Transformational Leadership Rev T - Final

John J. B. Silvia, Jr.ID#UD15829BBU23497

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Research Paper

For the topic: Transformational Leadership

August 11, 2011

ATLANTIC INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWARD Page 4

INTRODUCTION Page 4

Table 1: Significant Motivation and Leadership Theories and Models (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson, 2008 p.74) Page 6

RESEARCH AND LITERATURE REVIEW Page 7

What is Leadership? Page 7

Negative Traits and Characteristics Page 10

Defining Optimal Leadership Page 11

Transactional Leader Page 11

Charismatic Leader Page 11

Situational Leadership - Task vs. Relationship Oriented Leaders Page 12

Leadership vs. Management Page 12

Myths That Must be Disrupted Page 13

Teams Page 13

Leading Teams Page 14

Constructing the Team Page 14

Building and Leading Teams Page 15

Different Types of Teams Page 16

Continuous Improvement – The Learning Organization Page 18

Learn from Past Experience Page 18

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Deliberate Practice and Experimentation Page 19

Experience and Post-Mortem Analysis Page 20

Leadership Development Page 21

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Page 21

BIBLIOGRAPHY Page 23

Appendix A - Spreadsheet Compilation of Lists of Optimal Leadership Traits From 20 Different Random Internet Sources Page 27

Appendix B – 20 Possible Exam Questions and Answers On Transformational Leadership Page 28

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FOREWARD

This project consists of three parts. The first part and the core stimulus of this project is completing a full lecture series consisting of twenty four, 45 minute to 1 hour audio lectures on Transformational Leadership presented by Dr. Michael Roberto, D.B.A., Trustee, Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Program Innovation, Bryant University.

The second part of this project consists of research, through books and journal articles, on transformational leadership. Here, we discuss the history, evolution and application of transformational leadership. The additional research for this part of the project is found in the bibliography of this paper.

The final part of this project is a set of 20 questions on transformational leadership along with the answers to those questions.

INTRODUCTION

What is leadership? One good definition from Organizational Behavior is that “Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.”, (Schermerhorn, Hunt, Osborn & Uhl-Bien, 2010 p.326).

If this is leadership then what specifically is a transformational leader? More importantly, how can we find or develop such leaders within the organization? Many books and essays have been written on this subject going back to ancient times. In the 20th century significant research can be found dating back to the early 1900’s (see Table 1). The result of the scholarly and historical evolution reveals that a transformational leader is one who can appeal to the moral values of followers trying to mobilize them to affect a major change in the organization or society. In simple terms, to accomplish this one must learn how to unfreeze the status quo, affect change, and then freeze the new format or changed model.

A transformational leader must be one who can affect change. Typically, the desired changes within an organization revolve around growth, profitability, organizational stability and success.

This leadership model is quite different from several other popular leadership models including the transactional leader, the charismatic leader, the task-oriented leader, the relationship-oriented leader, and the situational leader. All of these other models have merits but also have significant limitations which will be explored in this paper.

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It is also important to recognize that many scholars and business strategists have spent great amounts of energy and effort trying to find a simple formula or a list of traits and/or criteria that will provide them with some sort of “magic recipe” for finding or creating the great leader. Others are seeking a plan or path to assist them in trying to become a great leader. Unfortunately, within the various books, journals, and seminars, including the presentations compiled by the management consultants, only two observations are apparent. First, there is a great deal of conflict among the experts as to what are the traits of a great leader. Second, leadership is a complex set of criteria that resists any attempt at a simple formulaic description. Both of these findings indicate that a simple formula may not be simple at all.

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Table 1 Significant Motivation and Leadership Theories and Models (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson, 2008 p.

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RESEARCH AND LITERATURE REVIEW

What is Leadership?

As noted in Table 1 (above) and Appendix A, experts have provided a myriad of opinions on this subject. Each business school and managerial discipline views leadership from their unique perspectives. Sociologists analyze group and organizational dynamics as does the business management scholar. In an alternate scholarly perspective, anthropologists and psychologists assess human responses and the sequence of events involved in learning. Historians look at how world industry has changed and the effect this has had on organizational behavior and management principles. In the end, the same question needs to be answered: What is leadership and how can we use leadership to transform the organization to maintain, achieve and magnify success?

In their case study book entitled The Strategy Process, Mintzberg, Lampel, Quinn, & Ghoshal conclude that,

“Our traditional view of leaders – as special people who set the direction, make the key decisions, and energize the troops [is] deeply rooted in an individualistic and nonsystematic world view [but] leaders in learning organizations are responsible for building organizations where people are continually expanding their capabilities to shape their future – that is, leaders are responsible for learning.” (Mintzberg, Lampel, Quinn, & Ghoshal, 2003)

From the point of view of technology management, leadership is seen as the, “Critical and highly valuable people in organizations [and] are therefore those who are capable of connecting the technical issues and opportunities to the business strategy and environment.” (Harrison & Samson, 2006)

This is certainly a key point that must be remembered. Leaders in the organization are responsible for vision and strategy more than management and maintenance of routine. This point will be expanded later in this paper.

