Introduction

My leadership quiz highlights my leadership style as transformational. In the quiz, it was found that I have the following strengths: self-confidence, positive attitude, emotional intelligence, compelling vision, ability to motivate people, and being a good role model. This paper will examine these traits, and my weaknesses, against the strengths and weaknesses of the prototypical transformational leader, and seek to establish ways in which I can deal with my weaknesses in order to make myself a better leader.

Strengths of Transformational Leaders

Y Culture is a consulting firm that has written about transformational leadership. Y Culture (2018) notes that among the characteristics of transformational leaders are self-management, ability to take risks, the ability to make difficult decisions, inspirational, adaptability, proactive nature and leadership with vision.

When we look at these strengths versus my own, there are definitely some synergies. First is vision – a transformational leader must have vision for the future, something that is different from simply maintaining the status quo. Furthermore, the transformational leader is inspirational; on my quiz it came up with motivational, but those are much the same. In other words, an effective transformational leader is someone who has vision, and the ability to motivate and inspire others to share that vision and pursue it.

There are also some differences with respect to my quiz outcomes, however. In particular, taking the right risks and making difficult decisions. These were not highlighted as among my weaknesses, but neither are they strengths, and yet they are characteristics of transformational leaders. In essence, these are attributes that I should cultivate in order to improve my

transformational leadership capabilities.

Proactiveness and adaptability are also cited. Again, these are not things that were identified as strengths of mine. It is one thing to have good vision, but these traits suggest the creation of a link between having vision and putting that vision into action. A vision is great, but only if you act on it. If you are not adaptable to new realities, you may not be proactive, and your vision will be a plant that does not bear fruit. So it is important to consider these traits also as things that I need to add to my list of strengths in order to be the most effective transformational leader possible.

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The transformational leader must have the courage to leap into the unknown. But there is more to it than that. The point about "knowing your people' is related to my emotional intelligence, for example. It means that when you are motivating people to join you, you also need to know that they are the right people. Further, the point about setting a company standard closely aligns with me being a good role model. Part of inspiring people is being the sort of person that they want to be, and being a great role model is exactly how that can be accomplished.

Weaknesses

My quiz noted a couple of key weaknesses, those being managing performance effectively, and providing support and stimulation. These are two traits that are more closely associated with transactional leadership. However, it is worth remembering that these are also things that transformational leaders need in order to actually execute that big, bold vision. If your team cannot perform the actual, grinding tasks that lead to excellence, then all the vision and motivation in the world won't help. As a leader, one does not necessarily need to excel in these areas, but they should not be areas of weakness, either.

Kokemuller (2018) notes that transformational leaders often need support from more transactional-minded people. Those people are important to the ability of the organization to transform that vision into the detailed actions that bring about the execution of the vision. The interesting thing from an organizational perspective is that a transformational leader who is not at the head of the company will often struggle to find the right place if these key elements are missing – or if they cannot find someone to help overcome these weaknesses.

The other weakness that Kokemuller (2018) identified was that transformational leadership sometimes get too inspirational, and can lack sufficient grounding in reality. Wanting to be everything and do everything, they sometimes fall into the trap of not accepting reality for what it is. On the team side, I feel that my high emotional intelligence will help with that – I won't think my team is capable of more than they really are. But on the operational side, that might be a little bit different.…