Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is composed of multiple forms, originally concerning administration of educational organizations. Developed by James MacGregor Burns in 1978, it was later extended by Bernard Bass, noting its occurrence when leaders expand and promote employee interests. This involved the encouragement of employees beyond their self-interests, generating benefits for the organization and highlighting the mission and goals of the organization to maintain awareness and acceptance among its members.

Transformational leadership recognizes and exploits existing needs or demands of followers by looking for their potential motives, seeks to satisfy these higher needs, and engages the abilities of the followers. The strengths of this form of leadership lie in its collective vision and effective communication with all employees.

Transformational leadership consists of four components: charisma or idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Furthermore, transformational leaders pursue three fundamental goals: to assist staff in developing and maintaining a collaborative, professional organizational culture; to foster development of professional growth; and to help staff members solve problems more effectively by engaging them in new activities and requiring from them an appurtenant effort.

There are two fundamental goals of transformational leadership. The first goal is to assist staff development and maintain a collaborative, professional school culture by means of communicating, observing, critiquing, and planning in collaboration. Norms of collective responsibility and continuous improvement encourage staff to exchange teaching techniques. Transformational leaders involve staff in collaborative goal setting, reduce teacher isolation, use somewhat bureaucratic mechanisms to support cultural changes, share leadership by delegating power, and actively communicate a school's norms and beliefs. The second goal is to foster teacher development; teachers' motivation for development is enhanced when they internalize goals for professional growth. This process is facilitated when they are strongly committed to a school's mission.

Ultimately, the third goal of transformational leadership is to assist teachers to solve problems more effectively, which is of value because it stimulates teachers to engage in new activities and put forth an appurtenant effort. These leaders share a genuine belief that their staff, as a group, could develop better solutions than the principal alone. However, critics argue that transformational leadership is unethical and contend that it lacks the checks and balances of democratic discourse and power distribution. They also contend that it manipulates followers into ignoring their own best interests.

Proponents of transformational leadership claim it increases the organization's productivity and customer satisfaction, generating higher commitment to the organization from employees and increasing employee trust in management and organizational citizenship behavior (i.e., discretionary extra-role workrelated behavior, such as conscientiousness, altruism, and sportsmanship, all of which are not related to the formal reward system of the organization). This also enhances employee satisfaction with both their jobs and leaders, reduces employee stress, and increases well-being. Evidence of the effects of transformational leadership is deemed positive. This is because its practices have a sizable influence on teacher collaboration and because significant relationships exist between aspects of transformational leadership and educators' own reports of changes in both attitudes toward school improvement and altered instructional behavior.

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