Hello. Welcome back for module seven. In this one, we're going to be talking about transformational leadership. Now this is, this should be one that you, most of you have heard about, or have experienced or have some knowledge of. So we're going to kind of give an overview. We're going to talk a little bit about bass talk. We'll talk we'll talk a little bit about burns, kind of talk about what transactional leadership is, kind of getting a few of those things, but, um, but this should go fairly quick, because, as I said, most of you have heard of this one, and certainly most of you have heard of servant leadership. I just want to correct something, and it's something that I've said in my own papers that I've written, and as you think about transformational leadership, you're going to hear many same principles when we talk about the next one, which is servant leadership. Pretty sure that one is next one, but when we talk about servant leadership, and I just want to point out that I used to say in my research that transfer that servant leadership was based on transformational leadership. But that's actually not correct transformational leadership. It stands on its own, and so the servant leadership stands on its own, but transformational leadership came first, and certainly the influence of transformational leadership had effect on Greenleaf, who wrote the servant leadership theory, which we'll talk about next. Servant leadership is another one of my favorites. So is transformational, so is authentic. So we're getting all my favorites now we went from LMX, which I think describes most organizations perfectly, to now talking about servant leader, I mean, to see I'm already jumping ahead and now talking about transformational leadership before we do what do we do with every class? We pray. So let's do that. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this class. Thank you for the opportunity to come back. Here. We are over halfway done, Lord, and that's just, that's just amazing. It's just, it's amazing how quick it's gone. It's amazing how much work that each student has put in, and Lord, they should be commended for that. And And thank You, Lord. In our very first prayer, we prayed for you to remove obstacles, and you've done that. You've been faithful in doing that. So thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, as we talk about transformational leadership, moving on to certainly servant leadership and authentic leadership, I think these are the leadership theories that have been best, best exemplifies You, Lord and the way you lead, and that is through wanting to see the best in each of us and wanting to serve others in powerful ways. So Lord, I pray that we will be able to see you through this theory, and the theory is coming up as well, and as we can see you in everything we do. But Lord, just give us the wisdom to know how to implement these theories in our own lives and look to you as the example of how we should treat others in Jesus name Amen. So we're talking about transformational leadership, and I, and I know in my introduction and leading up to this point, I've talked a lot about servant leadership and authentic leadership. And the reason that I kind of lump these three together is because oftentimes they are seen together, right? It's transformational then and then people see servant as kind of an offshoot of that, whether it is or not, whether it's not that theorists are very clear, it's different theories. Except me, I messed up in one of my papers and said it was linked, but transformational and servant leadership are separate, and then Authentic Leadership comes along as well, and that can be seen linked, but really we're talking about the seminal work for this kind of leadership theory, and that is really putting the needs of the followers above your own. And that's a powerful concept, right? And Jesus did that for us. He put himself last and certainly put us first. And what a powerful, powerful example. So as we talked about transformational leadership, let's let's remember that its popularity is due to the intrinsic motivation of the follower, not that extrinsic, not those external rewards, not that pay, but the intrinsic motivation of the follower, and then also leadership development, making somebody the best version of themselves, transforming them, right? So, you know, there's other reasons that this theory is extremely popular, and if it's today's work groups, there's people who want to be inspired and empowered and have success in uncertain times, and some people say that people aren't really into that transformational leadership. It's, it's, it's, its approach is a little bit generational. And millennials may not respond. So after this lecture, I am just something for you to think about. Maybe something I'm curious about myself is, what are your thoughts? Do you think this leadership theory has applicability for millennials or Generation Z, or, you know, kind of the younger folks that may learn this theory, or may be led in this way. So where did transformational leadership come from? There's this guy. His name is burns, and in his book, 1978 43, years ago, he wrote a book on leadership, and he said that transactional leadership focuses on the exchanges that occur between leaders and their followers, right? And in transformational leadership is a where a person engages with others and creates a