Transformational leadership deals with the motivation, inspiration, and encouragement of the personnel to carry out the innovative and creative change. This change directly helps the company in its growth and allows the scope for development. This leadership style is based on improving the corporate culture to provide a satisfactory workforce and innovation. It allows the freedom of employees to finally bring out innovative ideas from the creative minds of the workforce.
The leader following a transformational leadership style should inculcate the following characteristics to deliver correct leadership skills to the subordinates. Should have a wider vision in setting goals and objectives. Develop a healthy relationship with the employees to build a decisive and affirmative quality within the subordinates.
Transformational leadership style is often called a charismatic leadership style, so transformational leadership: charismatic leadership style. This style motivates the inspiration among the employees, team members, or subordinates. Embracing the motivation and energy of the employee base or team members proves to be a generous asset for the organization. The two world leaders who are considered to follow the transformational leadership style are Ex-President of America, Barack Obama, and the founder and Chief executive officer of Alibaba, Jack Ma. They both are known for their leadership qualities and splendid success. These world-famous leaders are the best example of the transformational leadership style. They believe in motivating the team members to promote innovative ideas. A detailed explanation of the proof that these leaders do hold the transformational or charismatic leadership style is mentioned in the following.
Barack Obama
Barack Obama is known for his eminent leadership qualities during his political career in the United States. The optimistic vision of Obama made him an unforgettable leader of the most powerful country in the world. The self-disciplined and confident personality of the ex-President has mentored many others. Obama has modified his campaign and planning, he has inculcated necessary elements into his campaign. The elements were the clear indication of the determining the leader in charge, the sort of information to be shared, along with the assurance of the leader to the provided message or information. He was open to new ideas and allowed the subordinates to openly suggest developmental ideas. He has a keen interest in building an affirmative, proactive, and determined policy to create a similar work culture. During the Presidential election in 2008, Obama utilized this leadership style. The citizens were in a need of bringing change to the situation of the country where the employment rate declined, healthcare facilities were not up to the mark and the government was not much interested in the environmental issues generated at that time, and the most important lack of a different perspective towards the development of the country. Obama can motivate the mob, and as an impact, the citizens became inspired and motivated to bring the change and choose to replace Bush Government with a non-white candidate. This is the result of transformational leadership that people showed that they are uplifted from any kind of racism or discrimination. This is the exemplified description of the transformational leadership style used by Barack Obama. Obama is always considered a democratic leader but the above-mentioned example surely concludes that Barack Obama is a charismatic leader.
Jack Ma
Jack Ma is the founder and Chief Chairperson of the Chinese online company Alibaba group. Currently, he is the wealthiest man in China with a net worth of $36.3 B (Forbes 2019). A good English intellect born in a poor family had no such instinct to become the wealthiest man in China. After graduation, he applied for a lot of jobs but end up serving in a school as an English teacher. Jack Ma had started his first company, a China page, which deals with the provision of Chinese companies to promote international business. The company was not successful. He then started a new firm and named it Alibaba. He has a dynamic vision to succeed with the overall development of the organization. He believes to be an inspiration to all his workers. He always hires a well-qualified workers for him to achieve his goals successfully. He believes that it is the wrong decision to hire less qualified personnel. Jack’s mission is to promote innovation within the organization and to create an affirmative environment so that a suitable workplace can be established. Ma is considered a determined leader who has the guts to tackle bigger firms than Alibaba. Ma has written in his book about the same. Ma always sees his business from his customer’s perspective. Ma has a good quality of building relations with his employees. He has a significant skill to unite employees and team members for the company’s goal. He always presented his goals as the goal of the company that helps in building employee trust. This is the principal feature of transformational leadership. This depicts that Jack Ma is a charismatic or transformational leader.
This transformational leadership: charismatic leadership style has helped a lot in the success of both the suggested leaders in their respective fields. Motivation, inspiration and bring trust among the team leaders or employees are the basic characteristics of this leadership style. Barack Obama won the election with the use of this style. The impact of this transformational leadership has created a change in the vision of the citizens to be motivated to bring about new changes in the governmental system. It generated a leadership responsibility in the individuals to promote the growth of the country by incorporating this change and eliminating discrimination. By electing Obama as the President of the United State, the citizen showed the end of the racist culture in the country. This motivation is effective to be more innovative and bring about changes and thoughts to develop the nation.
Alibaba, on the other hand, has reached its peak of success with the use of this leadership style. It became an innovative change for the country's business evolution by a graduate leader with suitable leadership qualities. The leadership style is effective to build trust among the employee base and the investors which leads the firm towards the path of success. Hiring more qualified subordinates allowing them to be the leader of their task has brought about more innovation to the growing firm.
Finally, this leadership style works on generating leadership in individuals. This can create uncertainty in the decisions and also confuse the current leaders and bosses. This style allows promoting the decisive nature of individual team members rather the being a part of decision making by the team. It can affect the decision-making process Also, this style is dependent on employees for decision-making in contrast with the authoritative leadership style.
