Transformational Leadership and Job Performance (Research Paper Sample)

Transformational Leadership and Job Performance Student’s First Name, Middle Initial(s), Last Name Institutional Affiliation Course Number and Name Instructor’s Name and Title Assignment Due Date Transformational Leadership and Job Performance Today’s business world is fast-paced, encouraging the organizations to embrace innovative solutions to maintain competitiveness. Various critical aspects of organizational success have emerged, with human capital being one of them. The primary influence on human resources is job performance, the component that defines the individual’s work progress. Job performance is essential for organizations as it measures issues such as task completion, deadline fulfillment, quality of customer interactions and products, among other aspects that directly impact the organization’s capacity to accomplish the strategic plan. With all its importance, identifying the appropriate strategies is essential in fostering improved job performance. While different techniques exist, transformational leadership is one of the most viable approaches as it culminates in revolutionizing the efficiency of operations within the organization. The one used, in this case, is a small-sized IT organization facing major performance issues. Evaluating the viability of transformational leadership in addressing these issues is crucial for giving appropriate recommendations. The Organization ABC Inc. is a small-sized technology company specializing in IT services and software development. The company has existed on the market for the past five years and has a workforce of 20 employees, being located in a suburban area. Currently, the organization operates in one location where all the employees work in an office building. The company specializes in providing custom software solutions for small, medium, and, in rare cases, large organizations. For the past years, the company has offered high-quality products and excellent customer service to all its clients. The organization is structured into teams, each with specific responsibilities. Its structure can be defined as a flat one with a CEO and managers for each department at the higher levels. The software development squad is the largest in the organization, comprising half of the overall number of employees categorized into accounts, marketing, and customer support departments. From its inception, the company has been experiencing steady growth; but recently, management and employee teams have been struggling to meet project deadlines and complaints from the clients. The Problem ABC Inc. is experiencing issues with job performance. The importance of this aspect is well documented in the literature and emerges as one of the most prominent issues of organizational and staff management. ABC Inc. is facing some significant challenges with job performance, which is reduced within the organization. Recently, the company started experiencing substantial issues among the management teams of software development that are responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining various software applications used within the organizations and by the company’s clients. As a result of their poor performance, several projects have been delayed while others have failed to meet the desired quality standards. As software designing is one of the areas where this poor performance is evident, the trend seems to cut across the organization. The management has been receiving complaints from clients on software functionality and effectiveness, which compromise the user experience and results in loss of business for the clients. In addition, they are complaining of delayed responses from the customer service department, which make them feel like as if the organization is disregarding their complaints. Clients have started terminating their cooperation with the company; and without effective interventions, this organization may lose all the clients, leading to its closure. After further investigation, the management team found that employees were dealing with low motivation; most of the team members were not meeting their targets and were falling behind schedule. In other cases, the members produced codes prone to errors and those being difficult to maintain. The customer service department was severely understaffed, leading to work overload for the one person handling customer issues. The management is looking for effective ways to deal with emerging job performance problems. Even as the administration pursues these strategies, the transformational leadership will lend a helping hand to the organization in need to revolutionize business operations and become more successful. Job Performance Job performance is a fundamental issue in organizational operations, reflecting a clear and sound picture of the organization’s activities and processes. While job performance has been defined to mean different things, it essentially refers to the behavior of employees concerning their jobs to create value for the organization represented by specific evaluative components (Ángeles López-Cabarcos et al., 2022). When assessing job performance, it should be noted that this component can be dealt with through the traditional approach that focuses on employment and performance based on tasks, which define the broader understanding of the work roles in dynamic organizational contexts. However, the approach emerged is sufficient as corporate settings have significantly evolved over the past years, with the technology becoming more pervasive. The new conceptualization of job performance moves past the task-oriented approach to encompass a broader one that brings together the potential behaviors which positively contribute to organizational goals (Ángeles López-Cabarcos et al., 2022). When evaluating the aspect, it is essential to consider other factors such as citizen behavior, job role, adaptive and proactive performance. This shows that job performance is the wide-encompassing component focusing on holistic employee performance. It is particularly essential to reflect on the human capital – a collection of activities from the standpoint of human resource management. While job performance reflects the activities at the individual level, these outcomes have a stream-down impact on the overall organizational performance, pointing to its role as the cornerstone of the organization’s productivity (Wanigasekara & Mendis, 2020). Optimal performance means the organization can achieve its goals and objectives, while reduced performance is a barrier to achieving its strategic plan. In addition, job performance has a direct impact on employee productivity. Improving this component translates into higher productivity, where the employees complete more work in less time leading to increased efficiency within the organization. More importantly, higher job performance may result in the improved quality of work. It also means that the employees execute their tasks more effectively and efficiently, leading to higher quality service and products (Ángeles López-Cabarcos et al., 2022). This aspect has a direct impact on client satisfaction. Evidence in the ABC Inc. case shows that poor job performance causes reduced client satisfaction due to poor services and products. Thus, the employees are more equipped to service the client better, fostering customer loyalty when performing better. Eventually, this improves the sales and profitability of the organization. Notably, job performance also directly impacts innovation within the company. While innovation and creativity are essential in all organizations, it is particularly beneficial in companies in the tech sector, as they must be highly innovative to remain competitive. Together, all these aspects illustrate the importance of job performance for an organization, pointing to a burning need for ABC Inc. to identify appropriate measures to implement permanent solutions. Recommendations Embracing transformational leadership is one of the most appropriate approaches for addressing the job performance issues at ABC Inc. By combining the organization’s strengths and considering its weaknesses, this approach can build effective solutions. According to literature, transformational leadership is particularly suitable for managing job performance as it considers individual strengths and weaknesses (Lai et al., 2020). The first step to be taken, however, would be for the organization’s leaders, including a CEO and managers. To cultivate these skills, organizational decision-makers should consider training the staff to enable them to develop transformational leadership skills. In its totality, the transformational approach encompasses four stages that can lay the foundation for addressing the issues at ABC Inc. The first dimension is the idealized influence which defines the degree to which the subordinates recognize the leader’s values, confidence, beliefs, ethics, and power, determining their willingness to identify with these attributes and divert from egotism to the higher mutual objective (Lai et al., 2020). In this dimension, the leader uses their skills and influence to work with the employee to set mutual goals for team guidance. When working with the employees, the leaders will take part in the team’s day-to-day activities, leading by example and illustrating the expected quality standards. Notably, the leader will proactively participate in every step of th...