Mgb 200 - Transformational Leadership

Queensland University of Technology

Reflective Journal

MGB200:  Assessment item 1 Part B

Word count:  1035

Observation      

The tutorial task I have chosen will be on tutorial 9 on Leadership and innovation. The activity required me to investigate my knowledge towards the characteristics of leading an organisation, and my thought process of how to manage a company. I have chosen the theory model of transformational leadership as it clearly relates to my personal experiences of leadership and relevant for my professional career.

Review        

Transformational leadership illustrate traits and behaviors to inspire, motivate the employees and assemble the organisation towards a common vision (Cavazotte, Moreno & Hickmann, 2012). This type of leadership includes characteristics of intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and charisma (McShane, Olekalns, & Travaglione, 2016).  The biggest challenge encountered by any organisation is the difficulties to successfully manage change effectively, and if change is managed poorly it can potentially deteriorate the company’s prosperity (Lin, Jiang & Cheng, 2009). Transformational leadership enables the employees to understand the purpose of the change by supporting the employers throughout the duration of change being introduced, allowing the individuals to adopt the change, and people who are driven by inspiration are considered to perform excellent when compared with individuals driven by transactional leadership restrictions (Odumeru & Gbonna, 2013). The principal of motivating staff worker’s gain knowledge and commitment necessity to elevate any individual’s visions. Transformational leaders who can understand the employee’s strengths and weakness, appropriately knows what motivates and what doesn’t motivate the employees to perform well (McShane, Olekalns, & Travaglione, 2016). Transformational leadership goes beyond any other form of leadership, with the results of complete subordinates of the organisation and the transformation of the company in the corporate world (Braun, Peus & Weisweiler, 2013). It’s important for transformational leaders to commit themselves to selfless assumption allowing to align personal principals and their values for the Individualised consideration of their employees by supporting the individual moral development to internalize the same key principals of values (Cavazotte, Moreno & Hickmann, 2012).

Reflection  

My understanding of leadership has strengthened from the tutorial on leadership, before attending the tutorial, I had very little knowledge on transactional and transformational leadership and was amazed how important this type of leadership is required in an organisation. The tutorial went through the task sheet of discussion on key leadership challenges between transactional, transformational leadership and the success or harm towards the company if the wrong type of leadership is used in the organisation, and example of successful transformational leader Steve jobs with the impact of transformation leadership model of vision to elevate the employee’s performance. I personally can relate to being under poor leadership were I experienced with transactional leadership. My experience with transactional leadership while working in hospitality where I found myself being taught and learned poor leadership qualities. I was working for Fasta pasta, the restaurant had been having financial difficulties for the past five years, while working for the restaurant I never felt inspired or motivated to work for the organisation, the environment and atmosphere was horrific none of the employees wanted to be there and the leaders of the restaurant kept to themselves, there were poor support for my development, however, the most crucial part was the lack of creativity in Fasta pasta. The managers nor the leaders encouraged creativity of developing new creative ideas for the restaurant, where I found myself not being able to show my skills and talent towards creating new and exciting ideas for the business, the transactional leadership diminished the opportunity where the managers and leaders demanded there is to be no changes and be happy with cooking the same food menu that hadn’t been changed for the past thirty years. The restaurant failed to change towards a new vision because of comfortability and the training procedures were quick and easy, which led the restaurant to close and as well other franchises, due to the competitor’s success of regularly making changes with transformational leadership. If the organisation had transformational leadership, Fasta pasta would have developed a strategic vision, built commitment to the vision and more importantly communicated the vision with all employees.  Which could subsequently develop a relationship with the employee’s asking for feedback on new ideas of the food menu, changed the culture environment towards an enjoyable place to work, understood each employee’s strengths and weakness towards support and mentoring with the possibility of inspiring me to be motivated to perform at my full potential.

Learning  

What I have learned from the tutorial are the challenges I will face in my professional career if I don’t assimilate to transformational leader, and I also emphasized on my leadership by identifying the areas I have been lacking as a leader for the improvement and growth in my professional career.  Transformational leadership allows me to continually strive towards the improvement of my leadership qualities, and essentially stimulate my employees to exhibit growth and outstanding performance (Caballero, 2013). Transformational leadership is important to consolidate my prosperity professional practice, and allows me to align my professional career by transcending towards transformational leader, transformational leadership allows me to progress my chosen career with my organisation as I know the effects which may occur as I have experience in the past, by successfully diminishing any potential harm of transactional leadership (Riaz & Haider, 2010). With what I have learned from the information of the tutorial and lecture I know what’s important for my career, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, motivation and intellectual stimulation, these areas allow employees to be creative and innovative, encouraging the employees to develop new ideas for the company (Turan & Erdil, 2013). Recognizing and applauding the employee’s accomplishment intrinsically elevates motivation (Denti & Hemlin, 2012). From the tutorial, I have consolidated how to treat all the team members of the organisation with support with their development, being concerned for their wellbeing, mentor the employees, and enable the individual to be open minded workers (Braun, Peus & Weisweiler, 2013). After attending the tutorial on leadership, I now know the importance of modifying myself for the effectiveness of transformational leadership. Transforming into a transformational leadership is a necessity in my chosen professional practice as it’s a driving force for the organisations future prosperity and my future success in the business industry (Riaz & Haider, 2010).