I found the section in the Bass article about leader-member exchange (LMX) to be interesting. Bass says that LMX can be perceived as both transactional and transformational leadership. It takes place in stages through which trust, loyalty and respect between the leader and follower can develop. At the start LMX is transactional, but by the end it is transformational. This idea made sense to me. It seems hard to jump right into a transformational leadership relationship without developing some trust between followers and leaders. If followers are reliable in doing what is asked of them by the leader, then eventually they can develop the relationship where there can be more give and take between the leader and follower. This seemed like a good halfway point between transactional and transformational leadership.
I was also interested by the sections of the Bass article that discussed women. Women are typically seen as more transformational leaders, rather than transactional. Being more transformational leaders means that women are likely more effective leaders. This is interesting because are implicit bias often tells us that women would not be as strong of leaders. In reality, however, they might be better equipped then men to be leaders because they trend towards transformation leadership. I assume that women that are often disliked in the workplace are those that practice more transactional leadership because they might not have the typical “feminine” qualities that supposedly make women better transformational leaders.
I also found the part about women interesting. It was paradoxical to read about women being more effective leaders, despite the disparity between women and men in traditional leadership roles. It made me wonder how we can shift our views/standards of leadership to allow for the best leaders.