Leadership

Running head: TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Transformational Leadership Plan

Michael N. Phan

University of Phoenix School of Advance Studies

Transformational Leadership

Common leadership studies mainly focuses on how to lead a given team smoothly and efficiently, which is often called transactional leadership. These leaders can be very popular but bring little innovation. Applying a common saying, these people may be able to change the way the Titanic deck chairs are arranged, but cannot save the sinking ship. Sadly in most of the organizations, the ratio of the transactional leaders to transformational leaders is high. Therefore these organizations face negative growth due to large gap between how things are done and how things should be done. (Transformational Leadership Primer, 2008)

Transformational Leadership is about innovation which means new thoughts are derived and put into practice. James Mc Gregor Burns first used the term transactional leadership in 1978. According to him “transforming leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality by transforming leadership which ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspirations of both the leader and led and, thus, has a transforming effect on both.” These leaders welcome changes and constantly bring about changes in themselves and those around them. In history we find both types of transformational leaders- reputed leaders and notorious leaders. (Transformational Leadership Primer, 2008)

Bass is a modern leadership theorist who wrote in his book improving organizational effectiveness through transformational leadership, the four basic theoretical qualities that a transformational leader should possess. The four qualities are charisma—a quality that is difficult to describe and which is something you know only from experience....