Transformational Leadership

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Transformational leaders elevate people from low levels of need, focussed on survival (following Maslow’s hierarchy), to higher levels (Kelly, 2003; Yukl, 1989). They may also motivate followers to transcend their own interests for some other collective purpose (Feinberg, Ostroff & Burke, 2005, p. 471) but typicallyhelp followers satisfy as many of their individual human needs as possible, appealing notably to higher order needs (e.g. to love, to learn, and to leave a legacy). Transformational leaders are said to engender trust,admiration, loyalty and respect amongst their followers (Barbuto, 2005, p. 28). This form of leadership requires that leaders engage with followers as ‘whole’ people, rather than simply as an ‘employee’ for example. …show more content…
Transformational leadership isalso based on self-reflective changing of values and beliefs by the leader and their followers. From this emergesa key characteristic of transformational leadership. It is said to involve leaders and followers raising one another’s achievements, morality and motivations to levels that might otherwise have been impossible (Barnett,2003; Chekwa, 2001; Crawford, Gould & Scott, 2003; Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 2004).Though an understanding of transformational leadership predicated on its outcomes appears to have been achieved, Leithwood and Jantzi (2000) observe that despite (or perhaps as a result of) over four decades of work in the field (see, for example, Bennis, 1959), the literature in educational leadership offers no singleconception of the processes that constitute transformational leadership. For instance, Gronn (1996) remarks onthe close relationship between charismatic and transformational leadership while pointing out the absence of notions of charisma in some work transformational