Transformational Leadership: Leadership for Education

Different kinds of leadership theories have been proposed over time such as trait-based leadership, emergent leadership, contingency leadership, complexity leadership, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and distributed leadership. Each theory has its influence and value in an era in certain contexts. This paper argues that transformational leadership is the most suitable style for leading formal academic institutions structured with the official internal and external hierarchies. The argument is supported by (1) the moral foundation of the transformational leadership; (2) proven validity from previous studies; and (3) evidences from the practices of the educational leaders.

Key words: transformational leadership theory, educational leadership

Transformational Leadership

During the past few decades, great organizational, societal and cultural changes have occurred. Globalization and technology have caused a reorganization of the supply-chain and worker-chain with an accompaniment of new forms of learning and knowledge sharing (Latchem & Hanna, 2001a). Free and wide-spread information on the Internet challenges the traditional authority and the control over knowledge of educators and leaders in administration as well as the way teachers and students interact in the institutions. People are encouraged to question authority when necessary. The concept of “going beyond one’s interests for the good of the organization” is no longer accepted unconditionally (Bass, 1999). The changes and challenges led to various explorations on leadership theory in seeking for effective leadership models for the new era in which people ask for changes but do not have a clear track for doing that. Leadership theories such as transformational leadership, distributed leadership, and complexity leadership have been developed in an attempt to describe the new phenomena, predict what will happen, and suggest strategies for effective leadership. Transformational leadership theory among all the existing theories is the one that underscores the importance of changing the mindset of the subordinators, building trust for the willingness to internalize organizational values, and encourage the follower to become the leader. In today’s fast-changing environment of education, the problems people confront often did not exist before. There is a greater need for everyone to respond to one’s unique problems properly and timely instead of waiting for instructions from the supervisors. Transformational leadership is needed for facilitating the capability.

Transformational leadership has been introduced after the research on behavioral leadership such as great-man leadership and trait-based leadership that assumed that leadership is rooted in the characteristics that certain individuals possess. James Burns (1978) first introduced two types of leadership styles: transactional and transformational leadership. Most of the traditional leaderships are transactional leadership in which the leader and the follower work together under informal contracts. The leader gives instructions to the follower about what they need to do and provides rewards when the follower completes the instruction. The leader and the follower exchange resources to meet their own self-interests. Distinct from transactional leadership, transformational leaders aim at inducing positive change in individuals through articulating vision of the future that can be shared with peers and subordinators, inspiring subordinators’ motivation, intellectually stimulate subordinates, and pay high attention to individual differences among people (Bass, 1999; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996). The transformational leadership approach uplifts the morale, motivation, and morals of their followers with the end goal of developing the follower into a leader (Bass, 1999).

Educators usually have higher academic qualification than the average people in their society. They are expected to be intelligent while playing roles as moral models. Leading an institution that is mainly formed by a group of educators to fulfill the missions of education requires a values-driven approach (Latchem & Hanna, 2001b). Aitkin (1998) and Bass (1999) argued that if the power of the educational leaders is to be used effectively, the leader (vice-chancellor) must “have a sense of mission, an agenda, a vision … those attributes need to come from inside, not from the university itself … from reflection and from one’s personal values.” (Aitkin, 1998, p. 123) Latchem and Hanna (2001c) also highlighted that educational leaders should see themselves as educators who are capable of enabling other team members to acquire and exercise the leadership skills. Drawing on these view points, educational leaders can only achieve real and lasting commitment to change by adopting more of transformational leadership approach and less transactional leadership approach. As noted by Sir John Daniel: “I believe that a leader should spend more time crating meaning for people than making decisions for them.” (Daniel, 2001. p. 143)

Theories for emergent leadership and other leaderships based on the contingency theory have shared a common assumption that there is no single correct leadership for all contexts and the best leadership is defined by external factors such as the characteristics of the subordinators, the type of work and the stress level in the organization. This situational perspective for adopting leadership has influenced almost all modern theories of leadership (Envision Software, Inc., 2011 Jan. 21) including transformational leadership. However, emergent leadership and other styles of leadership based on contingency theory focus more on the leader’s ability to diagnose the competence and commitment of the subordinators and respond accordingly (Latchem & Hanna, 2001b) without stressing the importance of internal factors such as ideal, vision, mission, value, or motivation and individualized concerns. An important constituent of educational leadership is missing from the leaderships with situational perspective.

The same limitation exists in distributed leadership. Distributed leadership approach was developed around four central ideas – leadership tasks and functions, task-enactment, social distribution of task-enactment, and situational distribution of task-enactment (Spillane, 2004). The main examination of distributed leadership is its practice distributed over leaders, followers and their situation and incorporates the activities of multiple groups of individuals.” (Spillane, 2004) The ideal influence of the leadership has not been brought to the up front of the theory.

