As leaders, we can be transactional and transformational.
And there are huge differences between the two of them.
But what are their differences?
We can say that transactional leaders model the appropriate attitudes
and behaviors to implement a task.
These leaders do not get more than what they set out to do.
Transformational leaders set the pace for the extra mile,
and at the same time, they help their team members
to embrace the organization's goals and values, and make them pursue
those values as if they were their own.
This kind of leaders is able to succeed in having all the team members
understanding and embracing that vision in a very passionate way,
making them move in the leader's direction,
and getting them to give more than what they were asked for.
By doing this, transformational leaders get more
than what they are expected to achieve.
The idea behind transformational leadership is to inspire the team,
to make them wish to go boldly where no one of them has gone before,
beyond their own interest, to look for the organization welfare.
As stated by Bernard M. Bass in 1985: “The attention of leadership has shifted
from traditional or transactional models to a new style of leadership
with an emphasis on transformational leadership.”
Now let's see both of them in more detail.