Abstract
The purpose of this research is to find out that does leadership style that is Transformational leadership style has an impact on employee performance. We also wish to see that if job satisfaction has a mediating effect or not. For this purpose, data collected from articles related to Transformational leadership. Result shows that transformational leadership is significantly positive associated with Employee performance however; transactional leadership was more important then transformational. Another important discovery made was there is no mediating role of Job satisfaction between transactional leadership. But it mediates with transformation leadership and employee performance.
History
James MacGregor Burns (1978) first introduced the concept of transforming leadership in his descriptive research on political leaders, but this term is now used in organizational psychology as well (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Bernard M. Bass (1985), extended the work of Burns (1978) by explaining the psychological mechanisms that underlie transforming and transactional leadership. Now 30 years of research and a number of meta-analyses showing that transformational and transactional leadership positively predicts a wide variety of performance outcomes including individual, group and organizational level variables.
Introduction
Have you ever been in a group where someone took control of the circumstances by conveying a clear vision of the group’s goals, a marked craze for the work and an ability to make the rest of the group feel recharged and energized? This person just might be what is called it is a transformational leader. Transformational leadership is a process in which the leaders take actions to try to increase the awareness of what is right and important. As well, it is a process to raise motivational maturity and to move beyond the persons’ own self-interests for the good of the organization. These types of leaders provide others with a sense of purpose that goes beyond a simple exchange of rewards for effort provided. According to Burns, transforming leadership is a process in which “leaders and followers help each other to advance to a higher level of morale and motivation”. Burns related to the difficulty in differentiation between management and leadership and claimed that the differences are in characteristics and behaviours. He established two concepts: “transforming leadership” and “transactional leadership”. According to Burns, the transforming approach creates significant change in the life of people and organizations. It redesigns perceptions and values, and changes expectations and aspirations of employees. Unlike in the transactional approach, it is not based on a “give and take” relationship, but on the leader’s personality, traits and ability to make a change through example, articulation of an energizing vision and challenging goals. Transforming leaders are idealized in the sense that they are a moral exemplar of working towards the benefit of the team, organization and/or community. Burns theorized that transforming and transactional leadership were mutually exclusive styles. Bass introduced the term “transformational” in place of “transforming.”
Bass added to the initial concepts of Burns (1978) to help explain how transformational leadership could be measured, as well as how it impacts follower motivation and performance.[1] The extent to which a leader is transformational measured first, in terms of his influence on the followers. The followers of such a leader feel trust, admiration, loyalty and respect for the leader and because of the qualities of the transformational leader are willing to work harder than originally expected. These outcomes occur because the transformational leader offers followers something more than just working for self-gain; they provide followers with an inspiring mission and vision and give them an identity. The leader transforms and motivates followers through his or her idealized influence (earlier referred to as charisma), intellectual stimulation and individual consideration. In addition, this leader encourages followers to come up with new and unique ways to challenge the status quo and to alter the environment to support being successful. Finally, in contrast to Burns, Bass suggested that leadership can simultaneously display both transformational and transactional leadership. If we conclude so, the transformational leadership is a type of leadership style that leads to positive changes in those who follow. Transformational leaders are generally energetic, enthusiastic and passionate. Not only are these leaders concerned and involved in the process; they are also focused on helping every member of the group succeed as well. 1.Why Transformational Leadership Is Important?
A transformational leader exhibits certain qualities and behaviours to inspire and motivate a team or organization to convention around a common vision or goal. These behaviours and traits include charisma, logical stimulation, inspirational motivation and individual reward for each team or group member. For many reasons, transformational leadership is an important part at both the micro, or individual level, and macro, or organizational, societal level. 1.1Individual Growth and Development
Transformational leadership affects individuals’ self-growth. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs places self-actualization at the top of the needs pyramid and defines it as a person’s full realization of his probable. Transformational leadership helps transform members of a group into individuals who transcend beyond self-actualization and their self-interests for the sake of the group or organization. Along with this includes individual moral development. Transformational leaders execute themselves to unselfish ideals and bring into line their personal principles and values with that of the organization, group or even society. The leader nurtures his followers’ moral progress to internalize these same values and principles. 1.2Increases Performance
Transformational leadership develops followers who can perform beyond their own and others’ prospect. Researchers who study and organizations that utilize transformational leaders regularly confirm this outcome. A 2002 article by Taly Dvir and others published in the “Academy of Management Journal” examined the effects of platoon leaders, in a military basic training setting, exhibiting transformational leadership on cadets’ performance. The researchers found that the experimental cadets — those
under the leadership of the transformational squad leaders — outperformed control cadets in every area, including weapons testing and barrier courses. 1.3Organizational Development and Change
Bass and colleagues, in their 1978 paper in “Group and Organization Studies,” termed the effect that transformational leadership has throughout an organization as the “falling dominoes effect.” Upper-level transformational leaders set an organization’s track and vision, influencing how lower levels of an organization work. Transformational leadership can also help a company meet new challenges, such as during a company’s reorganization, calculated redirection or downsizing. The impact of transformational leadership reaches every level of a group or an organization. At the team level, you can find members that care, stimulate, inspire and motivate each other 1.4Wide Application
According to Bass in his 1999 article published in the “European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology,” transformational leadership is more effective than transactional leadership. For instance, it can effectively apply to militaristic, industrial, hospital and educational settings. It is also apply frequently to businesses. Transformational leadership can improve the ability of a sales force, help a company restructure its image in the marketplace and create a positive environment for employees. Transformational leadership can be applying on a variety of settings. 2.The Components of Transformational Leadership
Bass also suggested that there were four different components of transformational leadership. 2.1 Individualized Consideration
