Leadership styles refers to the approach that a manager adopts in order to exercise authority in the work place and be able to direct staff towards meeting the organizational mandate as outlined in their job descriptions (Foti, 2007). It is the way that a manager resorts to conduct things in order to discharge all the sum total of responsibilities that entails management and leadership. Leadership styles have just recently been advanced and well understood, earlier literature that is available which attempted to identify and classify leadership theories focused on personality aspects that defined leaders and which defined followers. It was not until 1939 when, Kurt Lewin as the lead researcher was able to provide a well documented and thorough research of leadership theories at the time in a study that formed the first framework and reference of future studies in leadership theories and styles (Clemen, 1996). The results and finding of the research were first published in the U.S Army Handbook.
Transactional leadership entails management style that is fitted within the organizational context of the Company as well as the culture of the people. Transactional leadership style adopts a position that strives to reword employees in one way for desirable work output (Babou, 2008). For these reasons some of the features that are inherent in transactional management style include framework of provision of reward matched with employee efforts, employee motivation that is pegged on performance and efforts that are aimed at achieving employee compliant through promises rather than threats (Tannenbaum and Schmidt, 2008). On the other hand transformational leadership style entails people management through innovative ways that is aimed at transforming how employee perceives job responsibilities within the organization (Babou, 2008). Thus, in transformational leadership the focus is on inspiring employees beyond their present levels to a selfless level. It is characterized by inspirational type of leaders and increased levels of motivation among employees (Babou, 2008).
A personal experience that exemplifies what transformational leadership entails is a hand washing program that was recently implemented in our department sometimes back. It was inspired by the need to reduce the incidence of MRSA infections outbreaks in the department by instilling a culture of hand washing among the health workers in the facility. Because MRSA is endemic in almost any hospital setting the standard procedures of preventing this type of infections always fall short of completely eliminating the bacteria strain within our health facility. Thus, the implementation of a regular hand washing program among health workers was an innovative way of dealing with this problem which eventually eliminated the MRSA outbreak cases altogether. The implementation of this program has changed the way that I observe hygiene and I have become more conscious of the fact that all that is needed from me is a little effort if we need to eliminate the rate of MRSA infections.
An example on transactional leadership style is the employee work attendance reward program; the health facility that I work in has an arrangement of rewarding those workers who have been able to report for work on time without any day off for any four months consistently without counting the entitled days of leave. This mode of reward has also made me think twice before asking for a day off probably because of a mild flu that I could be experiencing.
In fact since its implementation the rate of employees requesting sick days off has reduced on average which is cited as the major reason that motivated this reward program in the first place.
In my opinion this approach of reward for instance achieved its desired effect since it provided workers with a benefit for a job well done, previously no one cared or even recognized the fact that it takes an effort to report everyday to work without taking a day off and am now even motivated to work harder to ensure I report to work consistently. As for the hand washing program, I have come to learn how regular washing of hands goes a long way to reduce the incidence rate of MRSA outbreak within the facility.
References
Babou, R. (2008). Transactional Leadership Vs. Transformational Leadership. Web.
Clemen, R. (1996). Making Hard Decisions: An Introduction to Decision Analysis. Washington, DC: Duxbury Press.
Foti Hauenstein. (2007). Pattern and Variable Approaches in Leadership Emergence and Effectiveness. New York: Gulliford Press.
Tannenbaum, R. & Schmidt, W. (2008). How to Choose a leadership Patter. Web.