Burns: transforming leadership
Political scientist James MacGregor Burns, in Leadership (1978), contrasted two types of leadership. Transactional leadership is based on exchange (votes for promises, work for pay). Transforming leadership occurs when leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. Burns' examples included figures such as Gandhi.
Bass: the four I's
Bernard M. Bass (Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, 1985) brought the concept into organisational psychology and described four components of transformational leadership:
| Component | What it means |
|---|---|
| Idealized influence | the leader is a role model, earns respect and trust, puts the group's good above their own |
| Inspirational motivation | articulates a compelling vision, gives meaning to work, expresses optimism |
| Intellectual stimulation | encourages questioning assumptions and seeking new solutions |
| Individualized consideration | attends to each person's needs, coaches and mentors |
With Bruce Avolio, Bass developed the Full Range Leadership model and the MLQ questionnaire, measuring styles from laissez-faire through transactional to transformational. Importantly, transformational leadership does not replace transactional leadership but augments it - clear expectations and rewards are needed but not sufficient.
Research findings
This is one of the most researched leadership concepts. Judge and Piccolo's meta-analysis (2004) confirmed strong relationships between transformational leadership and follower satisfaction, motivation, ratings of leader effectiveness and group performance.
Criticism
- The components are highly correlated and hard to separate.
- The concept can encourage a “heroic” image of the leader.
- Charisma can be used for bad ends. Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) distinguished authentic transformational leadership, grounded in moral values, from pseudo-transformational leadership serving the leader's self-interest. The distinction matters in communities - see selection of leaders.
In community practice
The four I's describe a mature community leader well: a witness of life, a clear vision rooted in the mission, openness to questions and personal care for each person. Close to it is servant leadership, which puts greater emphasis on the good of persons than on the organisation's goal.
Sources
J. M. Burns, Leadership, Harper & Row 1978 B. M. Bass, Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, Free Press 1985 B. M. Bass, B. J. Avolio, Improving Organizational Effectiveness through Transformational Leadership, SAGE 1994 T. A. Judge, R. F. Piccolo, Transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity, Journal of Applied Psychology 89 (2004) B. M. Bass, P. Steidlmeier, Ethics, character, and authentic transformational leadership behavior, The Leadership Quarterly 10 (1999)