In the Harvard Business Review publication, The Progress Principle, Amabile & Kramer reveal a coaching role for leadership stating,

“The great management scholar Peter Drucker once wrote, ‘The goal [of great leaders] is to make productive the specific strengths and knowledge of each individual.’ In Drucker’s view, [the] job is to serve employees by ensuring that their needs for challenging work are fulfilled […] focusing not on traditional control of subordinates, but on contribution to real work progress by the organization’s members.” (Amabile, & Kramer 2011 p. 155).

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Peter Senge reminds us, “’To become a leader, you must first become a human being,’ said Confucius more than twenty-five hundred years ago.” (Senge, 2006). In the ancient and famous Great Learning, the Chinese philosopher Confucius actually does lay out a “development theory” in utilizing a series of seven “meditative spaces of leadership cultivation” (Confucius, Legge, & Ford, 2005). These ideas find parallels in wisdom traditions around the world and it is almost universally accepted that wisdom itself is considered one of the oldest ideals directly associated with leadership.

It is critical that leaders communicate clearly. Even before Confucius, Sun-Tzu discovered and then taught in The Art of War that, “effective and clear communication is the responsibility of the general (Sunzi, 2001). He contends that if orders are carried out incorrectly, “punish not the solider, but his commanding officer”. This is still true today and transformation leadership is really about using clear communication to build a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is the key to leading various and diverse teams and crews toward the compelling vision and strategy. But the reality is that not everyone will take orders the same way therefore the first and most necessary skill for good transformational leaders is communication.

From Sun-Tzu (circa 512 BCE) and Confucius (551-497 BCE) to Dr. Michael Roberto (2011 CE), it is virtually impossible to find two authors, scholars or philosophers that define Leadership identically. Even the textbooks don’t perfectly agree although two popular business school textbooks have a strong parallel consensus. Leadership has been defined as “The process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.” (Schermerhorn, Hunt, Osborn & Uhl-Bien, 2010 p. 306). This coincides strikingly similar to a second contemporary definition where leadership is defined as, “The process of influencing others to facilitate the attainment of organizationally relevant goals [or] using influence in an organizational setting or situation, producing effects that are meaningful and have a direct impact on accomplishing challenging goals.” (Ivancevich, Konopaske, & Matteson, 2011 pg. 492). Not only do these two definitions substantially coincide, but they are also very similar to Michael Roberto’s concept of leadership from his lecture series, when he states that,

“Leadership is more than just meeting targets; it’s about articulating where you want to go and how you might have to change to get there.” (Roberto, 2011).

Roberto goes on to embrace the description from Harvard Business School scholar John Kotter who has argued for three fundamental processes necessary for effective leadership: (Roberto, 2011).

“1) Establishing a compelling direction, a vision for the future, and the strategies for how to get there;

2) Aligning people, communicating the direction, building shared understanding, getting people to believe in the vision, and then persuading and influencing

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people to follow that vision;

3) Motivating and inspiring people to enact the kinds of changes and vision that you have articulated.” (Kotter, 1997)

This serves as a good contemporary definition, since it coincides with the spirit of many other definitions, even those with divergent, agenda-specific, or myopic views of leadership that focus too strongly on only defining traits. From Roberto’s and Kotter’s three processes a simple but useful 8-point core list can be extracted to include: vision, strategy, influence, persuasion, agreement, articulation, change, and understanding. These are all good universal terms, not only for defining a good leader but also for transforming the organization or society of concern.

It is important to note that although one’s personality certainly has impact on that person’s charisma, psychologists generally believe that personality traits are deeply imbedded and formed through the life-long combination of genetics and the effects of early development. What is really more important is a leader’s character and behavior. Therefore, if personality is believed to be relatively unchanging, then it is behavior that is moldable and can be altered to enhance a person’s leadership abilities or to allow a person to conform his or her style to motivate and respond to those being led and supervised.

