Leadership and change Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Leadership and change - Essay Example Transformational leaders have the capability to encourage others, supporting their followers to respect and trust them. Companies require leaders who are capable of coping with this massive change, maintain day to day functions, and offer a competitive gain even at the time of downsizing. Transformational leaders can motivate and encourage their followers, uniting them for a combined cause, causing better productivity, performance, as well as job significance. The second section - Literature Review - will highlight the theories and concepts of transformational leadership. Third section will explain why transformational leadership is the appropriate approach to adopt at the time of downsizing. Fourth section will discuss the limitations of this leadership approach. Fifth section will reflect on the needs to develop the appropriate leadership skills, and sixth chapter will conclude the paper by providing the summary of the findings. The theory of transformational leadership has its origins with leadership scholar James MacGregor (Bass & Riggio, 2012). He presented the preliminary framework for the theory of transformational leadership by recognizing what he believed two opposed aspects - transactional leadership and transformational leadership (Bass & Riggio, 2012, p. 102). In transactional leadership, leaders keep a rapport with their team as a series of â€Å"exchanges or bargains† (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013, p. 82) to satisfy existing requirements. Transformational leadership bypasses the conventional form of exchanging incentives and attains preferred performance by intellectually motivating, and encouraging followers to go beyond their self-interests for a better mutual objective. Leadership has exceeded beyond the basis of simplifying the necessary performance of staff to boost the value of the productivity. Kearney & Gebert (2009) significantly developed