Transactional leadership has its focus on the exchanges that occur between leaders in their various capacities and their followers. That is, there is mutual benefit between the leader and followers. For instance, a leader can improve the quality of infrastructure in his or a state and gets more votes in the next election. It is an exchange process between leaders and followers in which effort by one leads to rewards from the other. This leadership involves corrective criticism, negative feedback, and negative reinforcement. There are two forms of transactional leadership, that is, active which involves watching the follower for mistakes or progress. Passive transactional leadership involves intervention after standards have not been met.
Hillary Clinton was born on October 26, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois. She married Bill Clinton in 1975. She was first lady 1993-2001 and a U.S. Senator 2001-2009.Rodham attended Wellesley College where she participated active in student politics and later elected as the Senior Class president before graduating in 1969.After moving to the state of New York, Clinton won the U.S. Senator post in 2000. Senator Clinton was reelected by a wide margin in 2006. Early 2007, she announced her plans to run for president but during the 2008 Democratic Primaries. In the 2008 presidential nomination race, despite losing to Senator Barrack Obama, she got the highest number of primaries and delegates than any other female candidate in American history. President Obama then appointed her as Secretary of State in 2008 (http://www.biography.com/people/hillary-clinton-9251306).
Recently before the general elections, she took responsibility for what happened on September 11, in Benghazi. In an interview with CNN's Elise Labott soon after her visit in Lima, Peru, she defended President Barrack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. She took responsibility for being in charge of security issues, not the president nor his vice. She had an intension to prevent any future attacks – but rather also introduce diplomacy, even in dangerous areas like Benghazi. This was in a bid to foster the safety of all citizens of America, regardless of their place of work.
This shows that there is some passive transactional leadership. This is because a problem has risen and she takes an initiative to correct it. The security standards were not met leading to an attack on American citizens in a foreign country. By promising to foster security, she seeks to assure citizens who will in turn vote her back into office. Furthermore, she is one of the leaders who are for the U.S. response to the Arab Spring and greatly advocating for the military intervention in Libya. She uses "smart power" as her strategy for asserting U.S (Clinton, 2003).
Among her agenda is to promote women empowerment all over the world and maximizing departmental effectiveness. In the process, she holds a record for being the most-traveled secretary for time in office. This can be attributed to her diplomatic nature, whose vital part is making people like you. People will always vote for someone they are familiar with and she gets a higher chance due to the diplomatic nature. Her main tool is the social media; which she uses to pass her messages to people in the U.S. and worldwide (Blashfield, 2011).
In conclusion, Hillary Clinton can be said to use transactional leadership because she is a diplomat who approaches people and tries to give them what they need e.g. security in return for votes. Both she and her followers benefit from each other. She also accepts her flaws and does not try to dictate her opinion to people. As a result, she has many followers because she is approachable.
References
Hillary Clinton Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com . (n.d.). Famous
Biographies & TV Shows - Biography.com . Retrieved November 7, 2012, from http://www.biography.com/people/hillary-clinton-9251306
Blashfield, J. F. (2011). Hillary Clinton. New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark.
Clinton, H. R. (2003). Living history. New York: Simon & Schuster.