It is important to reiterate that there is a danger when the focus for effective leadership is placed too closely on specific characteristics or traits of the leader. Roberto agrees and points out in his lecture one of the myths of leadership is, “[Myth #5]: all great leaders have a common set of personality traits” (Roberto, 2011). Geoff Colvin also agrees when he states, “… [W]e need to recalibrate our views on the role of specific, innate talents … talents are much less important than we usually think.” (Colvin, 2010, p. 35)

Nonetheless, the quest for a “magic list” of traits or talents is tempting and has been pursued by many consultants and scholars. A simple search on the internet and a review of “on-hand” literature quickly results in a plethora of leadership personality trait lists. As a demonstration of Roberto’s myth #5, twenty of these lists have been collected and compiled by this author into a simple Excel spreadsheet and displayed in Appendix A. The simple fact is that no single good list of leadership traits exists that can adequately define or identify a transformational or successful leader. By way of example, GE’s Jack Welch is very different from Apple’s Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln was an entirely different leader than George Washington, and England’s Winston Churchill was quite a contrast to India’s Mahatma Gandhi. Nevertheless each of these leaders were successful, motivational, had vision and a strategy, knew how to influence and persuade others, could foster agreement, were articulate, affected change, and possessed and created understanding.

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Negative Traits and Characteristics

If the quest for a “shopping list” of desired traits is not the best way to identify a transformational leader, is there a value to define traits that should be avoided? Most scholars and experts do agree that there are certain traits and characteristics that are negative and should be avoided by leaders and those choosing leaders for their organizations.

Morgan McCall and Michael Lombardo examined these traits and called them fatal flaws, listing them as follows (Hersey, P., Blanchard, K., & Johnson, 2008 p. 78-79):

1. Insensitive to others: abrasive, intimidating, bullying style 2. Cold, aloof, arrogant 3. Untrustworthy 4. Overly ambitious: always thinking of the next job, playing politics 5. Having specific performance problems with the business 6. Unable to delegate or build a team – over managing 7. Unable to staff effectively 8. Unable to think strategically 9. Unable to adapt to boss with different style10. Over dependent on advocate or mentor

This is a very important revelation. Positive traits may not or cannot predict and define the successful transformational leader but this list of 10 will most certainly result in short-term or long-term failure or disaster.

There are also other more obvious negative traits that will most surely result in leadership failure. These include, propensity for criminal behavior, active substance abuse, psychological aberrations and uncontrolled rage, issues with sexual harassment embezzlement and stealing, and most behaviors that can result in arrest and prosecution. This may seem blatantly obvious, but the failure of many top level executives and leaders has come from various forms of these negative behaviors and traits.

In 1887 the British historian Lord Acton wrote a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton. In that letter he made the now famous statement, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." (Acton 1887). If this is true and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then we may infer that optimal leadership and transformational leadership is better and less free of possible corruption when it is shared leadership utilizing a collaborative setting with the added strengths of a team approach. Lord Acton may have been somewhat cynical but history does indicate that some of the greatest leaders in history had quirks and dark sides. The successful ones found ways to manage those negative behaviors and those who failed or worse became evil, could not, allowing the dark sides of power and arrogance overtake them.

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Defining Optimal Leadership

Several types or styles of leadership surface from Roberto and throughout the reference literature. Scholars have tried to categorize various successful leaders by style or type including, the transactional leader, the charismatic leader, the task-oriented leader, the relationship-oriented leader, and the situational leader.

Transactional Leader

A transactional leader is defined as a leader that helps the follower to identify what must be done to accomplish the desired results”. (Ivancevich, Konopaske, & Matteson 2011 p. 510).

This leadership style also relies on rewards and techniques involving management by exception and the classic carrot/stick (reward/performance) motivation. The employee or follower’s motivation is relying on a pay vs. performance reaction and leaders or managers that are simply transactional often fail to respond correctly when the rewards are either inadequate or too slow in coming.

Charismatic Leader

Charismatic leaders usually have a socialized power orientation and the result can be either positive or negative. A positive charismatic leader is a leader that seeks internalization of the positive goals and organizational values in their subordinate followers as opposed to simply devotion to him or her as an individual.

The negative charismatic leader instead wants to get people specifically devoted to him or her as an individual. This personalized power orientation is often destructive for the organization because it not only limits evolution in leadership, but it also results in arrogant leaders who are authoritarian and self-aggrandizing, (Roberto, 2011). Negative charismatic leaders often succumb to the dark negative traits noted above.

Nevertheless, positive charismatic leaders, even those without management skills usually do have adequate concentration on the long term vision but often they do not take the time to spell out the necessary organizational roles and responsibilities. They can easily inspire and motivate, but regularly tend to fail to properly monitor, evaluate and control, therefore even if they have a great vision very often their vision is never fully realized.

Charisma alone cannot make a leader successful. The combination of charisma and team/group synergy is needed along with strong management skills that are either possessed or evoked from others within the management team.

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Situational Leadership - Task vs. Relationship Oriented Leaders

A task-oriented leader is a leader that focuses on the task or job at hand with a minimal regard to the impact on the people assigned to the task. The opposite is the relationship oriented leader that possesses concern and commitment for people and their environment but sacrifices quality, cost, or delivery of the product or service the organization is providing.

