Introduction
Hugh Blane’s book, 7 Principles of Transformational Leadership, is an excellent leadership resource. While Blane may not know everything about all businesses, he can transform the human mindset to generate business success. Blane has worked with leading companies, including Boeing, to guide their leaders’ mindset changes and promise success.
The book gives an intricate description of various principles that leaders must implement to achieve business success. The text is also full of motivating stories from Blane’s experiences since early childhood and explanations of how such experiences led him to have an “I can do anything mindset (Blane, 2017, p. 7). 7 Principles of Transformational Leadership presents critical concepts for successful transformational leadership. The book guides the implementation of every guideline with an assurance of dramatic organizational flourish.
Author Background
Blane is an American leadership expert and transformational coach specializing in converting human potential into powerful transformational business outcomes. He has a business leadership consulting firm with clients including Starbucks, Nordstrom, Boeing, and Sony Pictures (Blane, 2017). He often uses his experiences to guide successful leadership and businesses. His nationally recognized business strategies have led him to be hired to lead organizations in solving business issues.
Book Review
In the rapidly evolving and competitive business environment, organizational leaders seek to acquire and retain the best talent while ensuring business success. A leader’s success begins with their mindset, an aspect that Blane’s book significantly emphasizes. The book provides a healthy outlook on leadership, traversing self-development and impact on clients and subordinates. The book associates a leader’s mindset directly with the success or failure of an organization, thereby calling for more responsibility from leaders.
Additionally, Blane exclusively points out issues with leadership, a self-assessment model for leaders, and provides solutions. The book has seven principles of transformational leadership to guide leaders in transforming their business trajectories. Blane gives an in-depth explanation and examples of ways to accomplish each leadership principle; hence, the book is an excellent resource for leadership studies.
Blane focuses on mindset as a steering tool for effective leadership. He introduces the book by recounting his experience with a scarcity mindset and feeling unfulfilled for always seeking validation from others (Blane, 2017). He explains how leadership mindsets are a product of nature and nurture; leaders must accept past failures and develop their mindsets for success (Blane, 2017). Leaders are made rather than born since leaders learn from experiences and intentional mindset change with desire and willpower (Hashimy et al., 2023).
Blane affirms that transformational leaders are made from lessons, including mindset shifts, since a significant percentage of a leader’s success begins with their state of mind. Moreover, a leader must perceive their leadership as a project that requires investment, such as hiring a coach and mastering one’s mindset (Blane, 2017). Therefore, a strong mindset sets the pace for transformational leadership.
A transformational leader must go beyond the desire to be good and seek to flourish, hence the need for purpose-driven leadership. A clear purpose elevates leadership quality and pushes a leader to stay enthusiastic about achieving employee, customer, and company success. With a strong mindset, a leader focuses on aspects such as adaptation, innovation, and thriving (Hashimy et al., 2023). Purposeful leadership steers growth, given the promise of future success, and the leader must communicate the same to employees.
Successful purpose-driven leadership requires adequate preparation and awareness of barriers to success (Blane, 2017). Leadership behavior impacts employee behavior (Sanusi et al., 2023); hence, Blane warns about issues such as fear and hardship in business and their impact on positive growth (Blane, 2017). Leaders must learn to persevere through challenging situations to get to new levels of development. The perseverance principle becomes successful when a leader is aware of potential setbacks and can prepare countermeasures.
Transformational leaders must use the persuasion principle to convince others to follow their vision. Stakeholders are crucial to business success; hence, ensuring stakeholders agree with a leader’s vision for the organization is important. Blane mentions that eloquent speeches may not matter if a leader does not understand what goes on in their listener’s mind before responding (2017).
A transformational leader can change the mindsets of financiers, co-workers, and employees by inspiring them to trust the leader’s vision (Haryanti & Zulganef, 2023). Therefore, transformational leaders must observe their audience’s beliefs, behaviors, feelings, and thoughts before pitching an idea. Such a mindset gives a leader a greater chance of winning financial support, employee loyalty, and customer trust.
Conclusion
Transformational leadership includes creating a passionate workforce where happy workers provide the best customer experience. According to Blane, “A flourishing business comes from flourishing employees, flourishing customers, and memorable experiences” (2017, p. 9). Effective leadership identifies avenues for innovation, provides the necessary growth tools, and encourages employee loyalty (Hashimy et al., 2023).
Innovation keeps a business distinct and keeps it alive amidst competition and evolution. Additionally, a transformational leader achieves organizational growth using the praise principle. Praising co-workers and employees notifies them that leaders pay attention to their contributions.
References
Blane, H. (2017). 7 principles of transformational leadership: Creating a mindset of passion, innovation, and growth. 1st ed.
Hashimy, S. Q., Jahromi, A., Hamza, M., Naaz, I., Nyamwero, B. N., & Basavarajappa, H. T. (2023). Nurturing leadership and capacity building for success: Empowering growth. International Journal of Rehabilitation and Special Education, 3(2). Web.
Haryanti, H., & Zulgnef, Z. (2023). The influence of transformational leadership style and employee loyalty on employee performance. International Journal of Global Operations Research, 4(1), 13-18. Web.
Sanusi, I., Farida, I., & Sapiah. (2023). Green transformational leadership: Systematic literature review. Asian Journal of Economics and Business Management, 2(2), 511-521. Web.