Transformational Leadership Theory

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Before delving further into leadership and management theories and styles it is good to understand the difference between a manager and a leader. Bennis and Nanus (1985, p221) state that ‘managers are people who do things right and leaders are people that do the right thing.’ Yukl (2002, p7) goes on to suggest that leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how it can be done effectively, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish the shared objectives. However, Stodgill (1974:7) powerfully stated that ‘there are as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have tried to define it.’ Although there are varying definitions to leadership and management, it is fundamental to understand the relationship between the two and how you cannot have one without the other. Sullivan (2002: 92) cogently illustrates the point ‘management without leadership is sterile and lifeless and can become mechanistic and bureaucratic... Leadership without management loses touch with reality and dashes the very hopes it arouses.’ Leadership and management are detached sets of skills but are interdependent; each needs the other with the key message being successful organisations and teams need both sets of skills and that one role is not superior to the other. …show more content…
However, Blagg and Young (2001) add that increasingly, the people who are the most effective in the workplace are those who essentially are both managers and leaders and attain the skills for both.
There is a number of varying leadership theories and styles however there are particular ones that are relevant when discussing our particular organisations, Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, due to the nature of their work as individual organisations and together with their integrated working. Due to many of the traditional concepts regarding leaders and followers being dismissed in application to contemporary public sector services, this has caused the development and predominance of the idea of transformational leadership. The transformational leadership model has been adapted to largely fit the culture of British organisations such as the NHS by a number of various writers such as Alimo – Metcalfe and Alban – Metcalfe who describe the model as ‘not based on heroism but enabling others to lead themselves… not about being an extraordinary person but being ordinary and humble one – or at least very open, accessible and transparent’ (2005, p32). Transformational leadership, according to that of Bass & Avolio (1994) is suggested to be the ability to facilitate the transformation of followers and organisations in such a way as to meet the desired outcomes. Furthermore, transformational leadership is particularly relevant for complex and complicated environments such as healthcare, which are the type of organisations being analysed. In addition, within the context of integrated working, the duty of transformational leader can be viewed as exhorting the individual/organisational members to a shared commitment with increased capacity to achieving a unified, collective goal (McKimm and McKimm, 2009). Although in reality, the integration of two organisations may not be as tranquil and therefore constituent organisations and individuals will sign up to a broad shared vision however will pursue a range of political and/or subjective goals which although may not be marginally different from the agreed goal; nonetheless subtly reduce the real impact of the desired transformation or aim/goal. Therefore, this possibility, combined with the density of modern day public sector organisations and their ‘managed chaos’ has helped to shift the focus of leadership theory towards the not so different concepts of distributed leadership and situational or contingent leadership, according to Mckimm & Mckimm (2009). These approaches combine the notions of fluid team centred leadership, empowering at all levels, distributing responsibility and developing successful networks within and across the culture and structure of the organisations, ultimately benefiting all. In turn, said diverse approaches to leadership all shift away from a fundamental criteria of transformational leadership; the notion
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This is due to the fact that Rouse (2000) applied the complexity theory to a healthcare system which held implications for leadership styles across the entire range of similar systems however with particular significance to integrated working. In complex adaptive leadership the most important component is connectivity whereby the ability to connect with stakeholders and the desire to connect with one another is crucial (Mckimm & Mckimm,

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