Transformative leadership: can it be taught?

Transformation Leadership: Nature vs Nurture

Transformational Leadership

Transformational Leadership: The Nature vs. Nurture Debate

Transformational Leadership: The Nature vs. Nurture Debate

Spain's famous football club, Real Madrid, has a history of changing managers as often as players change their socks (Clegg, 2010). The hope that this pattern would end with the hiring of the Portuguese manager, Jose Mourinho, was well deserved, given the great deal of respect he has earned among footballers across Europe and in the Americas. Aside from being exacting and detail oriented, Mourinho is the epitome of a transformational leader. Many experts believed that Mourinho would be the best person for reining in the massive millionaire egos on the team, thereby improving the team's performance on and off the field. Leadership experts equated the challenges Mourinho was facing with those any executive would face in a boardroom.

According to Clegg (2010), Mourinho is more manager than leader because he is willing to roll up his sleeves and get his hands 'dirty' with the day-to-day tasks required to keep an organization running. Another way to view Mourinho's approach to management is that he judges his own performance based on the performance of the sports club. A case in point was provided when Real Madrid arrived in Benfica, the home of a bitter rival. Rather than subject the entire team to the stadium's animosity, Mourinho entered the stadium and stood alone on the field until the crowd had vented their hostility. After the booing subsided the Real Madrid players entered the stadium and probably played better as a result. Another strategy Mourinho has employed includes sending players motivational memos and emails, a habit that contrasts with the more common strategy of punishing employees for poor performance. At all times Mourinho exudes confidence and emphasizes the importance of placing the team before individual agendas.

Mourinho completed an undergraduate degree in sports science in Lisbon, where he claims he developed an appreciation for an academic/scientific approach to sports management (Clegg, 2010). Mourinho's exceptional managerial talents would make any aspiring football manager wonder if transformational leaders are the product of nature or nurture. If nurture does play a role, then it become essential to identify the attributes of transformational leadership which can be taught in an academic setting. Accordingly, this report will examine the transformation leadership model and any known or suspected contributions from nature and nurture. This exploration should help identify which attributes can be taught.

History of Transformation Leadership as a Model

Black and Porter believed that the minimum qualification of any leader is the ability to convince followers to ignore individual agendas for the good of the organization (as cited in Konorti, 2012, p. 165). Other attributes that have been proposed to be important include maintaining high standards for motivation and empowering employees. Transformational leadership, however, transcends the basic skills of management by being inspirational, charismatic, intellectual, and individualized (Konorti, 2012, p. 166). The term "transformational leadership" was first mentioned in the book Rebel Leadership: Commitment and Charisma in a Revolutionary Process, which was written by J.V. Downton and published in 1973 ("The Transformational Leadership Report," 2007). In the book Leadership, published in 1978, James MacGregor Burns applied the term 'transformational leadership' to politicians and defined it as a process through which leaders and followers are able to empower each other to attain higher levels of morality and motivation. Short-term interests are therefore set aside in the interest of achieving long-term organizational goals.

Abraham Maslow's Theory of Human Needs was an important influence in Burn's approach to leadership ("The Transformational Leadership Report," 2007). Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs and at the bottom of this hierarchy were physiological needs, such as food, water, shelter, and sleep. Personal safety was the next highest level in Maslow's hierarchy, which included physical, financial, family, and moral security. The next level was social connectedness with family, friends, and community. The level immediately above social connectedness was esteem, consisting of self-esteem, confidence, achievement, and the respect of others. Topping the hierarchy was self-actualization, which was defined as engaging in creative, spontaneous, intellectual, equitable, open-minded, and moral activities. The transition from one level up to the next is generally assumed to depend on fulfillment of more basic needs first.

The influence of Maslow's hierarchy of needs can be seen in Burns' belief that employee performance is determined to a large extent by whether more basic needs have been fulfilled ("The Transformational Leadership Report," 2007). For example, an employee who is worried about the quality of daycare staff will not perform optimally in the workplace. This worry would fit within the second level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs because it concerns family safety. Transformational leaders, on the other hand, should be operating at the highest levels of the hierarchy, with ample self-esteem and self-actualization. Burns emphasized values, purpose, and meaning in defining transformational leaders and the goal of consciousness-raising. A transformational leader would therefore help employees gain a solid grasp of their true needs and give these needs meaning, thereby motivating employees to act decisively and effectively and increasing organizational performance.

