Transformational leadership and emotional intelligence in organizational change management

¶ … Leaders Can Effectively Manage Change in an Organization

It has often been said that a manager is what one does and a leader is who one is. The differences between management and leadership transcend difference sin perception of how an organization and emanate from how a management professional chooses to gain support and cooperation in the attainment of objectives. Managers often are given the task of maintaining the status quo and minimizing variation in performance over time. Leaders are by definition the visionaries of an organization that set a compelling long-term goal or objective and then orchestrate an enterprise to their achievement. Implicit in this definition of a leader is also the ability to discern strategies issues, opportunities and risks, and also clearly communicate an organizations' strategy to the departmental or work unit level. Most of all, a leader can infuse any organization with a strong sense of purpose, energy and enthusiasm for the vision, so much so that they often show they are more than willing to sacrifice in its attainment.

All of the factors may sound exceptionally challenging to attain, yet the best leaders also have an exceptional level of humility and honesty with their subordinates and peers, which further adds to their credibility. The currency the best leaders trade in is trust (Douglas, Zivnuska, 2008). To get the most possible they must strive to be continually authentic, transparent and willing to be very clear about the progress towards objectives and the overarching vision they're committed to. Managers can often rely on their situational, referent or position power defined only by the structural aspects of the organization they are part of. Not so for a leader; they must continually earn trust and grow it if they are to succeed in defining and achieving the overarching vision of their organizations (Douglas, Zivnuska, 2008). The most effective leaders also have the ability to sacrifice continually for the pursuit of a challenging vision, not as martyrs for the cause but as a means to underscore their exceptional level of commitment to the plan or objective. In addition to addressing the visionary aspects of leadership in this analysis, defining transformational leadership and showing how critical it is for Emotional Intelligence (EI) to be engrained in its continual maturation is critical (Cheung, Wong, 2011). The ability of a leader to sustain and continually grow support for a challenging or even controversial vision is a direct result of how well they are managing the transformational aspects of leadership in conjunction with their innate and learned aspects of Emotional Intelligence (EI) (Cavazotte, Moreno, Hickmann, 2012). Empirical studies of leadership indicate that when a strong foundation of transformational leadership is built on using EI strategies and situational intelligence, entire teams are more likely to attain their most challenging goals (Cavazotte, Moreno, Hickmann, 2012). This is because the combining of transformational leadership skills and EI requires an intensive level of cross-functional team building and support. This is critically important for creating a highly effective change management strategy an organization can believe in, and invest their valuable time and resources to achieve. For the transformational leader the challenge then is to continually seek new approaches to growing their EI skill set in the context of cross-functional leadership (Cheung, Wong, 2011). Exceptional leaders are able to combine all of these factors and lead organizations to great results.

Why Leadership Is Critical For Organizational Progress

Of the myriad of factors that can determine the success or failure of an enterprise, leadership is by far the most critical as it acts as a galvanizing across every department, division and employee in an organization. Being able to successfully navigate the myriad of distractions, threats and economic turbulence requires a leader who can quickly interpret conditions and react accordingly. Excellent leaders are able to rely on a strong foundation of EI and create a shared sense of accountability and results, energizing their teams to attain more than a typical manager would be able to (Purvanova, Bono, 2009). It's because these leaders have the ability to not only equip their teams with the tactile, physical elements they need, they give them confidence and a strong sense of ownership when it comes to results as well.

Theorists Winston and Patterson (2006) have stated in their research that a leader "selects, equips, trains, and influences one or more follower(s) who have diverse gifts, abilities, and skills and focuses the follower(s) to the organization's mission and objectives causing the follower(s) to willingly and enthusiastically expend spiritual, emotional, and physical energy in a concerted coordinated effort to achieve the organizational mission and objectives." The theorists have added that leaders also are capable of defining challenging visions and objectives for their organizations while also ensuring that they are designed to allow for everyone to have a sense of ownership and contribution to their attainment. This is a critically important of building a strong leadership foundation as it concentrates on creating a strong sense of purpose with every person on the team. The best leaders also have the ability to create a highly effective paradigm of mastery and autonomy in the context of their vision for an organization and the roadmap they produce to guide the organization to its fulfillment. What these leaders do is combine autonomy, mastery and purpose into a framework that leads to exceptional commitment on the part of employees who internalize the goals they need to achieve. This puts the vision's goals and their own in perfect alignment and leads to a passion fro performance that cannot be enforced from outside; it must emanate from who an employee is. Great leaders use EI skills to understand how best to use autonomy, mastery and purpose to fuel employees and entire teams to challenging goals and objectives, despite challenging odds and difficult economic conditions. Steve Jobs and the birth of Apple Computer is a case in point as is the turn-around of General Electric under Jack Welch. These leaders combined EI skills and the ability to drive autonomy, mastery and purpose deep into their organizations while defining a compelling vision that drives rapid change.