connection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower. So when we talk about influence again, we're talking about that didactic relationship, right? We remember that from LMX, but we're talking about how the leader influences the follower, but also the follower influences the leader, and they work together. It's a symbiotic relationship. Transactional relationships are the way it is. We, you know, we kind of touched on that last lecture with leader member exchange, right? There's some relationships, especially amongst out group members, where it's a transactional relationship. So you come in, you have a job to do, you get a paycheck, you go home, you we don't we don't interact. A good day is not having to deal with you, right? Then there's this other kind of leadership, and that's where we build a relationship where it's trusting and mutually beneficial. And you know transformational leadership, you know people like leaders, who encourage creativity, who recognize accomplishments, who build trust, who inspire a collective vision, who attend to the needs and motivations of followers, and who desire to help followers reach their fullest potential. And I have to think about some of the jobs I have right now, and if I feel like I have, if I work for any transformational leaders, and I think, to be honest with you, I don't I think I would have to go back. Let me think about it, I think I would have to go back to 2008 was the last transformational leader I worked for. So from 2008 until now, over the course of many jobs, many different leaders, over the course of many different experiences, I haven't really worked for that many my that many transformational leaders, and I think that's that's what makes things so rare, right? I said in the last lecture that people don't leave organizations. They leave people. And I ultimately left as transformational leader, but it was because he encouraged me to do so. But, you know, I could have easily have stayed and worked for him forever. I think when you find a leader who is transformational, and also we can apply that to servant and authentic, but a leader who builds trust, who inspires a collective vision, who recognizes accomplishments, who encourages creativity, and who desires you to reach your fullest potential. That is where that word fulfillment comes in. And I'm going to add another word contentment, right? I think that in some ways you find contentment. You know, I was thinking about this recently at a job role change, and I was thinking about this recently, that I spend more time with my boss in his office, not anymore, but up until very recently, than I do with the people I Love. So if I'm going to spend that much time with somebody, significant time as I continue to get older, you can see the gray of my beard. As I continue to get older, my days become shorter. I have a terminal illness, so my days become shorter every day, and as I look at where I'm spending my time, I want somebody that's going to help me achieve my fullest potential. I want to work for somebody that builds trust and has collective vision and who values me. I don't want to work for somebody who says, come in, get a paycheck and go home, and that is why I believe that transformational leadership really resonates with everybody. Because I think at the end of the day, people want to feel valued, and when they're given their time to something, they want value from it. If you think about it, transformational leadership, this theory, which we're going to get into in more detail, it really results in psychological gains for people, people who are transformational leaders, the leader benefits and the follower benefits. It's not just one way. It's not, not one, one way everybody benefits. There's a, there's this. You know, when we think about Christ, there's the Antichrist, right? So just like that. Then for transformational leadership, there is the other side of that. It's called pseudo transformational leadership. And pseudo transformational leadership is the idea that there's a transformational leadership, leader who meets most of the qualifications but doesn't raise the level of morality in others. So this type of leader is somebody who is self consumed, somebody exploitive power, oriented with warped moral values, a pseudo transformational leader would be a leader that is self serving his unwilling to encourage independent thought and followers, has a lack of caring for others and uses talent and appeal to manipulate and dominate others. I've been told that I've been very critical of one of my bosses through these lectures, and I don't disagree. I believe I have, and maybe in some ways unfairly so maybe in other ways accurately so. But I hope what you're gaining from me describing these scenarios and allowing some of these thoughts and frustrations to show to you is, is an authenticity of what many workers feel in the workforce, right? So if I say I'm dissatisfied because certain people in my organization are not treated equally to others, then I hope that if you don't agree with it, well, you don't know my leader, but if you don't agree with it, then that's fine. But what I hope you gain from it is, I hope you gain an appreciation of the fact that not everybody in every organization at all times is happy. And then what can we do as a leader to right this ship? So when I talk about being a um, when I talk about these scenarios, I'm and I talked about, in particular, I've been