaysia. The company is a small-medium enterprise in the furniture industry as the competition in Malaysia is tough in this industry. The manager directly leads a team that consists of 22 sales managers and sales executives in total. He has been involved in the Furniture Industry for almost 15 years of experience and spent 7 years as a manager to manage and lead out his team. The experience that he had allowed him to notify that his team is well communicated with what is expected from them. When a company has a clear vision of command and cohesive commanding right, the communication amongst them on what is expected from them can be achieved efficiently. The understanding he had on his team is clear as they are motivated by rewards and acknowledgement. The basis of Mr. Ooi Chin Keat’s leadership style is that it is compulsory for every team members to obey the procedures set by higher levels of supervisor and rewards are given based on the performance of every individual team members.
In addition, Mr. Ooi Chin Keat has a very anticipated and clear style of leadership. He set a regular cycle of meetings every two weeks with his team members to address them on what the objective is required from them and as well gain feedback on their performance. Besides that, he also communicates with his team members on a regular basis to get updated on their recent sales performance, how to improve their sales, their current working condition and also what sort of rewards are offered based on their performance as a motivation to improve their sales. One of the interesting point that Mr. Ooi Chin Keat told me during our conversation was that he reward his team members that achieved their sales target on the basis of monetary encouragement, appreciation certificate as a recognition and awards like medal, while for team member’s sales target are not achieved will be offered extra training session on what areas are needed to be improved on their working performance and also being counseled.
Mr. Ooi Chin Keat is one of the examples of a manager that has a clear style of transactional leadership as he is used to a working environment with clear vision of command and operations with modernized type in a company that is a necessary tool so that transactional type of leadership can be executed. The type of leadership that Mr. Ooi Chin Keat implemented on is adapted pretty well by his team members. It allows every each of the marketing team members to put more effort on improving their performance and achieve their targeted sales of their furniture. As the furniture company is small-medium enterprise, the targets that are set out to the team members are considerably small to medium as well. Therefore, Mr. Ooi Chin Keat could not innovate the furniture company to a better and bigger company along with a plan for long run. The problem that the manager faced here could sabotage the point of view of the company and cause team members to feel lack of priority and not performing at the best.
One of the basic understandings of leadership is that it is one of the various characteristics of structural behavior and mindset. The common procedure of leadership consists of managing, influencing and motivating people to achieve common goal. In an organization, manager has to be effective in every sense in order to have an effective and efficient system in an organization. Kotter (2001) described that leadership is different from management because leadership and management are two individual and corresponding systems of action. Meanwhile, Ricketts (2009) explained that leadership is a process that