Successful leaders often possess a normal operating style that has high regard for both the task and the relationships, working constantly to keep a balance as well as a continuous improvement to both the success of the task as well as the people in the organization.

During abnormal operating situations or during crisis, emergencies, or high or low swings in workload, leaders possess a backup style and most often they swing to high task orientation at the sacrifice of relationship or swing to high relationship orientation at the sacrifice of the task.

Fred Fiedler established a line of thinking in which he called the task-oriented leader the “least preferred coworker (LPC) model.” (Schermerhorn, Hunt, Osborn, & Uhl-Bien, 2010, p. 310-311). In this model Feidler established a scale to rate the task motivated leader against the relationship motivated leader in an effort to help leaders determine their primary mode of operation and their backup or crisis mode of operation toward defining their shortcomings and helping leaders modify their behavior for improved balance and achievement as a leader.

There are many other styles and definitions of leadership including: path-goal leadership, servant leadership, inspirational leadership, and so forth. To explore and define all of the possible variations reaches beyond the scope of this paper. Roberto presents what he calls the “big five”: surgency (outgoing personality), conscientiousness (dependability), agreeableness (helpful and cheerful), adjustment (emotionally stable and possess self-control), and intellectance (curious and open-minded), (Roberto, 2011).

Leadership vs. Management

If this is leadership, then what is Management? According to Roberto, “Over the years, many people have made a distinction between leadership and management. To keep this in perspective, management is about generating efficiency in the organization and meeting near-term financial objectives or other objectives that are nonfinancial in nature.” (Roberto, 2011)

If leadership and management are not the same, then can effective leaders ignore the characteristics attributed to management such as efficiency and objectives, leaving those responsibilities instead to just the managers? This seems highly unlikely

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and Roberto agrees. In government, society and organizations, it may be harder to find effective leaders than good managers but this should not be a surprise, since leading change is harder than managing efficiency. Nevertheless, strong leadership with weak management is a formula for organizational disaster since in practice, both are needed.

Myths that Must be Disrupted

There are 5 myths revealed by Roberto concerning leaders that need to be disrupted. (Roberto, 2011).

1) “Leaders are born and not made. Simply stated, some people come out of the womb ready to lead others.”

Although some people do have natural skills and capabilities time is needed to develop those skills into attributes. Such development needs to take place over time and with the right mentoring, coaching, and education.

2) “A leader is a lone genius often thought of as the person at the top of the organization like a President of a country or a CEO.”

Leadership must be a collaborative endeavor. Leaders and followers need to work together in a model of shared leadership rather than lone genius.

3) “Leaders must be charismatic extroverts in order to motivate and inspire others and get them to follow their vision.”

This is not necessarily true. Many successful leaders have become successful and were introverts without charisma. In addition, there is a dark side to charisma, a negative charismatic leader that can develop a personalized power orientation attempting to get people devoted to him or her as an individual as opposed to an idea, concept, product, or strategy. Classic examples are people like Jim Jones and Adolph Hitler.

4) “Leadership requires formal authority influence and persuasion.”

Many people can lead successfully without possessing formal authority. The true power in these situations comes from influence and persuasion and that can be harnessed without formal authority.

5) “All great leaders have a common set of personality traits.”

Teams

For the purposes of contrast and definition then, management is largely about consistency, order, planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling and problem

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solving. These tasks are certainly critical to the success of any organization so therefore it is logical to conclude that both management and leadership are needed and good transformational leaders must provide both, through their own abilities, performance and managerial leadership and also through managerial teams. A second and overarching conclusion is that leadership is much more than simply developing a vision, and then articulating where one wants to go and how the organization might have to change to get there, but it is also providing the structure and management to carry that vision forward to success. This requires leading teams.

Leading Teams

In essence, transformational leadership is ultimately all about leading teams. One must be ready and able to stir the members of the organization or team beyond self-interest and toward the change and growth that is required to achieve the organization’s mission and vision.

The first steps to becoming a transformational leader, involve the leader and their willingness to take several steps.

A leader must:

1) Be willing to admit ignorance – no one knows everything or is expected to.

2) Know when to intervene and when not to interfere.

3) Truly share power with the members of the organization or team – not just say it – but, do it!

4) Understand that what one takes on as a team leader is the key, not what one gives up to the members of the team.

5) Remain teachable and realize that as a leader one will also learn along with the team as the team progresses and knowledge and understanding is discovered or revealed.

Constructing the Team

Both Roberto (2011) and Schermerhorn, Hunt, Osborn, & Uhl-Bien, (2010) identify the traditional five stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Although these come from older views and approaches to team building they still have merit in understanding team dynamics and continue to be widely used deserving consideration.

