A Leader is needed in order for community to progress, achieve it’s best and flourish. Though when we talk about leadership we more often think of work and business, it could be applied to any other group of people as well, e.g. to a regular family. A group of people always gets better outcome and shows high productivity if there is a leader who helps group members to organize themselves and keeps them oriented on results. And even family members for best achievements in life should work together as a team, as in such a way a family and each of it’s members will gain much more and achieve those results faster.
From different kinds of leadership at this moment in life to me speaks more transformational leadership. This is a kind of leadership where a leader uses his or her example to lead a team, and a leader focuses on followers in terms of bringing out the best in them.
For better definition I may as well give a quote by James MacGregor Burns that transformational leadership occurs when “one or more persons engage with each other in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality."
There are distinguished four basic elements of transformational leadership:
- Idealized Influence – This component comes first and the idea of it is that a leader should be the “ideal example” of what other team members should become, or in other words a leader has to “walk the talk”, not only show the direction to others. Here I’ll omit the part that a person should have certain personality traits in order to be a leader of any kind and for people to follow him or her, as I believe a whole new article would be needed for this purpose.
- Inspirational Motivation – it’s important for a leader to inspire and motivate the followers. Here communication skills of a leader are highly important, as he or she has to show and reason the purpose of work and ensure that the team has a good understanding of the task. Here also is very important to create and communicate a shared belief or a story, idea which’ll unite all the followers, support and guide them in a difficult moment.
- Intellectual Stimulation – It’s important that a leader stimulates others to look for answers, solve problems, be creative and innovative. Here the most important is to ensure that not a single idea is considered to be stupid so that the team is willing to share as much ideas as possible. Leader should also let the team deal with certain problems and difficulties themselves, so that they learn to make responsible and wise decisions.
- Individualized Consideration – Here individual attention is paid to any member of the team. Individual concerns, personal development, needs and desires are taken into account, which ensures every member of the team to perform to the maximum level possible.
This leadership style appeals to me as it reduces the competition between individuals and teams, and focuses on building strong professional relationships, team building and bringing out the best in people. People are following the leader because of respect and admiration, and some followers are even inspired enough to become leaders themselves. A transformational leader needs to be passionate, genuinely care about other people, be open to new ideas and have a clear vision that is grounded in reality.
