Transactional and transformational leadership
One leadership theory that is relevant to my internship is transactional and transformational leadership. Transactional leaders tend to use rewards and punishments to achieve results. They stress correct actions to improve performance. Transformational leaders attend to needs of followers, stimulate followers intellectually, inspire and motivate followers with a vision, and serve as a role model for followers. Our manager Igor definitely applies both leadership styles to run the office so that people are motivated and our office is setting the pace on charity campaign.
As a business that focuses on performance, rewards account for a large part of our organizational culture. For example, there is going to be a party as the reward for signing up 200 for the Humane Society within a week. When our customers stay with the Humane Society for more than two months, we will get bonus on payment. Even when it was just us playing a game, Igor gave 100 dollar cash as the reward for the winner to motivate us to go to the field with more energy. Although rewards are important, they are not the only part of his leadership style or the business. He likes to tell us his story on how he becomes a business owner with determination and extremely hard work to set himself as the goal and the role model for us. He encourages us to speak with him about our questions and concern. For example, he is always available at the team night on Thursday evenings when everyone can talk to him. He continuously paints a big picture of success for us with money, freedom, and excitement. Building on transactional leadership, transformational leadership makes it more effective to motivate and inspire followers to work harder to achieve their success and the office’s success.
Good to recognize that both transactional and transformational are used. Sounds as though Igor uses contingent reward; would be interested to know if he employs active or passive management by exception. As for transformational, I would go a bit farther and identify behaviors/actions that illustrate each of the transformational factors (idealized influence/charisma, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration). The greater specificity you can provide in these reflections, the easier it will be to complete the academic assignments this fall.
Management by exception: more passive than active because Igor spends almost all the time in the office rather than in the field, and what mostly determines the performance of the organization is what people do in the field. Therefore, unless team leaders notice or learn about the problems of interns or interns go to Igor themselves, it is difficult for Igor to keep track of every employee and detect problems if any right away. When certain issue was brought up to him (Bryan’s story), it was not addressed effectively or it was what it was. The program is set in a way with low retention rate, and Bryan is not the right person for the program as if many people on the streets are not the right people for us to get money.