Transactional and Charismatic Leadership

Transformational, Transactional and charismatic leadership
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Introduction
It is a widely known reality that leadership plays a crucial role in an organization. As such, there have been many deliberations on leadership aspect. According to Badshah (2012) there are different kinds of leadership which are portrayed by different leaders. Adoption of a particular trend greatly affects performance of a leader. There are three commonly analyzed leadership styles which are; transformational, transactional and charismatic leadership. Each leadership type has its distinct characteristics and therefore unique from the others. However, there are common grounds shared by the three leadership styles. Understanding of the three leadership styles is crucial as it offers viable grounds of perceiving organizations’ leadership.
Leadership styles
Badshah (2012) notes that; transformational leadership entails a kind of leadership whereby; the leader impacts greatly on the followers. The followers are the measuring tools when it comes to assessing this kind of leadership. A transformational leader will elicit some characteristics in the followers through their behavior. For instance, the followers will have trust, admiration and respect towards the leader as they feel greatly influenced. They will exercise higher level loyalty towards the leader. These trends emanate from feelings of motivation which followers feel to be receiving from the leader.
As Kaifi &Mujtaba (2010) found out; Transformational leadership is achieved through focusing on important issues. This focus must be in alignment with needs of followers and not just for the good of organization. A transformational leader influences followers through being charismatic. It is at this point that transformational leadership is said to have common characteristics with charismatic leadership. The boundary comes in upon the realization that; although charisma is required in transformational leadership, it is not sufficient o sustain this kind of leadership. Influence to followers must be enacted in varied ways.
There has been much confusion concerning transactional leadership. This view emanates from consideration of many arguments that transactional leadership is engraved in transformational leadership. These arguments are based on the older tendencies whereby; transactional leadership used to be taken as part of transformational leadership. However, transactional leadership is a distinct kind of leadership with its own characteristics. This argument does not mean that transactional leadership does not have any common grounds with transformational leadership. Rowold (2014) notes that; just like in other types of leadership, there are common grounds but transactional leadership qualifies as leadership style on its own merit.
Rowold (2014) observes that; transactional leadership is characterized by contingent behavior reward. There is also extended exceptional management. All these tendencies are meant to influence followers and that is where the confusion about uniqueness of this leadership and others such as transformational and charismatic arises from.
According to Horn, Mathis, Robinson & Randle (2015) charismatic leadership mainly entails the leaders’ innate characteristics which are often perceived to be divinely inspired. This leadership is associated with strong positive impression such that the followers feel greatly influenced to achieve the set goals. There is therefore, deliberate influence of followers as the leader is viewed to be a role model. This kind of leadership is perceived to have a problem when it comes to instances that may entail negative influence of followers. At such instances, there is high possibility of having great losses in organization because of the higher influence associated with the leader. Again this leadership is associated with failure to follow stipulated protocols with the wish of the leader being the determining factor.
Influence of the different leadership styles emanate from the different characteristics displayed by the leaders as shown in this table:
Leadership style

characteristics

Charismatic

High self esteem
Motivating
Communication skills
visionary

Transactional

Contingent rewarding
Exceptional management
Exercise of laissez faire

Transformational

Charisma
Considers individual needs of employees
Stimulates employees intellectually

Organizational leadership
The leadership in Boston Consulting group can be said to be divergent, but greatly aligns to transformational leadership. Boston Consulting Group is a privately owned company which has more than 2500 employees. It is located in Massachusetts. There has been much interest in this organization following its feature in top 100 best companies to work for. There have been many deliber...