Theories in Action – Transactional vs. Transformational Leadership

While it’s almost impossible for an unpaid internship to fall within the transactional leadership field, a transactional relationship can go beyond monetary payment for work completed, so I think that it’s still interesting to see how this theory can be applied to my internship experience.

Transactional leadership centers on the ability of a leader to reward or penalize a follower or employee for good or bad work. This can be a monetary award such as a bonus or pay raise, or it can come in the form of public recognition or promotion. Such incentives can lead to effective leadership, but Bernard M. Bass points out that such leadership can also lead to mediocrity and can also be limited by a leader’s ability to actually give out rewards and penalties. Mediocrity comes from the fact that employees are unlikely to be inspired to go above and beyond the set expectations in this situation. Leaders can be limited by finite budgets or contractual promises made to employees.

Transformational leadership, on the other hand, “occurs when leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees, when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group, and when they stir their employees to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group” (Bass, 1990). Bass goes on to say that such leadership arises through charisma and emotional awareness, and/or through intellectual stimulation.

At the Campaign for Youth Justice, I have really only witnessed instances of tranformational leadership. I am not receiving any significant monetary reward for my work, and due to the nature of small non-profit organizations, I can be fairly certain that none of the full time employees can expect significant bonuses or pay raises for good work. At the same time, in such a small organization, punishment of any nature, except for in the most extreme cases, would only stir up an hostile environment in the office towards the leader and would likely have negative repercussions that would make the punishment counterproductive to good work.

Where transactional leadership fails due to budget constraints and office culture, transformational leadership can be very effective in this social action non-profit setting. Charisma helps to energize the staff and keep them passionate about the work. When the work can become difficult due to the stories which are encountered and the feeling of futility arises because of setbacks and failures, emotional awareness addresses the needs of the staff and can lift spirits or allow for recovery time as needed. Finally, someone only gets into this line of work because the issue is of great interest for them, so intellectual stimulation from the leader is also very important because it feeds this interest and keeps the staff engaged with the issue at hand.

I have already experienced the ability of the CEO to intellectually engage with her staff when I had my first meeting with her and we spoke for at least 30 minutes about various issues related to youth justice. I found the conversation fascinating and thought provoking, and while it may have seemed like a waste of time to a transactional leader, it’s transformational value was immense as it inspired me to devote more effort towards the mission of the organization as a whole.