Theories in Action at Youth Life

As mentioned in previous posts, the staff at my particular site is only made up of five individuals; one site director, one teacher, and three interns. Southwood, Youth Life’s newest learning center, was officially launched in the fall of 2018. The site director and teacher successfully facilitated learning center duties during the school year, but this is their first time leading summer program. I believe that this is the main factor which has contributed to the transactional leadership that has been demonstrated by the site director. As discussed in the article “Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity,” transactional leaders focus on the proper exchange of resources. Once transactional leaders have mastered the proper exchange of resources, it is then that they are able to focus on the long term goals and intrinsic needs of the group. Since this is his first time running summer program, the site director is still trying to master the best way to allocate time and resources in order to promote the best outcome. Due to the nature of the organization and its aid from government organizations such as Feed More, the site director is constantly filling out forms and balancing the budget. He has not yet been able to master the proper exchange of resources, and therefore has not become a transformational leader. The transactional leadership demonstrated by the leader has rubbed off on the followers. As an intern, I am solely focused on planning my lessons and making sure that everything goes smoothly throughout the day. I have not been encouraged to or been inspired to make transformational change within the organization. As a learning center, we are completing our defined tasks but we are not yet going above and beyond to transform the community. However, I have no doubt that with time the site director will make transformational change; he must first build a solid foundation of transactional leadership.