One of Burns' students, Bernard Bass, formulated a different definition of transformational leadership ("The Transformational Leadership Report," 2007). Instead of emphasizing self-actualization, Bass believed transformational leadership is essentially amoral and focused on helping employees understand the importance of a given task to the organization and the organization's goals. Eventually, both Burns and Bass contributed to what has been called the transformational leadership model, which is discussed next.

Transformational Leadership Model

The basic transformational leadership model proposed by Burns and brought to light by Bass consists of four traits: "(1) charisma, (2) inspiration, (3) intellectual stimulation, and (4) individualized consideration" (as cited in Konorti, 2012, p. 166). Charisma has been suggested to be important for creating a strong organizational culture by helping managers and employees to share a common vision. The ability to create this vision is another trait some have attributed to transformational leadership (Konorti, 2012). Inspiration can come in the form of high expectations, at both the individual and organizational level. Transformational leaders also inspire by assigning meaning and purpose to daily tasks in a way that is easily understood by all employees. Intellectual stimulation can be encouraged by rewarding creative, intellectual solutions to old problems. Inspirational leaders encourage all employees to assume a stake in organizational performance by giving individuals personal attention. This can come in the form of delegated assignments that could lead to professional and personal growth. A large number of other traits have been added to the model over the years since, including pragmatism, self-confidence, nurturance, personal efficiency, honesty, and integrity.

Garman and colleagues (2003) reviewed the transformational model proposed by Bass in 1985, which helped define this model by contrasting it with transactional leadership. Instead of providing a shared vision and showing employees the value of day-to-day tasks to organizational goals, transactional leaders appeal to the self-interests of individuals in order to keep the day-to-day grind of operations running. Accordingly, the motivational strategies employed by transactional leaders depend on punishment and reward. Management-by-exception is also common among transactional leaders, which is a management approach where only those issues requiring immediate decisions are brought to the attention of a supervisor. All other issues are ignored by managers. Transformational leaders, on the other hand, focus the attention of employees on the immediate needs of customers through a motivational strategy composed of values, inspiration, intellectual soundness, and individual attention.

One of the most recent revisions of the transformative leadership model was authored by Eli Konorti (2012) and it is based on only three traits: wisdom, courage, and vision. Konorti (2012) fails to present an unambiguous definition of wisdom, but suggests that wisdom depends on knowledge and the ability to use this knowledge to make practical decisions. In other words, a wise person will be knowledgeable, but a knowledgeable person may not be wise. Leaders who have the courage to reinvent their organization and make important decisions in the face of uncertainty are individuals most likely to have the attributes of transformative leaders. A vision creates an intellectual framework upon which employee confidence in organizational goals can be built. Among the three traits in Konorti's (2012) model only vision has significant empirical support in relation to management success.

Many of the traits that have been associated with transformational leadership are personality traits, such as charisma, pragmatism, and honesty. Personality traits are believed to be significantly influenced by heritable factors and therefore relatively stable over time (Hopwood et al., 2011). However, environmental factors can still influence the expression of personality traits over time. What follows is a discussion of transformational leadership and whether the attributes defining this managerial style can be learned.

Nature, Nurture and Leadership

Caldwell and colleagues (2012) cite the cynicism most employees direct toward management as justification for increasing the prevalence of the transformative leadership model in the business community. They base this rationale on the heavy emphasis Burns' placed on morality in his model. Some of the data Caldwell and colleagues (2012) mentions include the findings from a study showing 7% of employees believe there is good agreement between what senior managers say and do. The same study found 25% of employees believed they could trust senior management to make the right decision in the face of uncertainty. Caldwell and colleagues (2012) blamed the low levels of trust on the continued reliance in the business community on old and outdated models of leadership. As a result, employees and society as a whole views business leaders and the organizations they run as untrustworthy. If trust is essential to employee performance then the business leaders have a lot of room for improvement.

