Transactional Leadership In City Hall

There could be a huge assortment of different theories that could be used but the first theory that resonates with my work environment is the transactional leadership theory. Some of the administrators and informal leaders can be seen as more transformational leaders but the structure of the organization itself permits transactional leadership as the overarching leadership dynamic. Transactional leadership is the most prevalent form of leadership because most of the systems in place, that all leaders have to abide by, promote compliance and effort of employee’s through reward and punishment. This leads to a very effective tightknit working community that encourages hard work and overachieving.

Every program, for the employees, is ultimately tailored to improve the production of work implemented by the employees. There are different program examples of this. The first example is the Employee onboarding program which is an initiative to motivate workers to achieve more and get “on board” with the culture and production of their specific portfolios. It is a mandatory event for all employees and if one does not attend the repercussions are detrimental to the advancement of the individual in the work place. Another program is the Employee Learning week, were employees are given the opportunity to learn new trades and receive certificates for their hard work and dedication to the company. This is the rewards factor of Transactional leadership because workers are allowed to attend different sessions based on their work productivity, and the certificate that they receive are recorded for use when an employee applies for raises or for a higher position. The example of transactional leadership is reiterating how employees are rewarded based on how they fill out their talent / performance management work logs. Along with their average time sheet that they have to fill out to get paid, employees have a strict work log that goes into every little detail to measure their performance. The sheet has each employee fill out what they have and will be doing for every hour of work, every day. This seems redundant and unnecessary to me because I don’t think that it promotes productive group and company cohesion. Unless employees bond by talking about how tedious the talent / performance management work logs are.