Trading Weight-Loss Transformations for a New kind of Transformation

      As I might have previously noted, my internship at Fit Tribe overlaps with a period of leadership turmoil at the organization. A decade-old leadership structure and staff had broken down over this past year and Fit Tribe is still feeling the effects in loss of morale and revenue. Uncertainty about the business’ future led to negative attitudes, decreased productivity and increased turnover among employees. Not only is the owner Jesse trying to keep remaining coaches calm, he is also trying to build confidence in the new hires and inspire them to take personal responsibility in restoring the business to its past performance levels. It is clear that though the hodge-podge group of employees is far from cohesive- they all have different skill levels, experience, personalities, and levels of willingness to learn- each person craves certainty and a figure they can believe in. Jesse’s strategy and the situational context at Fit Tribe has many parallels to the transformational leadership theory, a leadership style that takes hold more easily and is of prime importance in times of crisis or worry.

     While maintaining a more authoritarian style in regards to task completion and back-end processes, I have seen Jesse make an effort to divert most of his free time to developing individual coaches. I observed he is tailoring the discussion topics to be in line with the interests and attitudes he knows about each person. For example, one of the coaches loves the technical science behind movement more than others do, so Jesse asked his opinion on new articles and theories in the field. A coach whom Jesse pegged as having big sales potential was shown past coaches’ stellar sales numbers in their one-on-one session. This demonstrated how this coach had unlimited potential when it came to earning commissions, which helped silence their concern of putting effort and ambition into a stagnant business. After seeing a few of these one-on-one sessions take place, I quickly realized Jesse is using flagship tenets of transformational leadership. He is emphasizing intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration to varying degrees based on individual’s emotional needs and interests. to develop trust between himself and employees as well as community among all personnel. 

      In showing coaches they have the blueprint to be successful, recounting his history of success in the industry, and demonstrating his wide breadth of fitness training knowledge, Jesse is trying to increase idealized influence to regain trust and authority. I think the transformational leadership theory is holding up well based on what I see at Fit Tribe. Coaches are visibly enjoying their one-on-one time to learn from Jesse and seem to be more “bought-in” after the fact, forgetting their concerns and showing increased enthusiasm about the future (whether or not this leads to tangible results is yet to be seen). This theory can possibly help dispel the lingering negative emotions from past coaches and lead the new team to trust in the processes Jesse created and work together towards a common goal of business growth. An insight I mentioned above was that Jesse seems to emphasize one of the characteristics of transformational leadership based on which coach he is interacting with. I know that each of the four characteristics are required for transformational leadership, but this makes me curious if people are more receptive to certain characteristics (EX: intellectual stimulation over inspirational motivation) or if emphasizing different characteristics of the theory to suit the person actually makes the leader more effective in cultivating a group vision.