Question

an evaluation of the effectiveness of transactional and transformational leadership in business. In your evaluation, do the following:

• Describe two well-known business leaders who respectively exhibit transactional and transformational business leadership behavior, and explain how each business leader exemplifies the identified type of leadership.
• Explain whether you believe that transformational leadership is the most effective type of business leadership and why. Be sure to include specific examples, if any, in which transactional leadership might be more appropriate.
• Describe any potential negative consequences of transformational leadership

Answer 1

Forms of Leadership Analysis

Bill Gates as a transactional leader’s analysis

Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft that launched and operates windows. As a transactional leader, he believes in the need for employees to have an in-depth understanding of the processes they are undertaking. A thorough understanding helps to ensure that the employees are driven by the need to fulfill the goals and objectives of the organization (Tyssen et al, 2014).

John D. Rockefeller

He founded the Standard which over time developed and grew to become one of the largest organizations in the US (Breevaart et al, 2014). As a transformational leader, he holds team work in high regards where he expected all employees to come together and work towards a common goal. Transformational leaders set goals and act to coach their employees to follow given patterns as to achieve the set goals.

Best leadership style

Of the two leadership styles, transactional leadership is the best type that should be adopted by organizations. It is for the following reasons; first, it is a leadership style that appreciates efforts of team players by rewarding them. It as well identifies some ways through which one will be punished by setting some penalties once there is a failure to meet the established standards. Through rewards and punishment, the leadership approach facilitates the achievement of short term goals in a more rapid manner (Breevaart et al, 2014).

Adverse consequences of transformational leadership

Transformational leadership requires the existence of a structure that it should fix. The lack of such a system results in disorientation, and it becomes hard to achieve the set goals. Secondly, transactional leadership requires a step to step approach where the team players have to keep in touch to ensure that all the necessary measures have been followed. The failure to go through all the steps results in the subsequent failure of the whole process. It, therefore, requires a high team working and networking capabilities (Tyssen et al, 2014).

References

Breevaart, K., Bakker, A., Hetland, J., Demerouti, E., Olsen, O. K., & Espevik, R. (2014). Daily transactional and transformational leadership and daily employee engagement. Journal of occupational and organizational psychology, 87(1), 138-157.

Tyssen, A. K., Wald, A., & Spieth, P. (2014). The challenge of transactional and transformational leadership in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 32(3), 365-375.