Overview
Secondary Posts Instructions For responses, consider your classmates initial posts and answer the following: Explain the four steps to transformation and if it is possible with your classmates' initial posts. Include a leadership researcher that has impacted your perspective.
• Secondary Post Length: minimum of 200 words per post
Nathan
Overall, transformational leaders focus on inspiring change by bringing new ideas. “Transformational leadership refers to leaders who seek to create ideas and new perspectives to create a new path of growth and prosperity in front of the organization” (Korejan & Shahbazi, 2016). Transformational leaders are almost always brought in when organizations realize there needs to be a change due to decline. A transformational leader can often use their past achievements to back up the reasoning for this organizational change.
Charismatic and transformational leadership are two distinct yet overlapping styles that prioritize followers' growth and the leader's influence. Charismatic leaders inspire and motivate but rely more heavily on personal appeal and enthusiasm to capture attention and gain followers' trust. Furthermore, “they cause followers to become highly committed to the leader’s mission, to make significant personal sacrifices in the interest of the mission, and to perform above and beyond the call of duty” (House & Howell, 1992). The main differences lie in charismatic leaders focusing more on personality than different changes in an organization.
Transactional and transformational leadership are also two distinct styles that can have some overlapping qualities. Transactional leaders focus on the values that are shared between people in an organization. The biggest difference between these two styles lies in the result of their specific styles. “Transformational leaders are described as vision-oriented, whereas transactional leaders are described as task and reward-oriented” (Lussier & Achua, 2016).
While I think my personal style has a combination of multiple leadership theories, I believe that the charismatic style most represents me. As a leader on the swim team, I have to be able to keep my energy high and motivate the team members to achieve their goals. This has to be the case even when I have a bad day. Same for our swimmers, if they have a bad day I have to be able to bring enough energy to motivate them.
There are many important traits that I feel are represented in each style. Charismatic leaders need to have positive traits which include high energy, self-confidence, and good people skills. Transactional leaders need to be able to be empathetic to others and have great people skills in order to understand the values shared between team members. Finally, transformational leaders need to have high-self confidence, while being able to keep a humble nature. Too much change can be a bad thing if you lose the trust of other team members and they do not buy in because of that. Although many styles focus on different human traits, I believe having a combination of many styles makes the most successful leader.
Another leadership style that I believe could be very helpful in my personal and professional career would be servant leadership. Key traits include active listening, empathy, and a strong sense of stewardship. Servant leadership aligns with my goals to foster supportive, ethical, and high-performing environments in my career.
I am inspired by Dr. Collin Campbell who is a professor of physics and the coordinator of the data science department at Mount Union. Dr. Campbell exemplified many of the positive qualities mentioned above. He had an impact on me because of his humility, reliability, and dedication to my success in my senior year. He was a consistent source of support, providing resources and guidance to allow others to thrive in the class as well. This experience cemented my belief in the importance of putting people first, reinforcing my preference for a servant-leader approach that emphasizes empowerment and collective success.
References:
House, R. J., & Howell, J. M. (1992). Personality and charismatic leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 3(2), 81–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/1048-9843(92)90028-e
Korejan, M. M., & Shahbazi, H. (2016). An analysis of the transformational leadership theory. Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, 8(3), 452. https://doi.org/10.4314/jfas.v8i3s.192
Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2016). Leadership theory application skill development, 6th ed. https://opac.library.uib.ac.id/index.php?p=show_detail&id=3894&keywords=
Michael
For this week's discussion we continue to talk about leadership styles. Three leadership styles that I chose to analyze were the transformational, transactional, and autocratic styles. There are many others that can be included, but for these ones I find them relating to how I personally view leadership and ways that aspects of them work together. Ideally, I'd like to say I relate to transformational leadership the most, but their are other times where I can see greater value in others.
The transformational leadership style is best defined as inspiring positive changes in both employees and the organization as whole creating distinctive cultures filled with innovation and positive change (Michigan State, 2022). Transformational leadership takes a lot of interpersonal skills developed through many experiences to best understand how to motivate individuals. By having a strong visoin with goals for the future, self-inspiration becomes contagious to an extent motivating individuals to get on the same page about achieving the specific organization goal.
Transactional leadership is someone who simply values order and structure (STU, 2014). This style gets away from interpersonal or relationship focuses as it best relates to larger organizations and systems. Through relying on individual's self-motivations, providing the right structure for them creates the best operating system. So it is in some ways similar to transformational leadership in providing efficient structure, but the difference in trusting the individual's work capacity vs having to motivate them distinguishes the two.
Autocratic leadership is a more intense form of leadership. Autocratic leadership is having ultimate power and authority over others making their own choices without the thought of others involved (Corddry, 2021). With this form only being entirely realistic in something like a military setting, taking away the people's voice and thoughts does not effectively unite a group of people. When it is related to discipline though within a military or sports team environment, those situations can handle this type of leadership style.
Ultimately, I feel like I relate to the transformational leadership style the most in that I want to create an environment that allows people to create their own passion for the work that they do. With that being said, aspects like organized structure and developed discipline found in transactional and autocratic styles are characteristics that can be added to work with many different kinds of people. Developing a diverse skillset in many different styles only creates more preparedness for future situations.
References
Corddry, L. (December 30, 2021). What is autocratic leadership? National Society of Leadership and Success. Retrieved November 6, 2024, from https://www.nsls.org/blog/what-is-autocratic-leadership#:~:text=What%20Is%20an%20Autocratic%20Leader,or%20seek%20input%20from%20others.
Michigan State University Online. (July 1, 2022). The 4 I's of transformational leadership. Michigan State University. Retrieved November 6, 2024, from https://www.michiganstateuniversityonline.com/resources/leadership/4-is-of-transformational-leadership/
St. Thomas University. (November 25, 2014). What is transactional leadership? St. Thomas University. Retrieved November 6, 2024, from https://online.stu.edu/degrees/education/what-is-transactional-leadership/