Transformational Leadership and Organizational Culture Change

Introduction

The role of leadership in shaping organizational culture is vital, as Dr. Marsh demonstrates in his own case study, in which he examines ways to increase employee engagement and create a process for effective performance management for virtual workers. While effective leadership can provide some solutions to the challenges of shaping organizational culture (Chang & Lee, 2007), even Marsh admits that it is rare to solve every problem. Understanding what works and what does not is, in many ways, a lifelong process — and that is why the case study is so helpful: it allows for reflection. This paper reflects on Dr. Marsh's challenges and discusses the leadership style best suited to influencing an organization's culture. It also identifies an organizational change model and examines how positive social change can be infused into leadership style and organizational culture.

Dr. Marsh's Challenges

The central challenge Dr. Marsh faced was managing a virtual team — workers spread across the world who were not part of a shared physical environment and were therefore less engaged in a literal sense with the organization. This made it difficult to promote employee engagement in a fundamental way and to measure performance in a practical way. Dr. Marsh had to develop methods for increasing employee engagement among virtual workers and for measuring performance in order to identify problems before they negatively impacted the organization's objectives.

Dr. Marsh ultimately addressed these problems in several ways. First, to promote employee engagement, he developed a website where his virtual team could gather online, chat with one another, receive direct communications from team leaders, and access support. This platform helped workers feel more integrated, connected, and engaged with their work. Second, he trained team leaders who could facilitate the development of individual workers, assist them through their own challenges, and promote the organization's vision. Third, he structured operations so that metrics could reveal when performance was meeting objectives, when problems might lie ahead, and when an investigation was warranted. Marsh found that by identifying issues early, he could address problems before they became major obstacles and prevent difficulties from escalating.

One challenge that Dr. Marsh was not fully successful in overcoming was communicating the vision to the virtual team. Marsh recognized that the reason he struggled here was that he did not return to the vision after it was first communicated. As a result, the vision was lost among many workers. Because it was not consistently kept in front of the virtual team, a shared sense of the organization's vision never became a mainstay among team members.

Transformational Leadership as the Preferred Style

Transformational leadership is the style I would adopt to influence an organization's culture. Numerous studies have shown that transformational leadership can be an effective way to lead organizational change, positively impact workplace culture, and assist in the management of virtual workplaces (Alos-Simo et al., 2017; Atkin-Plunk & Armstrong, 2013; Bradley & Charbonneau, 2004). Warrick (2011) notes that "transformational leaders are leaders who are skilled at leading, championing change, and transforming organizations" (p. 14). They accomplish this by communicating a vision to workers, providing support where it is needed, inspiring and motivating workers through both intrinsic and extrinsic incentives (Gerhart & Fang, 2015), and educating workers on the importance of achieving the organization's objectives. The transformational leader shows respect and deference to the worker and, like a servant leader, places the needs of individuals before personal interests. The transformational leader understands that for the organization to achieve its goals, it must have workers who embrace its vision.

The leader must be able to communicate this vision, articulate why it matters, explain how it can be achieved, provide support when workers struggle, and motivate them in whatever way they need. This is essentially what Marsh does on a macro level — providing support through the website and via team leaders, communicating the vision, and intervening whenever metrics signal that a team member is at risk of falling behind. Transformational leadership provides the underlying philosophy that makes each of these practical measures coherent and effective.

Conclusion

Changing an organizational culture requires a great deal of attention to detail, as Marsh's case study demonstrates. It also requires a leadership style capable of supporting workers as they transition from old ways of operating to new ones. Transformational leadership is well suited to this purpose, as it demands the communication skills needed to promote the vision, provide support, and motivate workers to accomplish what is expected of them. To help an organization overcome the challenges associated with developing a new and improved organizational culture, Kotter's 8-step model can be employed as a clearly defined process for implementing change — one that brings workers into the decision-making process and makes them feel that their voices matter.

References

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