Transformational leadership theory research

Yuqing Cui
University of San Diego

Abstract
Leadership is to make the group handle matters according to a person's wishes
and this person is the group leader. The ability that makes others do according to his

wishes is leadership. I have heard a story, the bellwether of a flock of sheep slipped
and fell off the cliff due to strong wind when it came down the mountain, dozens of
sheep in the group followed and jumped off the cliff in that way. Simply for this
behavior, the bellwether had undoubted leadership. I learned a theory from this story,
a good leader is the key to decide whether an organization can be successful. A little
error can impact the whole organizations fate. According to Peter Nothouses
leadership theory, leadership can be divided into 3 pieces, attractive leadership,
transactional

leadership

and

transformational

leadership.

This

paper

has

elaborated my understanding of the qualities that outstanding leaders need to have and
transformational leadership.

Keywords: transformational leadership, invictus, leader

The measure of good leader.

Leadership is the action of how you achieve your goal by making changes and
mobilizing your people to solve their problems. Whats more, leadership is about
creating a shared vision for a group of people and empowering them to tackle the
adaptive issues. In my point of view, a good leader should have the following quality.

1. A leader should lead by example and treat subordinates with all sincerity. A leader
should have a dual career planning ability for him and subordinates. He should urge
himself to struggle upward to a higher class and think about things at a higher level.
Such deliberateness can be complete and thorough. Parallel units requirements and
team cooperation also can be taken into account. Meanwhile, he must be far-sighted
and open-mined and set high standards for himself. A leader should assist

subordinates to do career planning. Sometimes, subordinates have better

opportunities. The leader should encourage and recommend rather than not give
chances to subordinates due to private ends. Meanwhile, he should think about the
succession at any time and always be aware of the corresponding rise. As long as
subordinates are competent, he ought to support, encourage and provide opportunities
to subordinates to offer them better display space. The ability of learning is another
indicator. Many companies are promoting the learning organizations to make
leaders learn continuously. Training is a good way of improvement. A leader can read
more books that he is interested in or which can improve his self-management ability.
He can absorb others experience, digest knowledge and apply them to practice.
Furthermore, a leader must have long-term strategic planning ability. Qualified
leaders should have both remote and short-range capabilities.

2. Leaders must trust the person in position. A person trusted by others,

especially by leaders, can produce tremendous spiritual force. Trust can make people
under way quicken their pace. Trust can make people who temporarily drop
behind catch up forthwith. Trust can make subordinates have more fervently sincere
hearts and even indifferent to personal life and death. As an old Chinese saying goes,
A gentleman is ready to die for his confidants. The so-called confidants refer to
cordial, mutually affiliated and trustworthy friends. Only these friends can share weal
and woe and stick together in life and death. Conversely, if a person can not be
trusted, especially by leaders, it would be undoubtedly different completely. A leader
who employs persons but distrusts them will surely be suspicious. Suspects must be
bound to bring about the following consequences. One is suspect and estrangement.
The other consequence is suspect and jealousy. Such consequences are horrible. In

addition, the leaders should pay attention to the principle that a suspected man cannot
be used. Everyone has his own strong points and different capabilities. As persons to
be led, a leader should actively support their work and give them unquestionable trust.
For the work that subordinates are not good at or not suitable for, the leader can not
drag them into doing it. This is what people usually say, the general principle
of fostering strengths and circumventing weaknesses. Here a suspected man cannot
be used does not refer to the one-sided suspicion. As long as a leader is good at using
the art of leadership, fostering strengths and circumventing weaknesses, every
subordinate is trustworthy. In short, if a leader is arbitrarily suspicious and jealous of
subordinates, suspected subordinates are bound to distrust the leader. One more
subordinate being distrusted would make the leader have one less supporter, one less
contribution and even one more rival.

3. A leader must be a caring listener and pay compliments to others. A leader

should know very well that he must be a caring listener. Speaking from the
perspective of psychology, when a person's self-worth has been satisfied, it would be
a cheerful and delightful matter. Therefore, they can give up their requirements and
ideas. Even those most finicky and most furious critics would often be influenced and
intenerated in front of a patient and sympathetic listener. Abraham Lincoln once said,
Everyone likes to be praised. People under the leadership also wish to be
acknowledged and appreciated by leaders in their moral qualities, intellectual
attainments, artistic levels and work achievements. Appreciation costs nothing. It is
this costless affirmation that offers people the motive power of progress. A leader
should appreciate more not parsimoniously, because people of all ages and both sexes
and the respectable and humble can use this art of individual behaviorism.

4. A leader needs to strictly avoid prejudices and treat people equally without
discrimination. Everything is developing and changing, let alone man-the wisest of all
creatures. Therefore, for laggard people with shortcomings and faults, the leader
should treat them with the well-meaning, developmental and progressive viewpoint. A
leader has to see every small progress of subordinates, constantly encourage and be on
intimate terms with them.

