The Benefits and Disadvantages of Transformational Leadership Style

Transformational Leadership deals with the motivation, inspiration, and encouragement of the personnel in order to carry out the innovative and creative change. This change directly helps the company in the growth and allows the scope for development. This leadership style is based on improving the corporate culture to provide a satisfactory workforce and innovation. It allows the freedom of employees to finally bring out innovative ideas from the creative minds of the workforce.

The leader following a transformational leadership style should inculcate the following characteristics to deliver correct leadership skills to the subordinates.

• The leader should be full of encouragement and motivation for the required development of the subordinates.
• Should create moral standards in the firm and motivates the others.
• Should develop a suitable work culture which is dedicated to the priorities to achieve the goal
• Should promote and appreciate the work of employees to thrive in the workforce and the employee development
• Should make efforts to uplift the ethics of the employee and suppress the egoistic nature.
• Emphasize to communicate freely among the corporate sector for clearing any kind of doubt and discrepancies.
• Should mentor employees and to promote their decisive nature in the given task.
• Should set definitive goals
• Steer the emotions of the employee to create a healthy and positive workplace
• Should inspire the workforce to extend their abilities in order to generate maximum possible productivity
• Should have a wider vision in setting goals and objectives
• Develop a healthy relationship with the employees to build a decisive and affirmative quality within the subordinates.

Transformational leadership style often called a charismatic leadership style motivates the inspiration among the employees, team members or subordinates. Embracing the motivation and energy of the employee base or team members prove to be a generous asset for the organization (Trmal and Bustamam et al. 2015). The two world leaders who are considered to follow the transformational leadership style are Ex-President of America, Barack Obama and the founder and Chief executive officer of Alibaba, Jack Ma. They both are known for their leadership qualities and splendid success. These world-famous leaders are the best example of the transformational leadership style. They believe in motivating the team members in order to promote innovative ideas. The detailed explanation of the proof that these leaders do hold the transformational or charismatic leadership style is mentioned in the following.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama is known for his eminent leadership qualities during his political career in the United States. The optimistic and positive vision of Obama made him an unforgettable leader of the most powerful country in the world. The self-disciplined and confident personality of the ex-President has mentored many others. Obama has modified his campaign and planning, he has inculcated necessary elements into his campaign. The elements were the clear indication of the determining the leader in charge, the sort of information to be shared, along with the assurance of the leader to the provided message or information (Green and Roberts 2012). He was open to new ideas and allowed the subordinates to openly suggest developmental ideas. He has a keen interest in building an affirmative, proactive and determined policy to create a similar work culture. During the Presidential election in 2008, Obama utilized this leadership style. The citizens were in a need of bringing change to the situation of the country where the employment rate declined, healthcare facilities were not up to the mark and the government was not much interested in the environmental issues generated at that time and the most important lack of a different perspective towards the development of the country (McGuire and Garavan et al. 2016). Obama has the ability to motivate the mob, as an impact the citizens became inspired and motivated to bring the change and choose to replace Bush Government with a non-white candidate. This is the result of transformational leadership that people showed that they are uplifted from any kind of racism discrimination. This is the exemplified description of the transformational leadership style used by Barack Obama. Obama is always considered as a democratic leader but the above-mentioned example surely concludes that Barack Obama is a charismatic leader.

Jack Ma

Jack Ma is the founder and Chief Chairperson of the Chinese online company Alibaba group. Currently, he is the wealthiest man in China with a net worth of $36.3 B (Forbes 2019). A good English intellect born in a poor family had no such instinct to become the wealthiest men in China. After graduation, he applied for a lot of jobs but end up serving in a school as an English teacher. Jack Ma had started his first company, a China page, which deals with the provision of Chinese companies to promote international business. The company was not successful. He then started a new firm and named it as Alibaba (Lee and Song et al 2016). He has a dynamic vision to succeed with the overall development of the organization. He believes to be an inspiration to all his workers. He always hires a well-qualified worker for him to achieve his goals successfully. He believes that it is the wrong decision to hire less qualified personnel. Jack’s mission is to promote innovation within the organization and to create an affirmative environment so that a suitable workplace can be established. Ma is considered as a determined leader who has guts to tackle bigger firms then Alibaba. Ma has written in his book about the same. Ma always sees his business through his customer’s perspective. Ma has a good quality of building relations with his employees. He has a significant skill to unite employees and the team members for the company’s goal. He always presented his goals as the goal of the company that helps in building employee trust. This is the principal feature of transformational leadership. This depicts that Jack Ma is a charismatic or transformational leader.

Advantages of transformational leadership style

This leadership style has helped a lot in the success of both the suggested leaders in their respective fields. Motivation, inspiration and bring trust among the team leaders or employees are the basic characteristics of this leadership style (Amanchukwu and Stanley et al. 2015). Barack Obama won the election with the use of this style. The impact of this transformational leadership has created a change in the vision of the citizens to be motivated to bring about new changes in the governmental system. It generated a leadership responsibility in the individuals to promote the growth of the country by incorporating this change and eliminating discrimination. By electing Obama as the President of the United State, the citizen showed the end of the racist culture in the country. This motivation is effective to be more innovative and bring about changes and thoughts to develop the nation.

Alibaba, on the other hand, has reached the peak of success with the use of this leadership style. It became an innovative change for the countries business evolution by a graduate leader with suitable leadership qualities. The leadership style is effective to build trust among the employee base and the investors which lead the firm towards the path of success. Hiring more qualified subordinates allowing them to be the leader of their task has brought about more innovation to the growing firm.

Disadvantages of transformational leadership style

This leadership style works on generating leadership in individuals. This can create uncertainty in the decisions and also confuse the current leaders and bosses. This style allows promoting the decisive nature of individual team members rather the being a part of decision making by the team. It can affect the decision-making process (Tyssen and Wald et al. 2014). Also, this style is dependent on employees for decision making in contrast with the authoritative leadership style. In the case of the Alibaba group, this leadership can cause a disobedient employee base. The liberal nature of the leader can be harmful to the functioning of the firm (Amanchukwu and Stanley et al. 2015). Hiring more qualified under this leadership style can be the reason for the generation of competitors.