Since Bass states in his book that “transactional leadership may lead to expected performance, transformational leadership has the potential to result in performance beyond expectations” (as cited in Wang, Oh, Courtright, & Colbert, 2011). Transformational leadership has been in the spotlight. However, it was not clear how and what kind of performances transformational leaders influence. Wang et al. (2011) performed mata-analysis to compare transformational leadership to transactional leadership to demonstrate that transformational leadership has positive relationships with individual-level follower performance by increasing contextual performance rather than task performance in all level settings. Especially transformational leadership works the most within teamwork and collaboration of employees. This research shows employees work more happily and efficiently for ethical reasons such as improving themselves rather than monetary reasons with getting rewards.
Leaders should be aware of these facts. As we work to get paid salary, our system of contexts as an employee has an inseparable relationship with transactional leadership. Also especially in Asia, transactional style is still a standard in the society. We should apply some transformational leadership to strengthen a weak point of the transactional leadership.When we would be a transformational leader, first we must build a good relationship with employees. In spite of leadership style, being an ethical leader to get trusted from employees is always important, too.
The definition of ethical leadership and important components.
It does not matter leaders use any leadership styles, all the leaders should have ethical leadership. This is a start point and a foundation to be a leader. Leaders should have the self-awareness to try to be ethical which means to lead the followers to the direction where he believes right. Sometimes being ethical may not seem to be accepted by followers or contexts. Many famous leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi struggled to pursue their belief which they believed right. It is important that the ethics of leader should not be self-satisfied. When leaders try to use ethical leadership, they also need to develop to be a good, worthy human being having virtues of courage, temperance, generosity, self-control, honesty, sociability, modesty fairness, and justice (Northouse, 2019).
Northouse also defines five components for ethical leadership (2019). What I think are the most important when it comes to ethical leadership is, first of all, the ability to show justice. Employees have to be treated fair in a reasonable way. Northouse (2019) states that ethics give leaders the system of rule or principle for making a decision with judging what is right or wrong. However, “ethic” has a grey zone because every person has their own perspectives and belief. The ethical framework may be different depending on each person, employee’s background, culture, and working conditions. Therefore, respecting other is the second most important for me to build ethic leadership. Respecting others to listen to their opinion, leaders can keep being an ethical leader in any situations.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice, (8th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
George, I., Page, D. & Williaume, D. (2018). Monograph 2: Transformational servant leadership In Monograph 2018. Unpublished manuscript, MA in Leadership, Trinity Western University, Langley, Canada.
Wang, G., Oh, I. S., Courtright, S. H., & Colbert, A. E. (2011). Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Group & Organization Management, 36(2), 223-270.