In this model, the team is first formed. There are multiple ways of forming a team that range from top-down assignment (where the leader decides who is on the team), to

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evolution of the team through member accumulation (where core team members accumulate the balance of the team through discussion and articulation concerning the goals and needs of the team).

Building and Leading Teams

A leader must create conditions, foundations, and an environment that will allow a team to excel, and then put the team in a position to thrive and excel by developing the organizational stage setting and then providing the tools and motivation to complete the tasks and goals at hand. (Roberto 2011).

Teams need to be real and not simply puppets or support groups for the leader in charge. For a team to be real, several elements need to be in place.

1) A real team needs to be working on tasks that are appropriate for a team and not tasks that should be assigned to individuals.

2) A real team is not just a leader and a set of direct reports.

3) A real team is an empowered group that shares collaboration and joint decision making with true interdependence.

4) A real team has clear boundaries defining who is exactly on the team.

5) A real team has authority and knows what decision rights the team has.

Often these elements are not clear if they are even addressed at all. In addition a condition known as “scope creep” occurs and where additional responsibilities are added over time. This reduces the effectiveness of the team by over extending the members and confusing the priorities and goals.

Team membership stability is also important. One example that clearly demonstrates this is found with airplane cockpit crews. Roberto points out that commercial aircraft safety statistics shows a direct correlation between the stability of the crews even when compared with crews that are fatigued from long hours and overtime.

Additionally, teams of “stars” don’t necessarily compose the best team. An example of this is the 2004 US men’s Olympic basketball team. This team certainly possessed plenty of basketball stars but there was no team cohesion and the players did not clearly understand their individual roles on the team. This, coupled with insufficient practice as a team caused them to have one of the worst records of any US basketball team in Olympic history.

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Good stable teams excel with they know how to work together, have a shared body of knowledge, know their capabilities and weaknesses, and possess a shared commitment with clearly defined goals and authority.

There is a downside though when teams are together too long. Old, stagnant teams can suffer from a loss of diversity. A curvilinear relationship can be seen throughout the life of a team starting when the team is formed, then learns to work together and then ultimately becomes mature and then finally reaches a point of stagnancy. Stagnant teams resist innovation, new ideas, and thoughts outside the status quo. Old teams develop an attitude of infallibility and often view themselves as possessing more knowledge than they actually contain. New ideas are resisted and “group think” becomes dominant often stifling input that is contrary to the general consensus. Such teams should be disbanded or reorganized so to be revitalized.

Different Types of Teams

Different types of teams are needed for different tasks and situations. Executive teams are by nature different than work teams because of the ambiguous tasks and the creativity and problem solving needed for the executive tasks. Work teams need clear consequential goals and a clear shared objective rather than selfish individual roles. The transformational leader must be sure that he or she is clearly setting the end goal for work teams but allow the team to discover their optimal means of getting there. Let the team find out the best way to accomplish the task otherwise, as a leader, one will be micromanaging and thereby usurping the power and effectiveness of the team.

A leader should empower the team to develop and possess the following elements:

1) A compelling shared direction and goal2) An enabling structure that includes ground rules to engage with one another3) A size and blend of team members appropriate to the task

This is a critical element and needs to be unpacked to be thoroughly understood.Three common mistakes made in forming teams are: too many people, too homogeneous, and assuming that everyone knows how to work in a group

Too often leaders form teams by focusing on technical skills rather than interpersonal skills of the team members. Both kinds of skills are needed for a transformational team to be successful. Often a desire for inclusivity becomes an excuse for creating teams that are too large. Leaders seek to spread the risk and accountability and create a crowd that becomes stagnant when it can’t reach consensus. Most scholars recommend a team with an optimal size between 4 and 7 people – 5 is a good target. Roberto discovered in a survey he conducted with executives of many fortune 500 companies that many of them had teams of over 10 people and this was found to be too large to be functionally efficient (Roberto 2011).

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The transformational leader needs to also consider the demographics of the team. Demographics alone may not be the primary driving force for determining the success or destiny of team, but it must be considered. A common question is whether homogeneous teams are better than heterogeneous teams. Roberto notes that too much homogeneity may foster too little cognitive dissidence and too much diversity can foster excess controversy, (Roberto 2011).

Often sub groups can develop within a team based on demographics and become battle lines that will interfere with achieving team goals. Age, departmental origin, personal relationships, and gender are all demographic elements that can simultaneously bring people together and pull people apart.

Homogeneity can have the opposite effect and cause a team to focus on myopic issues while avoiding the needs of the entire organization as a whole. A typical example would be having a team of only members of the accounting department making decisions that affect sales and manufacturing without representation from sales and manufacturing on the team to offer ideas and ensure that the interests of those functions are considered in the decisions and solutions.

