Introduction
The capability to shape and develop the leadership abilities of the members of the organization so as to fulfill organizational needs and demands is a complicated and challenging component of the general leadership development process. Leaders are responsible for the achievement of organizational goals, as well as for their followers' performance needed to attain the desired outcome. However, this is not an easy task. Widget PLC has problems with their leadership as revealed by decreasing employee motivation and managerial performance. This paper discusses and analyzes the relevance of transformational leadership and authentic leadership to the problem of Widget PLC. It includes a discussion of similarities and differences and strengths and weaknesses of these two leadership theories.
Transformational Leadership
Until the introduction of the transformational leadership model in the 1970s, leadership research and theories placed a great deal of emphasis on the manager's role and relationship with subordinates. Social scientist James McGregor Burns introduced the theory of transformational leadership in 1978. His ideas have inspired organizational professionals and academics and created the foundation for almost all current works about leadership (Northouse, 2013). Ever since the 1980s there has been a large-scale change in leadership perspective from an emphasis on control systems and tasks to a focus on the process of creating an organizational culture that is capable of building an environment wherein organizational outcomes are favorable and individuals are productive.
Burns (1978) explains that transformational leadership takes place “when two or more persons engage with others in such a way that the leader and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality” (Hickman, 2009, 158). In essence, both leaders and followers discover purpose and value in their tasks, and improve and progress as an outcome of that relationship. In this description of transformational leadership, it is vital to highlight that the mission of the transformational leader is to fulfill his/her followers' needs and help them achieve their objectives and hence motivate them to perform at their best. Self-actualization and self-esteem are the two higher level needs-- based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs-- that transformational leadership focuses on achieving (Hickman, 2009). Hence, it appears that the transformational leadership model can help resolve the problem of Widget PLC with decreasing employee motivation and diminishing employee satisfaction with the management.
Transformational leaders can motivate their followers to perform beyond what is expected of them, because transformational leadership focuses on the internal motivational needs of the followers. This leadership model shares some similarities with charismatic leadership, particularly as regards these four aspects-- individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence (Gagne, 2014). Webb (2007) provided an empirical proof of the capability of transformational leadership to enhance employee motivation as it focuses on intellectual stimulation and empowering employees to accomplish their tasks beyond expectations. This was supported by the findings of Kalar and colleagues (2007), which show that transformational leaders motivate their followers by boosting their self-reliance and self-esteem. This, according to their study, motivates followers to perform at their best.
Transformational leaders, according to Judge and Piccolo (2004), induce a sense of purpose in their followers that is more focused on self-actualization, self-esteem, and long-term goals. Moreover, transformational leadership can also enhance the performance of leaders and managers. Widget PLC has problems with its management allegedly brought about by inadequate support for management development. Barling and colleagues (1996) carried out a research in a bank to examine the impact of educating and motivating managers to exercise transformational leadership. Their findings show positive outcomes, particularly on the intellectual stimulation traits of the managers. The dedication, motivation, and financial outcomes of the subordinates also improved as an outcome of the managers' effort to train them in the actual application of transformational leadership. Likewise, the study of Avolio and Bass (1998) discovered that for many of the community leaders who had been ranked by their subordinates before the training, there were substantial improvements in intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation directly after the training on transformational leadership.
Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership is a model that places emphasis on being aware of and behaving according to one's main predispositions, sentiments, beliefs, and values. Walumbwa and colleagues (2008) provide a clear definition of authentic leadership: “a pattern of leader behavior that draws upon and promotes both positive psychological capacities and a positive ethical climate, to foster greater self-awareness, an internalized moral perspective, balanced processing of information, and relational transparency on the part of leaders working with followers, fostering positive self-development” (Gagne, 2014, 189). In other words, an authentic leader acts on a greater standard of responsibility, dignity, and virtue. Authentic leadership has a reflective, inner-directed feature that enables leaders to thoroughly think about their behavior, whether it is in line with their identity, making sure that their beliefs and values withstand or surmount outside pressures.
The authentic leadership model is based on ethical and moral principles of leadership. The authentic leader is motivated by values and beliefs that require building and sustaining open communication with subordinates, prioritizing the motivation of others, placing emphasis on one's ethical and moral obligations, and being sincere and honest to others. It is strongly related to other positive approaches to leadership like the servant, transformational, and charismatic leadership models (Landy & Conte, 2016). Even though there have been quite a few empirical studies on the various approaches to authentic leadership, researchers (e.g. Walumbwa et al., 2010; Walumbwa et al., 2008) have associated this model of leadership with positive organizational outcomes, like work performance, work commitment, motivation, and job satisfaction. Thus, authentic leadership could help Widget PLC enhance employee motivation and design a successful management training program.
Authentic leaders could raise employee motivation by encouraging their followers to develop authentic leader attributes through becoming role models themselves. Such notion is based on the principles of social learning theory, by which individual behavior is changed through observation (Baron & Parent, 2015). Hence, by seeing the actions or behavior of authentic leaders, followers may also develop these authentic traits, and consequently, acquire a greater level of intrinsic motivation. Ilies and Judge (2005) explained that authentic leadership encourages the identification of followers with their leaders because of the direct and clear-cut characteristic of their relationship. Such follower identification could then result in identification with the overall organization, since leaders embody the organization's goals and values. These organizational identification and leader identification could enhance followers' work commitment and sense of purpose. An improved work commitment and sense of purpose at work could afterward lead to higher levels of internal motivation.
