Bernard E. Bass discusses the benefits and superiority of transformational leadership in his research article “Two Decades of Research and Development in Transformational Leadership”. I didn’t doubt anything Bass was saying, it all sounded logical and likely to me. However, I found that the way he constantly brought up potential holes in mentioned studies, or lack of research in certain areas, made me want to doubt the accuracy. I was confused because a lot of what he said, we have pretty much confirmed in this class or my LDST 102 class. Then I looked at the date of publishing, 1999, and things made much more sense after that. It’s truly amazing how far the study of leadership has come in the last two decades. Transformational leadership has become even more of a staple in leadership studies and in workplaces (as we have read before). Bass also hinted at Trait Theory in his post-paper-proposal for further research. It’s really interesting how much leadership study has to combat with things like McNamora’s Fallacy. To us, it just makes sense that some people would be better at being transformational leaders than others. But all that has to be proven for it to bear any weight. And it is almost impossible to isolate a leader-follower relationship study. There will always be external factors, as Bass has shown.
Anyway, onto my thoughts about the TOPIC of this (Bass’s) article. With transformational leadership, responsibility is shifted downward Instead of a singular leader controlling everything and doling out the responsibilities. When everyone is actively working toward the same goal because their personal interests align with that goal, there is less focus on subordinate-superior relationships and everyone can, ideally, feel like equal contributors intellectually. That feeling, I can imagine, is very important in the workplace (especially when one is working at a desk all day. Stagnant minds can really kill overall creativity and workflow). I did have one question about what was said about Maslow’s Hierarchy: If you’re aligning your personal interests with that of the group’s, how is that surpassing “self-actualization”? To be successful under a transformational leader, I don’t think you need to reach “idealization.” Maybe only the leader does, if at all.
I agree that it seems to be very hard to analyze leaders and their ways because leaders arise from very different occasions and everything can be seen as subjective. I think that your question is interesting. If that person has that “calling” I suppose to be a leader, maybe that is what their realization was and then they can help their followers to find theirs in a way that works because you understood your place in the world and by “aligning your interests”, it is more about the common theme of figuring out what you are supposed to do in society? I don’t really know though.