In empowering the team the transformational leader also needs to provide:

4) Supportive context, to be present and available to support the team as needs are defined and issues arise.

5) Provide expert coaching and guidance.

This element is an important key to the success of the transformational team. The transformational leader must think through what the organizational team is trying to do or accomplish and then provide the synergy. No one person is as good as the sum total of all inputs. The transformational leader believes and understands this and is ready to provide the expert coaching that the team needs.

Expert coaching needs to provide the following:

a. Effort – the leader needs to watch out for “free riders”. Roberto provides an example of this that occurs often in educational teams where some students will freeload on the rest of the group. This is often called “social loafing”.

b. Performance strategy – the leader needs to identify and coach the team away from slipping back into or going to old practices rather than looking for new ideas and innovation.

c. Use all the expertise on the team - good coaching has a more powerful effect on well-designed teams than poorly designed teams and weak coaching has less effect on poorly designed teams than well designed teams.

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d. Avoid micromanaging – the leader needs to resist inserting himself or herself into all the problems and resist worrying about every little detail. The leader needs to foster an environment that will promote success growth and development within the team and allow the team to provide the solutions.

Transformational leaders and team builders need to focus on foundation, conditions and the environment around the team. This is ultimately the key to successful transformational teams for any organization.

Continuous Improvement – The Learning organization

Harvard University historian and teacher Stephen J Gould once said, “Look in the mirror and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival”. In short this means don’t get fooled by short term success. A transformational leader must resist the desire to look in the mirror when one is doing well and be completely convinced that everything is doing find and nothing needs to be improved upon.

Continuous improvement is required for any organization to be successful and without it, the organization will quickly perish. Continuous improvement is the only shield and force to battle competition. Regardless of the end product or service that the organization provides, whether it be social services or the manufacture of hard goods is subject to the forces of competition. Competitors attack from three fronts: Quality, Service/Delivery speed, and Cost. It is only through Continuous improvement and a Learning organization that the organization can guard against competition and continue to gain market share and new business opportunities.

The next obvious step in this chain of events is to foster a learning organization that is both active in continuous improvement and agile to evolve and change as the needs and opportunities acre created or discovered. For an organization to become a learning organization it must utilize three key areas for learning and improvement. These are past experience, experimentation, and competitor/market research.

Learn from past experience

A poignant example of learning from past experience is demonstrated by studying the famous football players Johnny Unitus & Raymond Barry. These two talented but relatively unknown athletes in the beginning of their careers became famous by studying films of their team and the competitive teams. This practice is widely used today, but Unitus and Barry are credited with being the first to use simple VHS home recordings done by Unitus’ wife to learn from the past experience in order to improve performance in future events.

David Garvin, organizational learning expert teaches that there are three major

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elements to organizational learning. These are intelligence, experience and experimentation.

To gather intelligence the leaders and teams need to search established sources. Many of these sources are external. The search needs to be active and needs to engage in inquiry. Often techniques that utilize interviews and surveys are used. These may include market research, formal surveys, and/or focus groups.

Superior to surveys and focus groups is the use of direct observation. This can be costly and time consuming since it involves techniques like hiring anthropologists, or allowing managers and executives to go into the field or out into the factory to work on the line. Certainly learning by looking can wipe away many preconceived notions, but often one tends to see what we expect to see. It is often important to collect observations under different circumstances and at different locations. It is important to record the observations carefully and to include the actual quotes and artifacts. Never rely on memory.

Engage in active listening and do not ask leading questions. It is important to ask clarifying questions and engage the people. It is also necessary to especially note keep systematic track of observations that are contrary to and contradict what was initial and early pre-considerations and notions. As the famous Yogi Berra is credited to have said, “You can observe a lot by watching”.

Deliberate Practice and Experimentation

Transformational leaders drive learning in organizations. This is both important and necessary. Experiments can vary from pure research and development to post mortem analysis of lessons learned from successes as well as failures.

Edisonian analysis, in its raw form is the simplest and purest form of experimentation. Thomas Edison’s quest to eventually discover the tungsten filament for the electric light bulb is a classic example of trial and error with minute and tiny gains among huge numbers of failures. What Thomas Edison’s techniques and persistence teaches us is that the only true failure is the one that causes an end to the experimentation.

This author has had a similar experience in the discovery of the correct combination of materials and process elements that were necessary to create the first chip resistor on aluminum nitride. International Manufacturing Services, Inc. was the first company to produce this product and it is one of the highest growth products of the company today. The path to find the successful combination was one of Edisonian trial and error experimentation using every combination of existing materials and material preparations until the exact combination yielded success. This is raw experimentation and one necessary element of research and development employing the basic scientific principle.

