This chapter captures the bi-furcated challenge of implementing the transformational leadership practices in a complex organizational context. The authors embark on Bass' 4I transformational leadership model and suggest a variety of imperative skills necessary for the proper implementation. From the suggested pool of skills, two are highlighted as the most important and resonate with the 4I model. These are creativity and innovation skills and change management skills. The authors expect to find out the importance of transformational leaders to empower and enable the second line of operational leaders that are capable of efficiently and effectively bridging the transformational leadership chasm from the leaders' vision to the followers' practice.
TopIntroduction
In an organizational context, leadership practice does not exist in vacuum. It occurs within the boundaries of both external and internal environmental factors and a timeline. Hay and Hodgkinson (2006) recognize the argument that Burn’s Leadership Model and most of the models of transformational and charismatic leadership tend to conceptualize leadership in ways that neglect the complexity found in organizational settings. Thru the myriad of leadership definitions, Burn’s Leadership Model is versatile enough to encompass the broad spectrum of leadership activities and practices which view leadership practice as an attempt of a leader to influence their followers to achieve common goals. Re-visiting the work of James MacGregor Burns (1978) and his early definitions and model of leadership, reveals that he in his early definition of transformational leadership linked three factors only within the leadership model: leaders, followers, and goals. “He wrote of transformative leaders as people who tap the motives of their followers in order to better reach the goals of leaders and followers” (Northouse, 2021) Thus, we argue that in an organizational setting it is necessary to add the dimensions of internal environment, external environment and time frame to capture much of the neglected complexity in organizations that leaders encounter (see Figure 1). To accomplish this goal this chapter will breakdown the leadership model as shown to pull out the components that will drive organizational success from a transformational leadership perspective. These components include some of the necessary skill sets for both leader and followers.
Organizations realize positive outcomes from transformational leadership because the transformational leaders offer their followers something more than just working for self-gain. They provide followers with an inspiring mission and vision and give them an identity (Bass, 1985). The work of Bass and Riggio (2010) expanded the initial concepts of MacGregor (1978) to help explain how transformational leadership could be measured, as well as how it impacts follower motivation and performance. It manifested the measurement of the extent to which a leader is transformational. For example, it is measured in terms of their influence on the followers.
Bass’s work also explained the evolution of the impact of transformational leaders. The evolutionary process starts when the followers of a transformational leader feel trust, admiration, loyalty, and respect for the leader (Bass, 1985), Because of these demonstrated qualities of the transformational leader, followers are willing to work harder than originally expected. The dimensions, evolution and outcomes of transformational leadership are captured in Bass’s globally recognized model of transformational leadership. Bass’s 4Is Transformational Leadership Model suggests that the leader transforms and motivates followers through practicing their idealized influence (earlier referred to as charisma), inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation (stimulate followers’ efforts to be innovative and creative) and individual consideration (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. The 4I transformational leadership model