The four attributes of transformational leadership include individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and idealized influence. These four aspects of transformational leadership are unified together by a leader's EI skills and ability to also manage and lead cross-functional teams effectively. What EI skills also provide leaders in this regard is the ability to situationally assess which of these four aspects of transformational leadership skills are most appropriate for a given situation and subordinate. Excellent leaders balance each of these across their teams, ensuring the motivating aspects of a vision and most importantly, the individual contributions of team members deliver results. The orchestration of these factors is what separates a transformational leader from a manager, as the latter would be more focused purely on the aspects of managing to reduce variance in operations while ensuring the status quo (Purvanova, Bono, 2009).

Individualized consideration, the first of four factors integral to transformational leadership, are exemplified by empathy, continual support and the willingness to keep communication open with subordinates from across the entire organization. Excellent leaders have the ability to manage expectations and keep communication lines open while infusing a strong sense of vision ownership and purpose with very member of a team, regardless of their title or location on an organization chart. The need for creating a high level of intrinsic motivation is key for any challenging vision to be accomplished; transformational leaders are adept at infusing individualized consideration into every interaction to ensure continued belief in and support for their vision. This is the aspect of leadership that also concentrates on creating a very broad base of support for the initiative or vision they are attempting to lead their organizations to achieve. The founders of Hewlett-Packard were able to transform their start-up into a formidable engineering company by using this technique of individualized consideration to gain insight and recommendations from their best designers. Both founders chose to create a highly egalitarian corporate culture that gave each employee a highly individualized level of consideration of their new product ideas and recommendations for new products. More recently Google has also initiated this type approach to ensuring a high degree of individualized consideration with its Rule of 20% (Machlis, 2009). This has also allowed Google to generate a much higher level of task ownership and further fueled autonomy, mastery and purpose throughout its workforce. These three factors have consistently proven to be essential for leading to long-term motivation. Google's Rule of 20% is today responsible for 57% of revenues, a strong testament of the value of this type of program for initiating and continually strengthening individualized consideration (Machlis, 2009). The second factor essential to transformational leadership is intellectual stimulation. This refers to the ability of leaders to encourage and continually encourage creativity and continually support learning efforts on the part of employees. This is also a critical factor in ensuring long-term motivation to continually learn and seek professional development. In highly engineering-centric cultures including Google, this is an essential attribute of leadership. Managers at Google are given 360-degree performance reviews every year. Their subordinates also participate in these reviews, and rate their leadership skills specifically in the area of leading professional development efforts. As intellectual stimulation is such a core aspect of the company's culture, managers are often evaluated on this aspect of their performance alone. Google's competitors and comparable companies in high technology re also taking a comparable approach to this dimension of transformational leadership as well.

The third attribute of transformational leaders is inspirational motivation. This is the most visible attribute of a leader as it is often discussed by the media and internally within companies. This is the one attribute of transformational leadership that many theorists cite as critical for charismatic leadership to also emerge as well. The best leaders are able to bring their own unique style of inspirational motivation to their organizations, often infusing a unique identity to this aspect of their leadership style. Some of the most effective leaders have continually relied on showing how committed they are to a vision or mission, further bringing their entire teams along in the process. They model the behavior and attitudes that are essential for the entire teams to succeed.

The fourth attribute of transformational leaders is idealized influence. When leaders are role models and provide ample evidence of how committed they are to a goal or objective, combined with consistency of focus and direction, idealized influence is created. This is also a component of charisma for many leaders as they seek to continually fuel the passion for a vision they have. The best leaders have the ability to interpret situations and challenging conditions both within and outside an organization and use idealized influence to navigate their teams through them. This fourth aspect of transformational leadership also relies heavily on the EI skills of a leader to accurately assess when this aspect of their leadership skill needs to be used (Piel, 2008). For many leaders who are considered transformational based on their accomplishments, this is a foundational element of their leadership styles. It is what many of the best leaders have consistently used to continually earn and keep trust while also increasing a high level of autonomy, mastery and purpose into their teams. And those three elements in turn fuel long-term motivation to continually improve over time. Excellent leaders balance idealized influence as part of their unique leadership style.

