Comparing And Contrasting Two Leadership Theories

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP THEORY COMPARED TO LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE THEORY
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Transformational Leadership Theory Compared to Leader-Member Exchange Theory  PAGEREF _Toc9002647 \h
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Similarities  PAGEREF _Toc9002648 \h
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Team Transformational Leadership and mean Leader-Member Exchange Theory  PAGEREF _Toc9002649 \h
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Transformational Leadership, and Leader-Member Exchange Theory at Individual level  PAGEREF _Toc9002650 \h
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Differences  PAGEREF _Toc9002651 \h
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Transformational Leadership Theory Compared to Leader-Member Exchange Theory
Today’s changing work environment requires organizations to adopt transformational approaches in leadership leads to the effective management of both individuals and teams. Leaders play a critical role in encouraging and motivating their teams and inducing individual and team creativity. Both transformational leadership and leader-member exchange theories have an influence on individual and team performance and organizational goal accomplishment. While transformational leadership results in shared improvement and evaluation that leads into followers converting to leaders and leaders into moral agents, the leader-member exchange is developed based on the association between a leader and a follower (s) that develops over time and is based on the exchange levels. While the two theories hope to promote organizational transformation through improved leadership, varying aspects expose their strengths and weaknesses in their application.
Similarities
Team Transformational Leadership and mean Leader-Member Exchange Theory
Leader behaviors have varying influences on teams in a work environment. Leaders play critical roles in team motivation and encouraging creativity and team performance (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). Team efficacy and performance is bound to improve if members have sufficient knowledge of the task at hand, overall team, work equipment, and the shared situation in the workplace (Duncan et al., 1996). Team transformational leadership is developed through a collective understanding of the team members who hold a common view about the behaviors of the leader and the potentially transformational impact. With this shared view, team members believe that leaders are capable of developing a vision, articulating goals and organizational target, develop a practical framework, provide personalized support and intellectual incentive. These leadership properties exhibited under the collective transformational leadership have been positively linked to promoting creative behaviors among the followers (Shin & Zhou, 2003). Chan (1998) contends that the collective cognition model that promotes team understanding uses a “within-group consensus” at the subordinate level to develop creative solutions which are similar to the management functionality (p. 237). Therefore, team transformational leadership enhances team creativity which promotes organizational success.
Similarly, leader-member exchange theory is linked to improved team creativity given that exchanges are also high quality. Leader-member exchange theory, also known as mean leader-member exchange theory at a team level, refers to the dual relationship between a follower and a leader in regards to a work team compared to the working relationship of the leader to all followers (Cote 2017). The dyadic relationship between a leader and his follower is exemplified by shared respect, trust and individual effort in the workplace when a leader seeks to establish an exchange partnership with all the juniors. When all these characteristics are exhibited by all team members, this situation is referred to as high mean leader-member exchange. In this case, all team members (in-group) are involved in productive and responsible work activities, whereas their leader offers support, inspiration, and career support to the employees (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). This scenario is, however, absent in situations where leaders engage in low-quality exchanges with out-group team members. In high mean leader-member exchanges comprising of the entire team, there are overall high-quality exchanges that promote the culture of team creativity.
Transformational Leadership, and Leader-Member Exchange Theory at Individual level
Leadership and organizational creativity go hand in hand. At an individual level, both transformational leadership, and leader-member exchange theories have been used to predict the creative behaviors of employees at lower organizational levels. According to Bass (1985), transformational leaders portray various characteristics, including proactive thinking, radical ideologies, displaying creative thoughts, and unending curiosity in their search for solutions. Through their display of leadership, transformational leaders influence their followers to transcend and perform above expectations and hence promoting creativity (Krause, 2004; Sosik, Avolio 1999). Likewise, leader-member exchange theor...