Transformational Leadership: the strengths, weaknesses, current trends and world leader
Transformational Leadership is believed to be the ideal leadership style in this century, it inspires and motivate followers to achieve common goal. However, before we try to implement it, we must know the merit and demerits also the challenges of it. First, it requires a significant amount of time and efforts since they must communicate among followers intensively, know the follower’s interests then leader will consume high energy to overcome it. They have to observe each follower, win their heart, talk effectively the vision, ask their support without getting weak impression, delegating task without further. These activities might be sometime tiring and overwhelmed if they have low energy. This style also demands excellent interpersonal skills like communication, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking from the leader to inspire and motivate followers. Hence, in my opinion, this style can be implemented by a very dynamic person, high energy and passionate person. If they have low energy, task-oriented, and low Maslow’s hierarchy needs. Further, this leadership style may not be suitable for every organizational culture or situation, as it requires trust and buy-in from followers due to high consumable energy. Additionally, transformational leadership can be demanding on the leader as they need to consistently inspire and motivate their followers to improve their performance.
Despite the weakness, there are also several strengths in this leadership. Team-buy in can be easily achieved since the followers already give full trust in the leader. This style allows the follower room to develop their competence and skills so that the goals can be achieved effectively. They also give a space to the follower to take the challenge, risk so they can learn from that. It also encourages the follower to think creatively and increase the productivity. Many scholars believe that this style is good to boost employee engagement, job satisfaction, great relationships between leader and followers, and create effective collaboration within teamwork.
In recent years, we witness tons of research on transformational leadership and become increasingly popular. Some scholars examine the efficacy of transformational leadership in many contexts, such as healthcare, education, manufacture, telecommunication, and non-profit organisations, is one of the current topics in this area. Additionally, researchers are looking into how transformational leadership affects into another dependent variables like Lai et al. (2020) in their work mentioned the job performance, follower behaviour/attitude, encouragement to status quo, job safety, employee engagement, job happiness, and organisational effectiveness.
Followers are more likely to participate in creative activities when they are more engaged which is the main result of TL. Additionally, compared to disengaged followers, engaged followers are more likely to concentrate their attention on their current tasks, which improves their ability to identify their error and increases their willingness to raise concerns. Therefore, it is advised that future researchers look at various outcomes that can be influenced by work involvement. Overall, research on transformational leadership is still developing and provides useful information about good leadership techniques.
The World Transformational Leaders
Umar bin Khatab. RA.
As a moslem, Umar bin Khatab R.A is one of the best example of great transformational leader. He was the second Caliph (leader in Islam) and during his caliphate, led Arab armies to conquer Mesopotamia and Syria, and initiated the conquest of Iran and Egypt. He is also one of the greatest Prophet Muhammad PBUH’companion. He noted very remarkable legacy to his follower includes, establishing a judge, providing a pension to register warriors, and developing the Hijriyah calendar. His charisma even makes the Satan run quickly. We know there are 4 dimensions of TL: idealized influence (charisma), inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Umar bin Khattab RA actually poses all of them effectively.
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi was a charismatic leader with several distinctive traits. Gandhi was a great communicator who was able to encourage others through his writings and public speaking. He was able to lead by example, living out what he taught. He was a real and successful leader , distinguishing him from other leaders worldwide. He was known for his modesty, placing people over his personal will, and nonstop commitment or full dedication to the truth and nonviolence. Gandhi was also an effective listener who respected other people’s viewpoints, which is rare in this recent century. He treated all people with different races, backgrounds, and religions the same. He was able to visualize the concept of success toward his follower that makes them put higher trust on him