talking about this one boss. I'm using it as an illustration to help understand it within the context of this theory of these theories. And I hope you take it that way, right? Am I completely dissatisfied at work? No, by many way, in many ways, I benefit by being part of the in group. I in fact, I benefit greatly by being in part of the in group. But that said, I also recognize the damaging effects of having an in group and an out group, and I also recognize the damaging effects of a pseudo transformational leader who inspires leadership that is self serving. My boss wants a promotion, one of my bosses, and that person will stop at nothing to get that promotion. So he inspires leadership, but it's self serving. He doesn't really care about others. What he does is he pulls you into His grips, and you think, Wow, this is a transformational leader. And in the day you ask for a transfer, the day you ask for a change, the day you quit, you cease to exist in this person's life, and it's and those went to abandonment tendencies like myself, that's incredibly painful, and it's incredibly hurtful. And I think as leaders, we need to step back and we need to recognize the effects of our behaviors on our followers, somebody we spend an incredible amount of time with each and every day, and what that effect can do to people. Pseudo transformational leaders. Remember, these are the bad ones. Lack caring for others, their willingness to encourage independent thought followers. They may say that they want you to be have independent thought, but they don't really mean it. They want you to have independent thought that helps them succeed in your organization. It would be like telling a co worker that somebody is not innovative, and then in the next breath, going into a meeting that that person's in and then talking about all the new ideas. That that person came up with self serving, my ideas, only mine, nobody else's see. I think, I think when we talk about leadership, we talk about influence, right? And as part of this influence, we can influence people in a positive way, or we can influence people in a destructive way. So what I love about transformational leadership is we talk about influence in a positive way. We talk about influence in a way that's going to make a massive difference in people's lives. It's going to help them feel fulfilled, content, want to succeed, and how powerful that is. It's important to me. I think it's important to us all that as we go through this class and we learn about these theories, that we see what influence we have over they're other people's lives, and as Christians, we are called to be better. So if you're sitting back and you're listening to this, and you're thinking, wow, you know, the leader member exchange theory last lecture, really shows some things to me and brings some things to light. And then this one, Wow, it really shows me some things, or I'm in a situation, or I'm part of the problem, or whatever. I hope. I hope learning about these different theories helps you and gives you a path forward to change and a path forward to be better, or to change your situation, or to do things that are pleasing to God. I do believe that that leaders who are pseudo transformational, that are leader member exchange and have negative outcomes with people. I do believe that these leaders do not intend to do harm. I really do believe that, but I do believe that it's part of their leadership. Style, and hopefully through education, we all become better. And that's why this leadership foundations class, this leadership theories class, is so important to me that you learn this stuff. You know, there's this concept when it comes to transformational leadership, and it's charisma, and it's a personality characteristic that gives people super human or exceptional powers that's reserved for a few is of divine nature, and that that's what causes people to be treated as a leader. You know, charismatic leaders, and we can think of tons of examples from our life and from the world. Certainly, President Obama was a charismatic leader, and I mean that in a positive way. But charismatic leaders is part of transformational leadership as well. Those people desire to influence others. They have self confidence. They have a strong sense of more one's own moral values. And I would say all those are true, President Obama and others. And again, this isn't a political statement, right? I want to be very, very clear that I'm separating the man from policies. I want to be very, very clear on that. I'm just using him as an example, because I think he's less controversial than some other examples we could use in history of charismatic leaders. You know, when we talk about charismatic leaders, one of the things, and this is how this relates to transformational leadership, is charismatic leaders, the followers trust in a leader's ideology. There's acceptance as a leader, there's affection toward a leader, there's obedience, there's heightened goals for the follower. There's increased follower confidence and goal achievement. If a follower feels distressed because of stressful situations, they look to the leader to deliver them from their difficulties. So is charismatic leadership a bad thing. Well, I think it can be a bad thing and a good thing. One of the places I graduated from is led by a very charismatic leader, and there's very positive things about it. He's very transformational, and