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One of the most difficult experiences in deliberate experimentation and exploration for innovation and development is failure. Transformational leaders do not fear failure. Failure is only truly failure when it has the effect of stopping effort and progress. More is learned from the analysis of failure than from the analysis of success. Success often stops further progress and as a result often thwarts greater discoveries or more rewarding solutions. The key to utilizing failure is to design experiments and investigations in such a manner that results can be controlled and measured.

Transformational leaders also must be sure that failures in experiments and investigations are not punished. To say that it is OK to fail but to punish legitimate failures in the path of investigation will corrupt the message, especially when it comes from the leaders. The key is to engage systematic approaches and thinking to allow and encourage holistic approaches that see patterns rather than static snapshots. The leader, as well as the organization needs to encourage unfiltered data, be aware of limitations and biases and utilize integrative thinking so that the small gains, ideas and discoveries are not missed and be accumulated to achieve the final goals.

Besides observation and deliberate experimentation, a third method for learning and improvement is measuring experience and performing post mortem analysis.

Experience and Post Mortem Analysis

Experience and lessons learned is a technique perfected by the United States Army. In their post mortem exercises the US Army conducts After Action Reviews (AAR). In these exercises, four questions are asked and answered:

1) What did we set out to do?2) What actually happened?3) Why did it happen?4) What are we going to do the next time?

This technique is only successful when it is conducted without blame and the desire to jump to asking “What went wrong” is resisted.

David Garvin and Michael Roberto studied these processes. Roberto discovered that this is an ongoing initiative of the US Army and it is conducted immediately after a mission completed. This is important for memory clarity. The Army is strong on ensuring that all issues of negligence take place completely outside of this process. And the leaders and soldiers are all encouraged to be honest, complete and forthcoming with their input with a diligent effort toward achieving improvement and not blame or punishment.

Debriefings like these have been tried in business organizations but are not as successful as they are in the US Army. Nevertheless, similar techniques, such as post event debriefings are very valuable for any organization. In these sessions leaders need

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to attempt to follow the Army’s four AAR questions in order and use the experience gained from both successes and failures to make continuous improvements.

Leadership Development

The ultimate goal any great leader and the prime directive of transformational leaders is to develop and improve the leadership in the organization. This fundamental key is paramount to the longevity and survival of the organization and the key to the growth and stability of that organization. The organizations that revolve around a lone genius or a charismatic superstar will quickly reach stagnation and ultimately will fail.

It is incumbent upon the transformational leader(s) in any organization to provide active and dynamic development within the organization for leadership development. This includes the investment of both time and money, the identification of promising leaders (as early as possible), the use of good strategy in assignments within the organization to foster development, providing support and feedback, exerting passion and inspiration toward encouraging leaders, and inculcating leadership development into the organization.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Transformational Leadership is an active process that is simultaneously individualistic and holistic. It is not simply about the individual but it encompasses the entire organization. Transformational leaders are neither born, nor made, they are developed and this development needs education, coaching, experience, passion and encouragement. Certainly some individuals possess a blend of intelligence, ethics, charisma, and motivation that can facilitate their successful evolution into an effective transformational leader, but there are no set of traits or personality attributes that will help to identify or define such a person.

It is through teamwork, coaching, and conscious effort and behavior that transformational leaders are developed and the strong organizations are those that utilize strong teams for transformation, change, and growth while developing team synergy and team development both in the areas related to the task as well as the relationship of the members of those teams.

In the end, similar to Kotter’s definition above, the transformational leader is a team leader that establishes a compelling direction and vision for the organization but in the model provided herein this is done together with a team. The transformational leader, together with the team, sets a vision and strategy for how to get there, and together with the team they align and communicate the vision to the rest of the organization while building understanding, and persuading and influencing the organization to follow the vision. Finally the transformational leader and the rest of the team motivate and inspire the organization to create and carry out the changes that achieve the vision and strategy.

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Unlike most of the leader models defined and discussed earlier in this paper, the transformational leader must establish a sense of urgency, examine the realities of the competition, find the untapped opportunities and then compel the organization, through its teams to move into the unknown. By forming powerful, guiding coalitions and empowering champions for change, the entire organization is then moved toward the vision and opportunities. Once the vision and strategy is clear, it needs to be communicated to the entire organization. This necessitates credibility and the careful use of power within the organization. The message must be clear, and communicated to all levels of the organization using all forms of communication. The transformational leader empowers people to act on the vision and to make the necessary changes to organizational systems, structures, and processes.

Finally, through continuous improvement the transformational leader will ultimately institutionalize the new approaches or systems using the metrics, and values required. This must run parallel with investment and efforts to ensure that throughout the organization successors are identified and that there are adequate leadership development, personal growth and succession plans in place to perpetuate the organization for long term success, sustainability, profit and achievement.

