Examples Of Transactional Leadership

Transactional leadership
General Schwarzkopf was commander-in-chief of the U.S. forces in Operation Desert Storm, responsible for tens of thousands of troops in Iraq and Kuwait. He used the rules and regulations of the military to coordinate operations on several continents. Vince Lombardi is best known as the coach for the Green Bay Packers. Under his leadership, the team never had a losing session. He used to run the Packers through the same plays in practice over and over again. These two examples present the example of transactional type of leadership.

Transactional leadership type is characterized by achieving the performance standard using the tool of reward and punishment and following the routine under the set structure. Its root

The psychological principles on which this leadership style is based is of Pavlovian and Skinnerian. The basic premise of transactional leadership that marketplace demands reciprocity, flexibility, adaptability, and real time cost-benefit analysis (Burns, 1978) makes it inappropriate to use it in today’s dynamic knowledge economy. However, if the supply of skilled labors are higher than the demand, for example in a country like India, then leaders usually resort to transactional style wherein carrot and stick policy is applied and people are merely thought of as being motivated by monetary gains and not more than what scientific management theorist or McGregor’s Theory X, had the view of humans. This leadership style also works in military, police wherein people have to work within a set parameter and a defined structure. This leadership style is a prescription of short term gains with severe negative implications for long term existence of organization. It is clear failure where creativity and initiatives are required; where the environment is dynamic and most importantly the individuals working there strive for higher order needs of

Idealized Influence – It provides for high ethical behaviour, instills pride, gains respect and trust. The Deep Lead Model being used by Finnish defence forces for providing leadership training and development is all about application of transformational leadership in real life.
This theory is based upon the psychological principles of social-cognitive and humanistic theories which take a positive view of humans. The biggest positives of transformational leadership is that the members work based upon their intrinsic motivation ; there is a sense of trust and a shared vision which guides every member to go beyond their capabilities and perform. Innovations becomes a rule rather exception; leads to creation of pool of future leaders and not just ordinary followers.
However, there are some challenges which need to be taken care of under this leadership type. This model assumes that followers will work towards a larger goal; the application of this model in real life situation is time consuming. This type of leadership answers the question “what” but not “How”. There had been examples in our world when people like Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden, very glaring examples of pseudo transformational leadership type (Graham, Ziegert, & Capitano, 2015) had led the world to devastation and