Title: TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP: A SHARED MENTAL MODEL FOR ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE
Authors: Mr.Dipesh Gangrade, Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies
Prof. Manish Choudhary, Professor, Department of Science & Technology
College: Mathura Devi Institute of Technology & Management, Indore.
ABSTRACT
Organisations nowadays are struggling and trying their best to find new strategies and set plans to develop their human assets (including managers and employees) in order to adapt themselves with the new challenges they face in the highly competitive market. Depending on such a notion, it is with a high necessity for organisations to update their strategies and to get a full understanding of what skills, abilities, and proper style should a leader show in managing and satisfying employees.
A suitable approach to transformational leadership development implies moving away from the classical one-size-fits-all leadership model to a customized design approach tailored for specific individual needs. This transition in approach can be demonstrated with the help of some examples of different practices suited to current leadership development needs.
Keywords: Strategies, Skills, Abilities, Competencies and Transformational leadership.
INTRODUCTION
Effective leadership is a personal role that requires the blending of motivational, strategic and management skills to align focus, energy and drive whilst creating a culture which encourages individual thinking and attainment. Ultimately leadership is about pushing ideas and thoughts forward, shouldering responsibility and aspirations to bring out the confidence of others. Leaders are required to have greater project leadership and influencing skills than in the past. Summary of some key leadership skills:
• Managerial – keep track of progress against targets and take action on slippage.
• Trustworthy – speak honestly and openly and expect the same from others.
• Aware – understand each individual’s abilities, limitations, motives and drivers.
• Influential – use vision, argument and important stakeholders to sway opinion.
• Visionary – know what needs to be achieved and how to go about achieving it.
• Inspirational – create and bring to life an image of how things can be.
The influence of leaders works in two ways, they influence their followers, but the followers also influence their leaders in some way (Yukl, 1989). To understand what it is that makes leaders effective, one has to understand how influencing others are possible. Because people determine their moods on connections with other people, the moods of leaders effect the emotions of the people around them, their followers in this case. The different kinds of behaviours that followers can show towards leader behaviour are compliance, commitment and resistance. Today the business environment has become highly competitive and volatile. To grow/flourish in this competitive environment, one needs to take new initiatives and find innovative ways to solve a problem. These tasks are performed by a leader. In general, all human beings are meant to be leader—either for the society, group or organization, family or even for him. The way we lead is apparently different; each of us has our own style in practicing leadership.
TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
The Transactional leadership theory was first proposed by Max Weber in 1947. According to Burns (1982), “Transactional leadership occurs when one person takes the initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of valued thing” (p. 19). Bass (1994) proposes three styles of leadership that are transactional, transformational and laissez-faire. Bass (1990) describes transactional leadership is based on the assumptions that followers are motivated through rewards and punishments, and they obey their leaders’ instructions. Whereas Transformational leadership provides a generalization of thinking about leadership that emphasizes ideals, inspiration, innovations and individual concerns. Transformational leaders emphasize the value of the organizations’ membership whether they are voluntary or compulsory.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
De Jong, (2007) has described three types of leadership behaviour that differentiate effective and ineffective managers; task-oriented, relation-oriented and participative leadership. Task-oriented behaviour involves leaders that spend their time on doing task-oriented functions and guide their followers to be initiative and set high goals. Leaders that show relationship-oriented behaviour consider, support and help their followers. They have a general supervision, but allow followers to have some autonomy in deciding how to work and how to pace themselves.
Murray Prideaux,A.B.M. Rabiul Alam Beg (2007) explained Leadership is largely culturally orientated, embracing traditional beliefs, norms and values, and a preoccupation ,Thus, leadership style is significantly influenced by the leader’s immediate and extended family, clan, and tribe. Different leadership styles have diverse effect on variables such as flexibility. Responsibility, standards, rewards, clarity and commitment and in some cases on organisational climate. (Goleman 2000).
Barchiesi Maria Assunta, La Bella Agostino (2007) Measure the Leadership Effectiveness and leadership role and its influence on performance, leadership behaviours , attitudes, they found that high leadership indexes are not related to past performance records, but associated both to higher potentiality of enhanced performance and to higher reputation of organisations, pointing in the direction of a meaningful influence of behavioural complexity and dynamics on the leadership perceived level. Chung-Hsiung Fang, Sue-Ting Chang,Guan-Li Chen (2009) leadership style can affect organisational commitment and work satisfaction positively and work satisfaction can affect organisational commitment and work performance positively.
Hartmann (2006) also described motivation as “the main force through which individuals allocate effort to generate and implement innovative ideas”. Transformational perspective besides the different situations, the commitment of employees for the organisations’ mission or objectives is also important. This point of view is taken into account in the transformational and charismatic leadership (Burns, 1978: Yukl, 1989).
