Transformational leadership is an efficient and effective handholding that enables the team to undergo a transformation and inspires them to explore the uncharted waters. Transformational leaders inspire great fidelity and confidence in their followers.

When to use the transformational leadership style?

A passionate and enthusiastic leader when senses the same enthusiasm in the team, should adopt this style of leadership. The confidence that, this adoption can bring in a different dimension to the team, should drive the change in leadership style.

It is equally important that the team trusts their leader not blindly but wisely. While it is psychologically boosting for the leader to have blind trust, it is equally his responsibility to instil wisdom in his team to choose to trust with for a right reason. This makes the team stronger and eases the path of transformation as the team willingly takes the steps seeing the spark in their leader.  The leader’s vision is transpired and translated as the team’s vision. His abilities to express and positively influence would make it work.

Four basic qualities of the transformational leadership:

Inspirational Motivation:   To motivate is much beyond writing inspiring vision and mission statements for the team. It is with the leader on how he/she articulates it for the team to believe in working together for the same. He/she builds confidence, gives out positive energy and hope for an optimistic future. He/she understands the fact that purpose of doing an act is what motivates a person the most and keeps his communication well-articulated with a purpose and meaning to drive the team towards success. Engaging, precise and purposeful vision encourages the team to invest more efforts and boosts their confidence on their abilities to give the best.

Individualized Consideration: What matters the most is the level to which a leader can attend to each of his/her follower’s individual needs and act as mentor to coach the follower towards excellence. To be able to listen and empathize to the concerns shared, builds a layer of strong trust between the team and the anchor. Enabling a continuous two way communication encourages greater contributions for the individual and team betterment from every member. A focussed approach from the leader aspires and intrinsically motivates each team player to do beyond the obvious.

Intellectual Stimulation: A transformational leader nurtures and enables people who think individually and take risks in executing their ideas. The leader not only plays a key role in letting them execute but also stands as a key stimulating factor for such ideas. A level, to which the leader challenges the status quo and takes a sane level of risk, intellectually fuels each of the passionate followers. A leader who believes and sees opportunities to learn continuously, excites the team to ask questions and think deeply to find the best ways to execute any problem on the move. To simply say, a transformational leader adds new perspectives to the obvious and oblivious thoughts.

Idealized Influence:  Ethics and values are what define a person. It is the responsibility of the leader to be the right role model to instil high morals like respect, trust, royalty, pride and behaviour at a team level. He/she should lead by example, for they are noticed and followed by generation next.

When will the transformational leadership not be effective?

If the team looks onto the team leader as an archetypal person, transformation leadership will not have the expected results. As the transformation is an ongoing process, there will be an expectation on the leader from the team members to put on newness of thought every day and display an igniting spark for an unending effective result. Or else, the team will fall into the monotony of situation.

Moreover, if the members have target as their prior goal and are conventionally attached to the methods of achieving the targets, this style of leadership will not be successful. If the team members are attached to the traditional setup of working and thinking, they will feel the ideas of the transformational leader are far-fetched. They will be reluctant to give in for a change or transformation.

What is to be done? How does it work?

Once a leader identifies the work environment and senses that use of this style will be triumphant, he uses ways to convince the team with his vision.   The next step, which in fact never stops, is to constantly pumping the vision across the team. He/she is by their side all the time when it ebbs or flows. He/she is a sustainable support and anchor to his team. He/she always stands on the forefront till his team reaches the goal.

The leader has to maintain a sense of balance between team member’s personal interests, endeavours towards development and psychology. This helps an effective transformation to happen. Being people-oriented will lead to success and sustained progress.

The leader should learn each day and renew his ideas to avoid complacence and keep the team excited every time. A team that doesn’t believe in his leader’s abilities or distrusts his capabilities can never be transformed for better. And the only way for a leader to build trust on his/her competencies is to stay upbeat and lead by example in every facet of development.