Another theory of leadership that was introduced lately is that of complexity leadership theory. Complexity leadership theory considers leadership to be a system function that enables adaptive action in complex adaptive systems. This theory could be powerful in describing the leadership occurs in informal learning environment such as self-organized learning communities and open learning. It is not the intension of complexity leadership theory to describe the leadership in formal learning in official academic institutions that has official internal and external hierarchies on which this paper focuses.

This paper argues that transformational leadership is more suitable for educational institutions than the other leadership theories on the basis of three viewpoints: (1) the moral foundation of transformational leadership; (2) proven validity from previous studies; and (3) evidences from the practices of the educational leaders. I will elaborate these three viewpoints in the following paragraphs.

The underlying philosophy for participating in education, either as an educator or a student, is the assumption that the capability of an individual is not solely inherent - individual has the ability to learn. Through education, the abilities of an individual will grow. The higher the abilities grow, the better the choices an individual can make. An individual can obtain greater power of control over one’s own future through education. This is the belief that makes education worthwhile. The approach of transformational leadership takes the assumption that people can and are willing to learn. Leaders are therefore should communicate the values and visions with their subordinators and intellectually stimulate their motivation so that the latter become willing to align self-interests with the organization’s interests, internalize its values, and commit to the delivery of the missions. In addition, transformational leadership theory highlights the necessity for the moral character of leaders and their concerns for self and others, the morality of the processes of social ethical choices and action in which the leaders and followers engage and collectively pursue (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). These are all essential qualities for leading educational institutions.

Transformational leaders, in contrast to purely charismatic leaders who lead followers by invoking blind obedience, discourage followers and facilitate the followers to become leaders. When individuals have increased their intelligence and decision-making ability, they have also increased their capability for taking actions to advance the quality of the group. Moreover, when the individuals have more power of control, the morality of process would be advanced and further support the distributive justice that specify what individuals owe each other, what individuals owe to the group and what groups owe to individuals. It follows that everyone has a kind of moral standing and the interests of at least a minimum of altruism to help stakeholders to recognize the obvious benefits in fulfilling their goals. For this, transformational leadership is needed in educational institution on which a moral foundation of legitimate values must rest.

Transformational leadership style as a construct has been examined by several scholars (Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1999; Bass, 1995, 1999; Bass, Avolio & Goodheim, 1987; Bono & Judge, 2004; Ling, Simsek, Lubatkin, & Veiga, 2008; Lowe, et al., 1996; Sosik, Avolio, & Kahai, 1997). Several questionnaires have been used to measure the validity of different leadership styles, including transformational leadership, such as the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ), and the Transformational Leadership Questionnaire (TLQ). In the meta-analytic review of the 39 MLQ literatures, Lowe et al. (1996) reported a wide range of observed validity coefficient between the five scales of the MLQ and various measures of leadership effectiveness. Coefficients for the association between leadership style and effectiveness were higher for transformational scales than for transactional scales and a positive effect existed across studies between transformational leadership and effectiveness. In addition, the study of Lowe et al. reported that transformational leadership behaviors were more commonly observed in public organizations than in private ones. No difference in the pattern of relationships between MLQ scales and effectiveness were observed in comparison to studies of high level and low level leaders. Among all the criteria, charisma, the most commonly associated with a generalized impression of transformational leadership, showed the strongest association with effectiveness.

Ling et al. (2008) found that transformational CEO plays an important role in promoting corporate entrepreneurship and shaping the character of top management team in terms of behavioral integration (quality and completeness of decision making), decentralization of responsibilities, risk-taking propensity, and long-term compensation.

In additional to studies on construct validity, experts and leaders in education have expressed positive supports for the adoption of transformational leadership. President of UNESO-COL (Commonwealth of Learning) - Sir John Daniel, former Vice President of Athabasca University (the OU) and the Vice-Chancellor of the UK Open University, described his leadership approaches as: “acted by example to create goals implicitly”; “demonstrated the approach and style”; “interpret values”; “openness and flexibility”; “encouraged those who were most ambitious for the OU”; and “looked for commitment to the values, energy, enthusiasm, loyalty and credibility across the institution” (Daniel, 2001, in Latchem & Hanna (Eds.), pp. 143-146. Stress added by the author). The verbs he used revealed his notion for transformational leadership. Hanna (2001), former Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Extension in the US, shared his primary tasks for leading the institution including “provide a more supportive environment”; “provide opportunities” for faculty and staff (p. 168); “broad-based training and development opportunities for faculty”; and “develop a climate of communication, interaction, and cross-programme and division activities” (p. 170). He suggested that leaders should believe in the goals and purposes that transcend individuals: “Without ideals and purposes, actions are meaningless.” (p. 172) Sir John Daniel and Hanna’s leadership practices value the transformational approach.