QUALITIES IN A LEADER WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO IT SECTOR
With the phenomenon of globalisation empowering India as an IT capital in the international zone it is imperative to have the Indian IT industry reshaped in order to meet out upcoming challenges in the future. Information technology (IT) industry in India has played a key role in putting India on the global map. IT industry in India has been one of the most significant growth contributors for the Indian economy. The industry has played a significant role in transforming India’s image from a slow moving bureaucratic economy to a land of innovative entrepreneurs and a global player in providing world class technology solutions and business services. It also helped India transform from a rural and agriculture-based economy to a knowledge based economy. There is strong evidence that India has a strong and sustainable comparative advantage in software development and IT-enabled services.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1. To analyse leadership style, competencies in IT sector & its impact on organisational performance.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
After comparing two research approaches in this study, both quantitative approach and qualitative approach has been chosen. The study focused to measure attributes of leadership style among managers of IT sector.
Sampling Method-Random sampling (judgemental)
Sampling Unit- Top level Managers and Middle level Managers.
Company’s Name: Microsoft, IBM, Infosys and Satyam.
Data Collection- The structured questionnaire was based on 5-point Likert Scale distributed among 250 managers and the scope of the study was limited to companies in Indore city.
Reliability Analysis: In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha is 0.742 which shows that the factor scales are internally consistent.
Statistical Techniques: Correlation & Multiple Regression
Hypothesis of the Study: H11: There is an interrelationship between leaders’ competencies, Transformational Leadership Style, and Organisational Performance.
RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
To carry out the multiple regression analysis, both the independent variables, i.e. transformational leadership style and leaders’ competencies, were regressed on organisational performance using the Enter method. In the analysis, leaders’ competencies were entered first since this variable was found to have a larger correlation coefficient (refer to Table 1) than transformational leadership style which were entered later. Table 2 presents the result of the multiple regression analysis. As shown in Table 2, leadership style and leaders’ competencies were able to explain significantly 39.1% of the variance in organisational performance (F = 81.069, p = .000). This finding appears to support the hypothesis that both of these variables are contributors to organisational performance, albeit in a small way.
Table 1: Results of Multiple Regression Analysis (n=250)
Model Summary
Table 2: ANOVA *b
Table 3: Coefficients *a
a. Predictor: (Constant) Transformational Leadership style, Leadership competencies
b. Dependent Variable: Organisational Performance
On the basis of the results drawn from the questionnaire, it is concluded that transformational style of leadership is the most suitable among all the prevalent styles. This proves hypothesis of this study (Refer Table No.1 &2). The study has clearly demonstrated that transformational style is the most desirable and it is associated with creation of empowerment, growth, learning, morale and satisfaction on the part of the managers.
CONCLUSION
The leaders practicing transformational style of leadership have a very high level of persistence and a very positive attitude. Their positive attitude and persistence is the prime reason for their success. For an organisation to succeed in businesses, it must ensure that they have effective leaders in place. These leaders must possess the right skills and qualities to enable them to provide effective leadership to their employees and colleagues. A transformational/democratic style is adopted by a leader who likes to allow their employees to participate in decision making, and supports participation in deciding work methods and goals. The managers always allowed staff to participate in decision making and were opened-minded, so as to create good decisions and protect against mistakes that could happen. In contrast, only Laissez-Faire Leadership had a High Power Distance and also used an Authoritarian style. From the researcher’s experience, India is a democratic country in which the people have the freedom to participate in decision making. Therefore, the dominant leadership style of IT industry, top managers and middle managers encourage their staff to determine goals, procedures and decision.
SUGGESTIONS OF THE STUDY
• In discussing the link between leaders’ competencies and leadership behaviours, many researchers focused only at emotional intelligence as an important leadership competency an effective leader needs to possess. However, it has been proposed that a good and effective leader needs to possess a set of leadership competencies and skills to help him/her with the job of leading and motivating others.
• Depending on the definition of the effective leader, the researcher hypothesises that an effective and competent leader is that the one who knows how to choose the proper style (consists of a variety of competencies) in order to motivate and make his/her employees satisfied with their jobs.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Bartolo, K., & Furlonger, B. (2000). Leadership and job satisfaction among aviation fire fighters in Australia. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 15(1), 87-97.
• Bass, B. M. (1990). Bass & Stogdill´s handbook of leadership: Theory, research and managerial applications. (3rd ed.). New York: The Free Press.
• Conger, J. and R. Kanungo (1987). “Towards a behavioural theory of charismatic leadership in organisational settings.”Academy of Management Review 12: 637-647.
• Cooper, K. (2000). Effective competency modelling and reporting. New York, NY: AMACOM.
• Lucia, A., & Lepsinger, R. (1999). The art and science of competency models. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
• Madlock, P. E. (2008 ). The link between leadership style, communicator competence, and employee satisfaction. Journal of Business Communication, 45(1), 61-78.
• Murray Prideaux, A.B.M. Rabiul Alam Beg, “Uncovering Leadership Issues in Papua New Guinea”, The 4th SMEs in a Global Economy Conference 2007 9th – 10th July 2007.
• Northouse, P. G. (2001). Leadership: Theory and practice. CA: Thousand Oaks.