5. A leader should be adept in observation and care for subordinates. People

always have psychologies of deficiency and uneasiness. These two kinds of
psychologies would seriously affect peoples emotions. A leader should pay attention
to these two psychologies of subordinates at any time. Subordinates generally have
the following five aspects of uneasiness. First, does my leader dislike me? Second, am
I getting blamed? Third, will my leader make things difficult for what I have done?
Fourth, can I fulfill this task? What should I do if I failed? Will my colleagues support
me? Fifth, will I be redeployed? Leaders can resolve subordinates uneasiness from
the following three aspects. First, the first impression can not be regarded as the final
one. Although a leader is very dissatisfied and less optimistic with the first
impression, he should learn to forget. Thus, subordinates can be much relieved from
uneasiness. Second, a leader should not alter subordinates posts easily. Leaders
should pay special attention that they must not alter subordinates posts unless they
have no alternative, because being afraid of transferring is a kind of widespread
uneasiness. Once subordinates are redeployed, it means they must make a fresh start.
When a leader finds that a subordinate can not move forward, he should first reassure
the idea of "substitution" and try his best to help the subordinate to complete the task,

which can eliminate kindred subordinate feelings of absolute panic. Uneasiness is

actually a negative factor. To eliminate a negative factor will virtually increase a
positive one. Third, a leader should dare to assume responsibility for subordinates. It's
hard to avoid failures at work. A leader should dare to bear responsibility.
Incompetent leaders always shirk responsibility and shift the blame onto subordinates.
Otherwise, subordinates will eventually become dead chess pieces. Therefore, as long
as subordinates realize that their leader is willing to share their cares and burdens,
support them and take the responsibility, their uneasiness of living on tenterhooks
would be eliminated.

6. A leader must have the courage to admit his faults and dare to bear
responsibility. Leaders are paragons. It is a brilliant leader that never makes mistakes
and faults. The critical problem is what kind of attitude a leader should hold in front
of subordinates after making a mistake. A leaders acknowledgement of mistakes in
front of subordinates will not lower the leaders prestige but can improve his
authority, because what subordinates respect most are such leaders who dare to
envisage the faults and undertake the due obligations. Therefore, a leader should
boldly admit his own shortcomings and errors and bear his responsibility bravely
in front of his inferiors in leadership activities. Thus, he can be respected by
subordinates.

7. A leader ought to pay attention to cultivating subordinates and stimulating

competitions. A wise leader should make his subordinates completely display and give
full play to their intelligence and wisdom and create all favorable conditions for
subordinates to make them preeminent and outstanding as far as possible. A truly

talented subordinate can find a suitable position anywhere. The work performance in a
unit, a department or even a region is directly proportional to its staffs quality which
is directly proportional to the premise whether the department personnel can be openminded in learning advanced knowledge. Therefore, a leader should observe and
cultivate subordinates. First, a leader should set up models and examples. Second, he
should take the lead to learn from examples and call on subordinates to learn form
advanced figures and examples. In this way, the team under his leadership can always
take the leading position. Attention should be paid not only to talents cultivation, but
also to the role of competition in leadership activities. No doubt competition will
greatly promote the development of work and career and make competitors enhance
their abilities. In the competition, colleagues can learn a lot from each other, enhance
mutual understanding and deepen friendship. A leader should tactfully organize and
command subordinates to carry out the competition and genuinely help competitors
win and make progress. This, he would surely win respect and love from every
subordinate who has participated in the competition.

8. A leader should less censure, criticize and command subordinates. A famous

psychologist Hans Hill once said, More evidence has shown that people are all afraid
of being blamed. In practice, it is easy to find those who are often criticized and
censured by the leader still make mistakes and expose shortcomings frequently. There
are often more problems in the units led by those who censure and criticize
subordinates as soon as they see subordinates shortcomings, problems and errors,
because nobody likes criticism and attributing blame. On the contrary, the shame
caused by criticism and accusation often makes people's morale drop disastrously.
Grievance and resentment would also rise sharply. Except in particularly unusual

cases,

leader

should

limit

his

criticism and

attributing

blame

of

subordinates shortcomings and errors to appropriate occasions. In addition, he also

should pay attention to communicative skills. Otherwise, the expected effect and
purpose can not only be reached, the barrier among them would be further deepened.
A leader should adopt more lateral reminding which can be easily accepted by people.
In addition, leaders need to pay special attention to using less commands and
manipulations, because the favorite and the most respected people are those who like
and respect themselves the most. Therefore, only leaders who know how to respect
subordinates can get the respect from subordinates. In short, there are still a
variety of techniques of leaders and subordinates getting well along with each other.
We need to constantly sum up and accumulate experience in leadership activities.
Only in this way, we can better apply them to practice.

9. A leader should also have sense of social responsibility. When one is promoted
from a minor leader to a senior one, his sense of social responsibility will be
increasingly heavy. How does he do his bit for repaying the society? Starting from
personal capability, not making excessive demands of returns and doing good works
quietly are the true meaning of social responsibility. Society is a big family. It needs
everyones diligent irrigation. If leaders at all levels can be role models, they will have
powerful impacts on

the

practice

and

implementation

of

the

entire social

responsibility. Furthermore, personal family life will be more wonderful. Charity will
bring people the highest personal spiritual happiness.