he wants the best from his followers, and he does everything he can to lead people in a way that gives them their best, that gives them value, that gives them autonomy, that gives them that intrinsic motivation to be better. But there's also frustrating things about charismatic leaders, and those things are with this leader I'm talking about. He's somebody who throws a lofty goal. All out there, and then there's really no way to accomplish it, and that can be incredibly frustrating for a follower. So when you think about transformational leadership, and you think about charismatic leadership, and you think about some of these qualities, one of the things that I want to warn you against or guard you against, as you reflect on your own leadership style is, are you burning out followers, or are you treating followers in a way, or are you giving them things that that they're following you and they're loyal to you, but are you overworking them because of their fault, because of their loyalty? And I think this is true for both transformational leaders and then that pseudo transformational leader that I talked about, which is the negative qualities. So let's see so charismatic leaders and followers identity, they have been linked, but by charismatic leadership works because it ties followers and their sub concepts to the organizational identity. So it's about that organizational identity, whatever that is. So let's talk about the map model. Now we've kind of given the background, and I kind of went off a little bit about my my own thoughts on transformational leadership and pseudo transformational leadership. Let's talk about the theory. So basically what bass and burns ended up saying is there's the emotional elements of leadership, right? So transformational leadership motivates scholars to do more than expected by raising their level of consciousness about the importance and the value of specified and idealized goals. And charismatic leaders do that as well, right? I'm going to read that again, maybe because you might see it again on a test or something, raising followers level of consciousness about the importance and values of specified and idealized goals. And Bass argued that getting followers to transcend their own self interest for the sake of the team or organization, and they do so willingly. I did that for many, many years, and then motivate followers to address higher level needs, their needs, what they need, the organizational needs as well, as well as the needs of the leader. So the model of transformational, transactional leadership has seven different factors. One of those factors is idealized influence, or charisma, and that's the emotional concept of that so idealized influence describes leaders who act as strong role models to followers, and then role of those followers identify with and want to emulate those leaders. There's behavioral components, there's attributional components, and I'm just going to give you the definitions of this. Attributional component is the idealized influence factor that refers to the attributions of the leader. So they perceive their leader in a certain way because of certain attributes, and then they want to emulate those attributes. There's behavioral component, which is you want to you observe the leaders behavior. Maybe you follow that person because they're highly moral or highly ethical or whatever. There's the inspirational motivation, which is the high expectations that's given to the leader. And then you have those collective success intellectual stimulation, which is another part, which is, you're stimulated intellectually to work toward goals, individualized consideration, which is the supportive climate, which I would argue is one of the most important climates. And then there is the idea of contingent rewards, which is, there's an exchange process. The follower is exchanging specific rewards between the leader and the follower, and they exchange rewards with each other. And then there's the idea of management by exception, which is, that's a little bit of corrective criticism, negative feedback and negative reinforcement. If you're a transformational leadership leader, that does not mean you can't give negative reinforcement. That does not mean you can't give negative feedback. In fact, that's very important to the growth of the employee. It all depends on how you give that feedback, right? So, you know a good example is, as somebody who has worked for transformational leadership, he would point out specific behaviors I would have in very funny ways, but it was a negative feedback which I've worked on and tried to improve. In some cases I have, in some cases I haven't. I am very compliant as a follower. And he pointed that out to me by calling me say, hey, it's mercy. I need you right here. And I'd walk down and be like, I was just kidding. I was just seeing how, you know if you would do this or that. Now, in this case, the transformational leader did it. He was trying to help me grow through my own personal growth. But just because he was transformational doesn't mean he can't give me negative feedback. So there are different types of management by exception. So an active one would be close monitoring of followers for mistakes and then providing corrective action. Then there's passive management by exception, which is laissez faire, which is a leader who either doesn't really give a lot of input, they're non