Leading Organizational Transformation Through Trust

One of the resonating findings from the literature review completed for this analysis is how precious trust is as a catalyst of organizational change (Douglas, Zivnuska, 2008). Without trust in a leader, even the most brilliant plan cannot succeed. The many mergers, acquisitions and layoffs that have occurred and will continue to reshape entire industries require leaders to define more challenging, often daring visions of the future if their companies are to survive. Every employee realizes this who studies their specific industry, as does every manager and certainly every CEO. To gain buy-in for programs and initiatives, leaders must continually seek to reinforce the authenticity, transparency and trust they have within their organizations and across the broad, often highly varied base of stakeholders they must also work with. All of these actions, which great leaders orchestrate so well so they all align perfectly to their vision, further reinforce and strength the trust others have in them. The finding that trust is the currency that makes lasting organizational transformations possible (Douglas, Zivnuska, 2008) is seen in empirical studies of how Google and other high technology companies rapidly move through new product development and quickly translate knowledge into customer-driven products and services. The lightening fast pace of Google's development organization is attributed to the high level of transparency and trust throughout the organization, even if it means negative feedback has to be given at times. This keeps the entire culture open and honest, and arguments with regard to new products are often lengthy and very complex, with their culture of continuous improvement and testing dominating many of the decision processes. Not all organizational cultures are as intense as Google is, yet many have their unique attributes and characteristics. This is why trust is such a critically important attribute for any leader to cultivate and continually provide over time.

Leading organizational transformation through trust must also keep transactional leadership in its place as well. There are a myriad of studies that show how powerful transactional leadership is in the context of attaining short-term strategies (Burke, Sims, Lazzara, Salas, 2007). Between the short-term gains inherent in using transactional leadership approaches and the long-term visionary strategies of the best transformational leaders, there is a balance many leaders are able to maintain over time, using a situational leadership approach to meld these two strategies (Douglas, Zivnuska, 2008). This is also an area that researchers have seen the value of EI as a component of transformational leadership as well. EI is essential for determining which aspects of transactional vs. transformational leadership need to be used in a given situation. The highest-performing leaders have the innate ability to determine which transactional vs. transformational approach needs to be used, how, and when. This EI-based intelligence is essential for their continual support of a strong corporate vision everyone identifies with and supports. It is also the foundation for ensuring the vision of a transformational leader gets translated into reality, and continually gets reinforced through the actions of the organization. For change to be made permanent there needs to be a continual focus melding the best possible transactional and transformational leadership styles for the needs of employees, teams and stakeholders over time (Fitzgerald, Schutte, 2010) (Leban, Zulauf, 2004).

Conclusion

The intent of this study of leadership has been to show how leaders can successfully transform their organizations using a compelling vision of the future combined with the transformational, EI and transactional skill sets mentioned in this analysis (Leban, Zulauf, 2004). Given the turbulent pace of change in global economies coupled with the high level of uncertainty regarding how any given industry will change as a result, leaders must continually strive to stay transparent and trustworthy over time. Trust really is the greatest asset there is; it is essential for any leader to continually make progress towards the vision they are attempting to accomplish.

This analysis has also shown how critical it is to continually strive to manage the strategies issues, opportunities and risks of significant change in an organization as well.

What this analysis has also shown is that the core skill sets of transformational leadership are essential if the strategies issues, opportunities and risk facing an enterprise are going to be kept in context and managed well. The most effective leaders are able to create a strong, unified vision that galvanizes entire organizations to the accomplishment of a common goal or objective. The techniques and concepts provided in this analysis show how critical it is for the four foundational elements of transformational leadership to be present in any leader's skill set. The unifying aspects of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and the continual development of strong alliances and shared responsibilities with other leaders throughout the organization is critical for making any vision a realty that continually contributes to the performance of the enterprise. These factors taken together also illustrate very clearly how important the balancing of leadership skill sets are and how critical the supporting frameworks mentioned in this analysis also are for a long-term vision to be achieved. The key to making these many aspects of leadership effective is trust, which must be earned by leaders if they are to excel at their roles in organization.