Comparing and Contrasting Transformational Leadership and Authentic Leadership
When evaluating authentic leadership against other contemporary theories of leadership, it has been identified as a core by-product of all types of positive leadership models, particularly transformational leadership. Numerous similarities between transformational leadership and authentic leadership can be found, such as considerable emphasis on the moral aspect of leadership, being open to individual growth and development, and being self-conscious. Burns (1978) argued that the moral domain is highly valued in transformational leadership. The primary goal of transformational leaders is to encourage individuals to improve their behavior and ethical decision-making. Similarly, authentic leadership is largely focused on the moral domain. A leader is said to be both transformational and authentic when s/he promotes understanding and appreciation of moral behavior, when s/he contributes to the assessment of the needs of the followers for self-actualization, meaningful work, self-esteem, and achievement (Gagne, 2014), and when s/he motivates followers to prioritize the interests of the organization over their own interests.
Walumbwa and associates (2008) proposed bringing together transformational and authentic leadership into a training program that offers the greatest capabilities toward sustained motivation and improved performance at work. However, even though having several similarities, it is necessary to mention how authentic leadership is different from transformational leadership. According to Shamir and Eilam (2005), “transformational leaders can be authentic or inauthentic and non-transformational leaders can be authentic” (as cited in Landy & Conte, 2016, 465). Authentic leaders are highly committed to their responsibility, exhibit a sense of purpose, and build long-term relationships, but are not essentially defined as charismatic, which has been identified as a central feature of transformational leadership. Moreover, Avolio and colleagues (2004) argued that the theory of authentic leadership does not naturally go through the core objective of transformational leadership, that is, to empower followers into becoming leaders themselves. Thus, although there are definite commonalities with transformational leadership, authentic leadership provide a distinctive perspective of leadership open to all individuals.
Strengths and Weaknesses
In order for Widget PLC to successfully enhance the motivation of its employees and create a management training program that would improve its managers' performance, it is important to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the two proposed leadership theories-- transformational and authentic. The transformational leadership model is a common practice in numerous Western organizations. The capability to motivate, inspire, and empower is one of the major strengths of transformational leaders. Commitment and passion are the usual characteristics that make transformational leaders successful in motivating members of an organization to perform beyond expectations. Transformational leaders elevate and use their passion when leading an organization through a crisis (Zhang et al., 2015). They aspire to bring out the inner motivation of all employees by emboldening them to pursue greater levels of performance.
Transformational leadership gives primary importance to the development, learning, and application of principles that are necessary for the improvement of individual performance and organizational outcomes. Transformational leaders exhibit behaviors that propose sincere concern for their followers. They inspire better performance across geographical, generational, gender, and cultural differences (Northouse, 2013). However, even though transformational leadership brings about success in numerous domains, it has several weaknesses. Primarily, it creates a vacuum in the organization if subordinates are not trained and empowered to take on roles. Without creating and fully implementing policies for recognizing and welcoming failures, transformational leadership methods can encourage people to seek and give better performance with little or no value (Hickman, 2009). Moreover, transformational leadership enhances productivity. Yet, if irrational deadlines and lengthy hours continue for a long period of time, workers will experience exhaustion or burn out.
Meanwhile, the authentic leadership model is based on the idea that the leader must act on what is right, and for him/her to choose and do what is right s/he must be aware of what is 'real' or 'true' to him/herself, to other people (e.g. stakeholders), and the wider organization. As argued by Northouse (2013), one of the strengths of authentic leadership is that it fulfills the need of a society for sincere, honest, and dignified leaders. Furthermore, proponents of this leadership model claim that authenticity is a trait that can be learned and developed. However, as explained by Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe (2011), even though authenticity presents a notion of a person's traits, it fails to “directly address the question as to how to engage employees in the work of the organization” (as cited in Holroyd, 2015, 19). Although defined as a positive leadership attribute, authenticity could have adverse outcomes when a leader voices out his/her thoughts during a heated confrontation.
Recommendations
Widget PLC clearly needs more transformational leaders to help the organization successfully shift from a task-oriented approach into a training and development program for employees and managers. Primarily, the company must send their managers to off-the-job training seminars and focus on individual coaching. Coaching, according to the transformational leadership theory, guarantees the best transmission between what was gained from the training and the concrete performance of managerial tasks (Zhang et al., 2015). In addition, on-the-job training brings about the greatest possible trainee motivation since training participants view this form of training as exceptionally useful.
As managerial tasks in Widget PLC become more challenging, there is apparently a greater need for a relevant management training. The transformational leadership theory argues that most categorizations of managerial jobs stress that managers must have leadership abilities. Therefore, using a transformational leadership model, the company must emphasize in its managerial trainings the value of leadership skills such as having positive relationships with subordinates, coordinating organizational goals and individual goals, building employee motivation, and sustaining open communication and feedback mechanisms. The transformational leadership model can help Widget PLC design a managerial training that is focused on goal-setting and the higher level needs of the members of the organization, such as self-actualization, self-esteem, and achievement.
These managerial training strategies can be enhanced by the authentic leadership model. Based on this leadership model, Widget PLC must conduct a long-term managerial training program making use of peer coaching to cultivate authentic leadership traits among its managers. The managerial training must focus on the following: helping managers develop self-awareness through self-assessment of leadership style; promoting an understanding of individual development and growth perspective; and, creating flexibility and fostering higher levels of emotional intelligence. Through a combination of these recommendations from transformational and authentic leadership models, Widget PLC would be able to enhance its employee motivation and managerial performance.
Conclusions
Widget PLC is having problems with declining employee motivation and satisfaction with managerial performance. Through transformational and authentic leadership models, these problems could be resolved. As shown in the discussion and as verified by empirical studies, both these leadership models can help increase employee motivation and improve managerial performance. Nevertheless, the company must be careful in adopting these two leadership theories for the design of its management training program because both also have weaknesses. With thorough and precise application, transformational and authentic leadership theories could contribute to the formation of a relevant, useful, and competent management training program for Widget PLC.
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