transactional. I worked for a leader like this, it was kind of great for me, because I was kind of left alone to do whatever I wanted. And that's kind of way the way the person operates. They're just very laissez faire. In fact, in my organization, if I had to work for one of the three different leaders I have, I would probably pick him because it suits me and for what I need, which is basically to be left alone, to be able to go do whatever I want. But a lot of people get frustrated with laissez faire leadership. There is a questionnaire that was developed that test for transformational leadership characteristics, and that was called the MLQ, the multi factor leadership questionnaire. I bring that up because you may see that on a test, the MLQ is pretty famous study. I've actually used it myself, and it's a good one. So other transformational perspectives is vision, and that's the image of an attractive, realistic and believable future that the leader sets for others to follow. There's also, you're part of the social architects, and you help create that vision, and you help find the meaning of people's lives and help them achieve those meanings in their organization. Transformational Leadership requires a high level of trust between the leader and follower and then the creative deployment itself, which is an understanding of one's own strengths and weaknesses, both as the leader and also as the follower. And we tend to see leaders that are transformational leadership focus on the strengths instead of focusing on the weaknesses. Remember that leaders like this, they're committed to learning and relearning, and the process of learning and relearning never ends, and that makes them a good leader. Let's see so leaders can act as role models for followers in organizational change. So organizational change is characterized by being a very stressful time for people, and leaders can really help followers in this way, by having a high developed sense of moral values, by communicating well, by being competent and articulate, listening to followers, accepting their viewpoints, and then help create a shared vision with them. And that's an important one, is to build that trust, communicate, treat people with respect, build a shared vision and make sure that that people are are able to change both the organization and themselves. So are there any criticisms for this theory? No, it's pretty awesome. No, there are some. So some of the things is that it lacks conceptual clarity. You know, certainly charismatic leadership can be discussed on its own. In addition, you know, some of the pseudo transformational leadership, it can be a little bit confusing as well. I think as Christians, we get it when we think about the Christ, Antichrist example. But nonetheless, it can be very confusing. Also, there's been a lot of bad charismatic leaders in our history that have done very, very bad things with it, and I think that sometimes there can be a negative connotation around that. So certainly, understanding that there's some there's some clarity missing within this concept that that is a very fair criticism. Also, there's not a lot of parameters around what a transformational leader is, and there's not a lot of evidence for it. And then, and then, also, remember that whenever you have somebody who follows you and looks at you as a charismatic leader, there's the potential for abuse, and that is something that's unfortunately very prevalent in our society and in our world. So certainly that's something that has to be guarded against when you're talking about transformational leaders or charismatic leaders. So let's talk about the practicality of this. You know, anytime you focus on a leader that that is, you know, focused on you, that is a very good thing, and you know, somebody that wants you to improve, and somebody that gives you a strong vision and a strong way forward, that's something that I think we all appreciate and love. So those are some of the positives and of this leadership style. So how can you apply this? You know, I think I gave you some application throughout it, but certainly, you know, understand that some followers are going to look to you as a transformational leader. They're going to commit to you fully. So make sure you're taking care of your followers. With that. We're going to close in prayer, and then next week, we will be going into authentic leadership. I thought it was servant, but it's actually authentic. So we'll be talking about the attributes of authentic leadership. Please join me in prayer, Heavenly Father. Thank you so much for our time together. Thank you for helping us to understand transformational leadership, and what a powerful leadership concept and tool it is. Lord, I pray that you'll help us to be in your will if we are transformational leaders that will understand the awesome responsibility there, and certainly we can look to Christ as a great example of how transformational leadership should be used, as well as authentic and servant many other leadership theories. I pray that you'll bless this class, that you'll help them to have the the ability to get through the rest of the work this week, and I pray that you'll help them to find the success they need to finish this class and the time they need in Jesus name. We pray Amen. Thank you everybody. And have a wonderful day.

Last modified: Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 11:17 AM