Conclusions

It is important for educational leaders to lead the organization not based on a give-and-take relationship, but on the leaders’ personality, traits, intelligence, and ability to make a change through being the moral exemplars of working toward the good of the team or organization as well as constantly committing to shared visions and goals. The concept of transformational leadership is a compelling model for education leaders today (Beaudoin, 2007). Although researchers have cautioned that the transformational leadership approach might not always be the best for every situation (Bass, 1999) and that educational leaders should avoid committing to any particular leadership style (Beaudoin, 2007), this paper argues that leaders of formal educational institutions need to be more transformational and less transactional to be able to remain effective in discharging their leadership responsibilities.

 

Aitkin, D. (1998). What Do Vice-Chancellors Do? Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 20(2), 117-128. doi:10.1080/1360080980200201  

Avolio, B. J., Bass, B. M., & Jung, D. I. (1999). Re-Examining the Components of Transformational and Transactional Leadership Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 72(4), 441-462.  

Bass, B. M. (1995). Theory of Transformational Leadership Redux. The Leadership Quarterly, 6(4), 463-478. doi:10.1016/1048-9843(95)90021-7  

Bass, B. M. (1999). Two Decades of Research and Development in Transformational Leadership. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 8(1), 9-32. doi:10.1080/135943299398410  

Bass, B. M., Avolio, B. J., & Goodheim, L. (1987). Biography and the Assessment of Transformational Leadership at the World-Class Level. Journal of Management, 13(1), 7 -19. doi:10.1177/014920638701300102  

Bass, B. M., & Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, Character, and Authentic Transformational Leadership Behavior. The Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 181-217. doi:10.1016/S1048-9843(99)00016-8  

Beaudoin, M. F. (2007). Institutional Leadership. In Handbook of Distance Education (pp. 391-402). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associations.  

Bono, J. E., & Judge, T. A. (2004). Personality and Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(5), 901-910. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.89.5.901  

Burns, J.M, (1978), Leadership, New York, N.Y.: Harper and Raw Publishers.

Daniel, J. (2001). The UK Open University: Managing Success and Leading Change in a Mega-University. In Leadership for 21st Century Learning: Global Perspectives from International Experts (pp. 139-146). New York, NY: Routledge.  

Envision Software, Inc. (2011, Jan. 21). Contingency Leadership. Envision. Retrieved from http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/Contingency_Leadership_Theory.html

Hanna, D. E. (2001). University of Wisconsin-Extension: Exercising Leadership in Complex Organizations. In Leadership for 21st Century Learning: Global Perspectives from International Experts (pp. 167-175). New York, NY: Routledge.  

Latchem, C., & Hanna, D. E. (2001a). Changes, Challenges and Choices. In Colin Latchem & Donald E. Hanna (Eds.) Leadership for 21st Century Learning: Global Perspectives from Educational Innovators, (pp. 15-26). New York, NY: Routledge.  

Latchem, C., & Hanna, D. E. (2001b). Leadership in Open and Flexible Learning. In Colin Latchem & Donald E. Hanna (Eds.) Leadership for 21st Century Learning: Global Perspectives from Educational Innovators, (pp. 53-62). New York, NY: Routledge.  

Latchem, C., & Hanna, D. E. (2001c). Lessons for the Future. In Leadership for 21st Century Learning: Global Perspectives from Educational Innovators, In Colin Latchem & Donald E. Hanna (Eds.) (pp. 235-240). New York, NY: Routledge.  

Ling, Y., Simsek, Z., Lubatkin, M. H., & Veiga, J. F. (2008). Transformational Leadership's Role in Promoting Corporate Entrepreneurship: Examining the CEO-TMT Interface. Academy of Management Journal, 51(3), 557–576.  

Lowe, K. B., Kroeck, K. G., & Sivasubramaniam, N. (1996). Effectiveness Correlates of Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of the MLQ Literature. The Leadership Quarterly, 7(3), 385-415. doi:10.1016/S1048-9843(96)90027-2  

Sosik, J. J., Avolio, B. J., & Kahai, S. S. (1997). Effects of leadership style and anonymity on group potency and effectiveness in a group decision support system environment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(1), 89-103. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.82.1.89  

Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2004). Towards a Theory of Leadership Practice: A Distributed Perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1), 3-34. doi:10.1080/0022027032000106726