Leadership (Essay Sample)

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16th October 2014
Transformational leaders are leaders who show energy, enthusiasm and passion. They are leaders focused on the success of the company and their followers too. According to Langston University (2013) they are involved and concerned about a process. It is a leadership that earns trust, respect and admiration from followers. The leadership to be such acceptable and admirable is based on the following components. They first component is intellectual stimulation. These leaders stimulate employees to utilize their intellectual knowledge and creativity. Growing employees and their profession will involve much of giving them space and tasks to put the knowledge into task and exercise their creativity. The leadership that offers such kind of knowledge is called transformation. According to Langston University (2003), intellectual stimulation applied in transformational leadership is the degree, to which a leader challenges assumptions, engages in risk taking and even involve followers in decision making. It continues to explain that for these kinds of leaders learning is of importance and unforeseen occurrences are opportunities.
Transformational leadership also possesses a component called inspiration motivation. This is basically the motivation given to followers through copying the leader and direct motivation on them. Motivation can happen in a variety of ways. It can be done by clearly defining the vision of the organization, challenging followers by setting high standards for their excellence, communicating optimism about the achievability of the company goals and defining the situations at hand (Langston University, 2013).
The third component is the Idealized influence. This is basically that the leader becomes an idol for followers and hence naturally influenced their followers. Transformational leaders are trusted, and liked. They become role models for their followers. Through the behavior of transformational leadership which is very ethical, respectful and targeted towards making goals happen without compromising anybody’s work or victimizing their employees, they become roles models to be copied (Langston University, 2013).
Transformational leaders also posses what is called Individualized consideration. This is a component that enables individual followers to reach their leaders. Their approachability is coupled with direct support and encouragement. This makes each employee count and increase the recognition of each employee to the employer. Keeping lines of communication open to the leader and approachability are the factors that increase individual consideration. According to Langston University (2003), individualized consideration includes the extent to which a leader attends to a follower’s needs and gives advice, mentorship or coaching. This is the support that some employees could be requiring to go forward hence transformational leadership is that supportive.
The leadership can then all be summarized to mean a kind of leadership in which leaders are committed to both the work and leading. Leaders of this kind respect and work to develop their followers’ professions. They believe in the lead by example where they do what they want their employees to do. Hence they develop a type of leadership that a leader does a lot and builds up an image of what the others should do. The result is the employer gets envied and idolized making followers to follow him.
I studied the behavior of a manager with regard to how he handled delegating duties to his junior. I had an opportunity to observe a manager in a company that dealt with transport of cereal for biscuits companies. The manager was in charge of doing tests to verify the safety of the cereals for human consumption. He was a self-contained manager who took tasks serious and always aimed at delivering the best. In many instances he chose to do the work alone with maximum involvement of his juniors.
The character of this manager did not allow him to easily delegate work. This is not because he was not willing to delegate but because he could manage to do all the work. He did not try to be a perfectionist but did the right thing and sacrificed his personal time to do work in the right manner. He promoted culture of cooperation and team work. He also challenged his juniors on their roles and set stands for them and made sure they had a chance to show their capabilities in their different roles. Though, the junior employees had the chance to do the several tasks in their roles they never had a chance for more challenging tasks to do bigger roles that were supposed to be done by the manager. Hence, the manager had a problem with delegation with regard to having overly control of his work. He therefore could only delegate not because he wanted to do it for a favor, or in exchange for a something and not even for evaluation. He could only delegate as a chance to the younger employees to exercise and promote their capabilities to handle bigger jobs along their lines of profession.
I observed him in a particular delegation. He was first of all in control of his work and around. He however decided to give two employees junior to oversee cereal testing of several trucks and determining some trends in the toxicity levels and come up with recommendations. He however explained the work carefully and offered encouragement of seeking for help when they got lost. The manager was to oversee something else. He, as I observed did not take keen interest on what they were doing but remained alert to offer any assistance pertaining to their progress. However he did not intrude and only waited for the end results. The nature of the delegation as I observed was that, he was not compelled by circumstances to give the duties. He was not under a tight schedule and did not need any assistance. However, he likes to help, to show how things should be done and get copied. That was his way of doing things initially. Hence delegating the duties was just giving a good chance to the employees to developed their career and exercise what they know. When they were done, he corrected them on few things and neither rewarded them nor had anything negative on them. He however recorded their achievement and offered to repeat doing that occasionally. Fortunately the juniors were able to oversee the testing of the cereal and record the data which they came up with several trends of the toxicity as they occurred in certain climates and geographical regions.
Due to the circumstances under which the delegation of duty was done, the manager was just giving his employees higher stands for achievement. He was setting goals higher, engaging their creativity and giving them a chance to shine. He was promising creativity, independence and excellence for the company.
Applying the principles of a transformational leader, we find that, a transformational leader is one who leads by example. He is set to deliver the right thing regardless of the means. They are leaders who enhance motivation, morality, and performance through a variety of means. It places importance in a leader acting out what the followers need to do and respecting the followers in making them deliver in their roles (Slavich and Zimbardo, 2012, P12). The basic principles of transformational leadership include leadership that facilitates acquisition and master of key concepts in the work (Slavich and Zimbardo, 2012, P13). These factors can be observed in the leader under study as he engages in delegating work with an aim of equipping the employees to take on the duties and be familiar with them. The other principle of transformational leadership is to enhance strategies and skills for learning and discovery (Slavich and Zimbardo, 2012, P15). The chance was offered in a manner that gave the followers freedom to exercise whatever strategies they had in mind to deliver. Transformational leaders enhance skills and discovery by giving followers enough space to do things in the best way possible. This is one core means of transformation.
The last principle of transformational leadership is to promote positive learning and related attitudes, values and beliefs (Slavich and Zimbardo, 2012, P16). When the manager delegated the work, he took the least interest in what they were doing and how they were doing it. He though stayed alert and offered assistance when they needed. The behavior of delegating and then taking least concern of what junior employee was doing was meant to cultivate the freedom that will boost their self esteem and attitude to the work. The will believe they are capable of handling the work and do it while motivated.
The manager is very effective with the transformational leadership. This is because applying the principles of the theory of leadership he was able to motivate employees to produce good work. It created a good environment in which followers knew what they were working for. The manager became idolized with his commitment towards achieving goals. This made the junior employees to take the delegated duties jovially. They with freedom, motivation and creativity were able to define observed trends in toxicity of cereals and relate them to certain geographical features and climate. This was a major achievement for the company, the employees and the manager.
The company’s major aim is to have competent employees who can deliver at work. Hence the kind of leadership promoted that by training and enabling them to exercise their own knowledge. Leadership also has a responsibility of growing professions of their employees ethically in the long run. This can be possible through continuously building the profile of its employees. The manager was also able to build a team that can work independently without supervision, and able to deliver good results. The kind of leadership wa...