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Appendix A: (Compilation of Lists - Optimal Leadership Traits From 20 Different Random Internet Sources)

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Appendix B20 Exam Questions and Answers

1) Define Leadership:

Answer: Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.

2) True or False: Leadership is primarily about generating efficiency in the organization and meeting near-term financial objectives or other objectives that are nonfinancial in nature.

Answer: False – this defines Management

3) According to Dr. Michael Roberto, what are 3 of the 5 Myths concerning leaders that must be disrupted?

Answers:

1) Leaders are born and not made 2) A leader is a lone genius often thought of as the person at the top.3) Leaders must be charismatic extroverts in order to motivate and inspire others.4) Leadership requires formal authority influence and persuasion5) All great leaders have a common set of personality traits.

4) True or False: There is no such thing as a Negative Charismatic Leader.

Answer: False, A negative charismatic leader is one who wants to get people specifically devoted to him or her as an individual.

5) What are the 4 sequential questions that the US Army reviews during their AAR (After Action Review) sessions to conduct a Post Mortem analysis of a mission or event?

Answer:1) What did we set out to do?2) What actually happened?3) Why did it happen?4) What are we going to do the next time?

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6) Can these questions in #5 be answered in any order during an AAR?

Answer: No,

Jumping to “Why did it happen?” or “What are we going to do the next time?” can cause the loss of valuable analytical information and turn the focus to mistakes, error and blame which will comprimise the learning event and devaluate the process.

7) What is the value of defining and understanding negative traits and characteristics in a leader?

Answer: Defining and understanding negative traits and characterists reveal areas and weaknesses that must be avoided, and not only point to probable potential failure it also defines characteristics where improvements can be made and behavior can be corrected and actions taken before the organization is damaged.

8) Describe the motivation behind the Transactional Leadership Style:

Answer: This leadership style relies on rewards and techniques involving management by exception and the classic carrot/stick (reward/performance) motivation.

9) True or False: The study of Leadership has only manifested itself recently resulting from the needs of our western industrial civilization after the industrial revolution.

Answer: False - Leadership has been studied since since ancient times with evidence found more than 2500 years ago from the philosopher Confucius who lays out a “development theory” utilizing a series of 7 “meditative spaces of leadership cultivation”.

10) Thomas Edison’s methodical search for the light bulb filament is a characteristic example of learning through “Deliberate Practice and Experimentation”.

Answer: True – this is a classic example of successful learning through dilligent trial and error experimentation.

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11) True or False: Since Management is largely about consistency, order, planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling and problem solving, therefore Leaders can ignore these functions.

Answer: False – A transformational leader must ensure that all the management functions are being conducted efficiently since BOTH good leadership and management are necessary for a successful organization and the Responsibility for ensuring that management functions are properly conducted falls on the organizational leaders although others in the organization may be performing the detailed management functions.

12) True or False: A team consisting of the organization’s top stars representing each department is optimal for success.

Answer: False – A team of stars very often fails or takes a long time to determine how to work together as a team because of division and dominant individuals . The focus must be on the task and not the talent. Unless the team can establish cohesion and develop structure and synergy it will stall as a result of excess posturing and defensive maneuvering.

13) When the famous football players Johnny Unitus & Raymond Barry used VHS home recordings to study their team and other teams, this was a characteristic example of learning by market research.

Answer: False – This is a classic example of learning from past experience.

14) Since we cannot define a formula or set of traits to model a Transformational Leader what are five big characteristics defined by Dr. Michael Roberto that are desirable to cultivate:

Answer: Surgency (outgoing personality), Conscientiousness (dependability), Agreeableness (helpful and cheerful), Adjustment (emotionally stable and possess self-control), Intellectance (curious and open-minded),

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15) True of False: Successful Leaders always place the task in the highest priority and never worry about the task’s affect on relationships within the organization.

False: Successful leaders maintain a high regard for both the task and the relationships, keeping a balance between the task to complete and the people in the organization.

16) What are two of the 4 elements required for effective leadership coaching

Answer: The 4 possible choices are:a. Effort b. Performance strategy c. Use all the expertise on the team d. Avoid micromanaging

17) What is the recommended optimal size of a team according to most scholars?

Answer: 4-7 people

18) Identify the traditional five stages of team development.

Answer : 1-Forming2-Storming3-Norming4-Performing5-Adjourning

19) Define “scope creep” in relation to team responsibilities.

Answer: Scope Creep occurs when additional responsibilities are added to the team over time and the scope of the assignment creeps into a larger sphere than originally indended.

20) How does the transformational leader avoid micromanaging?

Answer: The transformationl leader avoids micromanaging by resisting inserting himself or herself into all the problems and resisting worrying about every little detail.

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