Caldwell and colleagues (2012) suggest that one solution would be to foster the growth and acceptance of the transformative leadership model within the business community. This implies, of course, that transformative leadership skills can be taught to most managers; however, empirical support for the role of nurture in transformational leadership training is lacking. Recent research into the absolute stability of traits during the transition into adulthood (ages 16 to 29) has revealed that broad personality traits are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Negative emotional temperament (NEM) declined with increasing age, while constraint increased, with the greatest increase occurring at younger ages. By contrast, positive emotional temperament (PEM) increased more modestly. The authors of this study attributed the difference in absolute stability to the adaptive role played by NEM and constraint traits, whereas PEM traits tend to solidify during late adolescence and early adulthood. Differential or rank-order personality trait stability, by comparison, increased across the board with increasing age.

The data gathered by Caldwell and colleagues (2012) led them to conclude that the life-span perspective had the strongest support. The life-span perspective holds that personality changes are largely driven by social or environmental forces. A competing theory, the maturation perspective, proposes instead that personality change and stability is primarily determined by genetic factors. The personality traits of twins enrolled in the study, while providing significant support for genetic influence also revealed that non-shared factors (environmental) had a significant impact on the trait stability and the levels of trait expression. The traits most affected by environmental factors were NEM, if compared to constraint. Caldwell et al. (2012) concluded that the insensitivity of constraint traits to environmental factors during this period of human development is likely due to the late development of the frontal cortex. Genetic factors therefore play a greater role in constraint traits, such as risk-taking propensity, during this period of development.

Overall, the findings of Caldwell et al. (2012) reveal that personality traits can be influenced to some extent by the environment, which in turn suggest that transformative leadership could be taught to a percentage of managers. Their findings also suggest that transformative leadership programs would probably be most successful if enrolled students were still young adults. Konorti (2012) wholeheartedly supports the theory that transformative leadership can be taught, but with qualifications. Using his model, persons without courage, wisdom, and vision cannot become transformational leaders; however, if one or two of these traits are already present then through hard work becoming a transformational leader would be possible. Konorti (2012) therefore implies the existence of personality trait prerequisites for becoming a transformational leader.

Larsson and colleagues (2003) agree with the basic premise presented by Konorti (2012) and have proposed the existence of basic prerequisites for managers wishing to become transformational leaders. Larsson et al. (2003) based their model on Bass's transformational leadership model, but renamed it developmental leadership because the term 'transformational' does not translate well into Swedish. Leadership qualities are divided into two broad categories: (1) basic prerequisites and (2) desirable competencies. In contrast to Konorti (2012), however, the basic prerequisites in their developmental/transformational leadership model represents a continuum of traits. In other words, the better prepared a leadership candidate is in relation to basic prerequisites the greater the chances of acquiring desirable competencies. Larsson and colleagues (2003) caution any candidates who may excel in both categories that success will still depend on the environmental factors encountered.

The basic prerequisites mentioned by Larsson et al. (2003) are good health, intelligence, creativity, personality, and view-of-life. The desirable competencies are task-related, management-related, social, and stress management skills. Task-related competencies are based on an individual's knowledge and skills in accomplishing a task, while management-related competencies encompass the ability to make and enforce rules, plan, organize, coordinate organizational activities, prioritize, make decisions, and follow-up on tasks. Other skills include the ability to make objective evaluations of the organization from internal and external perspectives and how external events might impact operations. Social competencies include the ability to build trust, provide individualized attention, communicate effectively, and be fair and equitable.

The efficacy of leadership development programs claiming to teach the skills necessary to become a transformative leader has rarely, if ever, been tested empirically. This fact has not prevented a number of business schools from offering certification in transformative leadership. At Georgetown University, for example, a certificate in transformative leadership is offered for completing competency courses, including courses in mindfulness, coaching, and the art of reframing problems (Institute for Transformational Leadership, 2014). This lack of empirical support, however, has begun to change. In a recent study, researchers in Sweden compared leadership outcomes for managers attending a conventional leadership development program or an art-based leadership program (Romanowska, Larsson, & Theorell, 2014). The average age of the managers in both groups was 48, with an equal number of men and women. Both groups attended a 2-day leadership development program, followed by 12, 3-hour classes over the course of 10 months in either the conventional or art-based program. The art-based program consisted of creative writing, performance art, and music, while the conventional program focused on teaching leadership skills using a didactic and practicum approach. The outcome measures were based on the amount of agreement between manager self-ratings and subordinate ratings.