The process of transformational leadership research

Over the past three decades, transformational leadership has become the research

frontier

and

focus

of

leadership

and

has

attracted

many

researchers

academic discussions and experimental studies. The connotation of transformational

leadership originated in Downtons earliest study on transformational leadership in the
early 1970s. Based on Downtons study, Burns conceptualized the transformational
leadership. He thought that the transformational leadership was the process in which
leaders and members mutually improved their moral qualities and motivations to
higher levels. In this process, the leader attaches great importance to improving
members intrinsic motivations and putting forward higher values and ideals to arouse
the subordinates self-consciousness, hope them transcend the original expectations
and lift the hierarchy of needs to a higher realm so as to assist subordinates to achieve
their higher inner demands and make them be content to transcend personal interest
and achieve organizational interests.
Transformational leadership includes four parts. The first part is leadership
charisma. Leaders become models of subordinates behaviors and are acknowledged
by subordinates. Charismatic leaders are capable, confident and strong-willed. The
second part is inspiration action. They optimistically expound the future within their
reach to subordinates and adopt emotional appeals and team spirit to rally the
subordinates. In order to do this, leaders must create an emotional connection to
colleagues, place high hopes on them and make them have courage and passions for
the transformation. This requires a leader should have empathy or be able to
understand things in other colleagues shoes and plan out stirring future prospects to
achieve team goals. The third part is intelligence stimulation. Leaders encourage
subordinates to innovate and challenge themselves, including instilling new ideas into
subordinates, inspiring subordinates to express new insights and encouraging
subordinates to solve problems encountered in work with new means and methods.

The final part is individualized consideration. Leaders should show solicitude for each
subordinate and pay attention to personal growth. Listening is essential for
the team collaboration. In this way, a leader can test his ideas and ensure the action
plan is feasible before making a decision.

The implementation of the value management is bound to incur the

transformation

of

enterprise

culture.

In

the process of organizational culture

transformation, leaders need to have certain traits to bring about new ways of thinking
and doing things under the guidance of value management. In terms of personal
development, a leader must adopt and defend those values regarded as the life source
of the organization by employees. In the implementation of transformation, the role
that a transformational leader assumes cannot be underestimated. For every successful
business in any size and industry, there is a real transformational leader behind it.
They must control and formally introduce the real transformation of beliefs and values
rather than assume presentable looks or only make some adjustments of technical
process.

Philosophy of Transformational Leadership in the movie

Peter Drucker once said, Managers do things correctly, but leaders do right
things. In the film Invictus, Mandela set up demeanor of a respected leader. At that
time, football had always been considered as a sport for the white. To change peoples
prejudices, he tried his best to support the South African football team to win the
World Cup championship in 1995. Through television transmission, the world
witnessed changes in South Africa. People set up the national pride and confidence
and forgot the prejudice. As far as I can see, Mandela possessed all elements of

an excellent leader.
First of all, his integrity and the idiosyncrasy of geniality make me deeply
impressed. He is very amiable and obliging. For instance, he would extend cordial
greetings to people who work with him and their families and magnify them at any
time. He is very humorous and witty. For example, in reply to a question asked by a
hostile journalist on the transformation of his previous nonsupport of Springboks after
the leadership, Yes, but now it is different, because we should adapt to changes.
Football is a rough sport and barbarous like politics, he answered. He is graceful and
broad-minded. For example, on his first day at work, in the face of everybodys
distrust, he exhorted those who worked for the former President at the office and
intended to leave that they were working for all South Africans not for him. He kept
their hearts and reassured them. He is very far-sighted. When seeing a bigger overall
situation beneficial to the nation, he persuaded the black who were going to disband
the football team to retract the decision. He challenged others questioning voice
with actions. He is adept in motivating others. When he invited the football team
captain to have tea, he asked, How do you motivate your team? Taking the lead,
the captain said. Yes, so, how do you inspire them to do better beyond expectations?
He motivated the captain and made him regain his self-confidence using the poem
which had supported him in prison for thirty years. He is very valorous. Fully
knowing that he was in the environment with high uncertainty and lots of risks, he
still courageously stepped onto the grandstand and communicated with people.

Mandela has a powerful demeanor. The essence of his leadership inspires a

country and team to perform at their best and believe that they are better than they
believed themselves to be. Mandela changes peoples mental model successfully.

Although transformational leadership has been researched by a vast number of

scholars these years, there are still many problem exist. Such as cross-cultural studies
of transformational leadership, under different cultural background, the leadership
method may vary a lot. The theorists should pay more attention on it.

Reference

Heifetz, R., & Linsky, M. (2002). Leadership on the line: staying alive through the
dangers of leading. Harvard Business Review Press
Invictus. (2009). Warner Brothers.
Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in organizations. (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NY:
Prentice Hall.

Bass.B, Riggio. R (2006). Transformational leadership (2nd Ed.). Psychology

Press: New York, NY.