The degree to which the leader attends to each group needs to acts as a mentor or coach to the followers and listens to the follower’s concerns and needs. The leader gives compassion and support, keeps communication open and places challenges before the followers. This also encompasses the need for respect and celebrates the individual contribution that each follower can make to the team. The followers have a will and aspirations for self-development and have intrinsic motivation for their tasks. 2.2 Intellectual Stimulation
The degree, to which the leader challenges assumptions, takes risks and solicits followers’ ideas. Leaders with this style excite and encourage creativity in their followers. They nurture and grow people who think independently. For such a leader, learning is a value and unexpected situations seen as opportunities to learn. The followers ask questions, think sincerely about things and figure out better ways to perform their tasks. 2.3 Inspirational Motivation
The degree to which the leader articulates a vision that is attractive and inspiring to followers. Leaders with inspirational motivation challenge followers with high standards, communicate confidence about future goals, and provide meaning for the task. Followers need to have a strong sense of purpose if they are to be motivated to act. Purpose and meaning provided the energy that drives a group familiar. The creative aspects of leadership are support by communication skills that make the vision understandable, accurate, powerful and attractive. The followers are willing to invest more energy in their tasks; they are positive and confident about the future and believe in their abilities. 2.4 Idealized Influence
Provides a role model for high ethical behaviour, instils satisfaction, gains respect and trust. As a development tool, transformational leadership has spread already in all sectors of western groups, industries societies, including governmental organizations. As an example, the Finnish Defence Forces is using widely Deep Lead Model as basic solution of its leadership training and growth. The Deep Lead Model based on the theory of transformational leadership. 3.Applying Transformational Leadership
Because transformational leadership covers a large range of aspects within leadership, there are no specific steps for a manager to follow. Becoming an effective transformational leader is a process. This means that conscious effort must be make to adopt a transformational style. Understanding the basics of transformational leadership and the four, I’s can help a manager apply this approach. According to Northouse (2001), a transformational leader has the following qualities: •Empowers followers to do what is best
for the organization; • Is it a strong role model with high standards;
• Listens to all viewpoints to increase a spirit of teamwork; •Creates a vision, using by the people in the organization; •Acts as a change representative within the organization by setting an example of how to instigate and implement change; •Helps the organization by helping others contribute to the organization.
4.Relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ job satisfaction Although there are various leadership styles, which could have an impact on employees’ job satisfaction and their organizational commitment but we are mainly concerned with transformational leadership. We choose transformational leadership because of its supportive, creative and modern nature of leadership. Cumming et al. (2010) stated that leadership that is concerned only with the output of the workers and do not care about their belief failed to attain best hard work of the staff. The study suggested that transformational leadership should be adopting to improve workers selection, satisfaction, work atmosphere and to avoid employee turnover. Miles and Mangold (2002) proclaimed that job satisfaction is facilitating by leaders’ performance and effective management interaction with employees. Leader’s ability to identify and solve the conflicts of employees determined the employees’ observation about leaders’ performance. AL-Hussami (2007) concluded that transformational leadership positively effects the employees’ job satisfaction. Hamidifar (2009) conducted a study in Islamic Azad University in Tehran and explored that among different leadership styles transformational positively determine the employees’ job satisfaction. Employees are more satisfied with transformational leadership than any other style. 5.Relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ organizational commitment
Avolio et al. (2004) conducted a study on staff nurses in a public hospital of Singapore and stated that transformational leadership positively affects organizational commitment. Limsili and Ogunlana (2008) proclaimed that transformational leadership is a better leadership style, workers productivity and transformational leadership facilitates organizational
commitment. Ismail and Yusuf (2009) studied the impact of transformational leadership on followers’ commitment and concluded that there is significant positive relation between these two variables. Transformational leadership is the most useful leadership style in determining organizational commitment of employees. On the bases of above literature study, following hypothesis is deriving. Transformational leadership positively relates with employees’ job satisfaction. Transformational leadership positively relates with employees’ organizational commitment.
Conclusion
Productivity and performance of an organization depend upon the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of their employees and lead to growing profits. Transformational leadership, an approach of improved interpersonal relationship between supervisor and subordinate, is a way to create higher level of job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees. Transformational leaders also help employees to become more creative, innovative and bring such new ideas, which allow the organization to grow competitively and adapt itself to the changing external environment. The results of this study concluded that if managers adopt transformational leadership behaviour, they could get better-satisfied and committed employees. The positive impact of the transformational leaders on their indirect followers’ performance experimentally strengthens conclusions drawn from previous studies, typically conducted with causally ambiguous designs.
Transformational leadership is a vital role for effective managers because leader effectiveness determines the success level of the organization. Organizations that take the time to teach leadership are far to the lead of the competition. By becoming familiar with the transformational leadership approach and combining the four I’s managers can become effective leaders in the business world.
Transformational leadership can applied in one-on-one or group situations. Using this approach, the manager (leader) and the associates (followers) are “changed” to enhance job performance and help the organization is more productive and successful.
Previous studies of this kind, this research found no major differences in transformational leadership between male and female managers at equivalent levels, whether leadership was self-rated or observer-rated.
This may indicate that transformational leadership is a more neutral, feminine role compatible leadership style than earlier directive or task-oriented models of leadership. So now, the current study supports the premise that women and men in management have at least equal claim to transformational leadership.
References
1.Albion, M. J., & Gagliardi, R. E. (2007). A study of transformational leadership, organizational change and job satisfaction. Retrieved from http://eprints.usq.edu.au/3098/1/Albion_Gagliardi.pdf
2.AL-Hussami, M. (2008). A study of nurses’ job satisfaction: the relationship to organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and level of education. European Journal of Scientific Research, 22(2), 286-295.
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