Transformational leaders establish a vision that encourages others to make great things, and they guide their actions with honesty, ethical values, and standards. In other words, their integrity inspires their team to take action. Those kinds of leaders know the importance of empowering and developing their followers. They help them to achieve personal and professional goals, and they invest time and energy in them because they know that recognizing their followers' personal and individual achievements is the best way to motivate them. They promote the interchange of ideas. They allow their employees to make responsible decisions, and they encourage creativity and embrace originality.
This approach reinforces the idea that only poor leaders use coercive power to achieve results. In contrast, transformational leaders motivate, inspire, develop, and empower their followers. Transforming means making a permanent impact as well as being able to change something or someone in form and appearance. If we think about the most remarkable leaders in history, we can see that they have inspired people to make disruptive changes.
There is a proven relationship between transformational leadership and performance because it enables the improvement of communication and the understanding of goals and quality standards, as well as the development of new ideas.
The transformational leadership approach assumes that leaders can impact people’s emotions, values, ethics, standards, long-term goals, and change them for the better by influencing the follower to become a better person. For example, Pixar Animation Studios is a company with 15 Academy Awards and an average worldwide gross income of over $600 million per film. This company might be the most successful creative enterprise ever—and one of the most profitable. Out of the 14 features the firm has produced, all but one have made the list of top 50 highest-grossing animated movies. Pixar is a clear example of the excellent results that can be achieved by promoting the transformational leadership approach.
In this company, leaders allow their employees to communicate their ideas, and they promote honesty; they manage to enhance creativity by encouraging their employees to make mistakes and figuring out how to solve them in original ways. Pixar founder Ed Catmull encourages candor, trust, and empathy, and he knows that the best way to increase his followers' performance is to empower them to learn and to explore different perspectives.
Unlike transactional leaders that focus on supervision, organization, performance, and who motivate based on rewards and punishments, transformational leaders inspire and motivate followers to achieve results beyond the expected. They create a connection that increases the follower's performance. In other words, transformational leaders help their employees to improve their technical skills, and they are willing to take risks to achieve great things. Some of the most important behaviors of transformational leaders are idealized influence and charisma, inspirational motivation or ability to communicate goals, intellectual stimulation or intelligence, and individualized consideration or high levels of empathy.
In conclusion, a transformational leader is the one who becomes a role model, boosts respect, and earns people's trust. They motivate by providing challenges and meaning, and they act with honesty and integrity. They encourage their followers to keep high standards of communication, and they promote their employees' critical thinking.