The role of the leader in the change management
As new and constant changes are required in organization to adapt to new trends of the market, leaders need to prove how capable they are to face the challenge and provide organizations with modern and innovative solutions that produce affective results in the overall process of the business. A leader must not only know about motivating and encouraging followers, but also about managing personnel, dealing with business strategies, and having a strong personality to make crucial decisions.
In addition, because there may be a natural negative perception about change, in terms of tension and anxiety among staff, which may interfere with the accomplishment of the organization (Boga & Ensari, 2009, p. 236), the leader needs to bring confidence and harmony to connect with employees and eliminate the resistance.
An incorrect selection of a leader may affect negatively all the processes and put investments at risks. A clear example is that of Dana Faber Cancer Institute case (Gardner, et al., 2012) where a great effort, a huge investment and grants, and starting aims, were thrown away due to the incorrect nomination of leader who presented a notorious lack of management and leadership knowledge to control, to plan, and to communicate to run the project.
As it is agreed that “the attainment of the organizational future state depends on the success of individuals reaching their own personal future states. Change management is the structured and intentional approach to enable individual employees to successfully adopt the changes required by projects and initiatives” (Prosci, 2014); it is now important to find the correct leaders to connect the personal individual goals with that of the organization in a world that demands innovative strategies to find different and better results.
From transactional to transformational leadership
Transactional leadership has to do with exchanges between the leader and employees, it means that results depend on the different ‘prizes’ leaders promise to their followers, which is comprehensively documented and supported on the bulk of leadership models (Northouse, 2016, p. 162).
On the other hand, transformational leadership responds to engagement processes in which a mutual level motivation and morality raises due to the connection between both the leader and the followers, which conducts the followers to attain their uppermost potential levels to achieve their goals (Northouse, 2016, p. 162). To the definition Díaz-Sáenz (2011) adds that the achievement of goals mixes a strong emotional link with collective commitment of a moral cause (p. 299).
Under these positive considerations, there are 4 ideas to help develop motivation which are called transformational leadership factors or transformational 4 I’s, and they are:
- Idealized influence or charisma: it “describes leaders who act as strong role models for followers; followers identify with these leaders and want very much to emulate them” (Northouse, 2016, p. 167).
- Inspirational motivation or inspiration: in this factor, “in practice, leaders use symbols and emotional appeals to focus group members’ efforts to achieve more than they would in their own self-interest” (Northouse, 2016, p. 168).
- Intellectual stimulation: the third factor “includes leadership that stimulates followers to be creative and innovative and to challenge their own beliefs and values as well as those of the leader and the organizations” (Northouse, 2016, p. 168).
- Individualized consideration: this factor involves leaders as coaches, leaders are invited to: “provide a supportive climate in which they listen carefully to the individual needs of followers” (Northouse, 2016, p. 168).
It is important to highlight that there are other transformational perspectives, but this one is singularly valuable because it contains the basis to confront results with the transactional leadership.
Some studies presented by Rowold and Heinitz (2007), Nemanich and Keller (2007), and Tims, Bakker and Xanthopoulou (2011) ( cited in Northouse, 2016, pp. 170-171) showed important and positive responses of the transformational leadership in the organitations in terms of employee´s motivation, work engagement, job satisfaction and employee’s performance.
How Transformational leadership contributes to change management
Change is a wide and hard issue to deal with for organizations. Leaders need to examine several aspects to achieve a correct implementation of change, and carefully observe how transformational leadership can provide successful help to attain the aims. Under this consideration, several studies have examined different approaches to topics related to change and have proved that, firstly, the transformational leadership plays an important role on the change of the organizations, and secondly, it is a crucial tool to support the change management.
A studied applied on 219 managers from 63 companies in the top 100 Iranian companies, presented by (Mokhber, et al., 2015, pp. 234-235), demonstrated that charisma, inspirational motivation, and intellectual stimulation have a highly positive relation with the organizational innovation, considering innovation as a strong variable to construct a deep change.
A research done by (Shanker & Sayeed, 2012) considered that one important factor that leaders must deal with is the understanding of the powerful influence the climate has on change. Results of the research “revealed unequivocal influence of transformational leadership styles over organizational climate dimensions” (p.470).
Additionally, successful achievements in change are at risk when employees have a negative perception of change, a research conducted in part-time and full-time employees from small to mid-size businesses demonstrated that “an organization undergoing many organizational changes is perceived as more successful when managed by a transformational leader” (Boga & Ensari, 2009, p. 246).
One more study conducted in South Africa, in which the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was applied on 190 leaders of the higher education sector, demonstrated that when leaders exhibit a high level of transformational behaviors they were able to manage change successfully (Vinger & Cilliers, 2006, p. 7).
Although useful, not the perfect approach
Despite the positive results in the application of the transformational leadership, a series of concerns have shown up which determine a lack of consistencies that attempt against the strength of the theory. Among the several criticisms faced by the theory, conceptual definition, instrument, and leadership-focused style are considered below:
Conceptual definition: there is vague definition in the limits of the concepts which make a constant overlap among the 4 I’s factors (Northouse, 2016, p. 178). Also, According to Beyer (1999 cited in Bryman, et al., 2011, p. 308), this ambiguity of the conceptual framework also involves that charisma and transformational leadership are not well defined.
Instrument: for Tejada, Scandura and Pillai (2001 cited in Northouse, 2016, pp. 178), some versions of the 4 I´s QLM questionaire presents a high correlation among them what makes diferentiation among the factors an issue not easy to establish. Similarly, Beyer (1999) points out that the instrument requires more preciseness, stating that: “transformational leadership research sorely lacks studies that draw upon qualitative data. In particular, the relationship between leaders and followers is ripe for qualitative analysis” (Bryman, et al., 2011, p. 308).
Leadership-focused style: studies suggest that one weakness of the transformational leadership is that the theory gives too much credit to the leader rather than the elements related to the followers; therefore, “the effects of the followers’ contribution to the interaction with their leader and situational or process factors underlying foundations or transformational effects“ (Bryman, et al., 2011, p. 308), may represent a clear sample of how the approach disregards variables of individuals, group and organizational development.
CONCLUSIONS
Organizations have understood that if they want to subsist they need adaptation to new contingencies naturally imposed by the market, and change is the answer; nevertheless, the change requires planning and supervision which may be better adopted if a change management model is implemented.
Changes may present some resistance by employees; that is why, organizations may adapt a suitable leadership style to guide the followers to attain the personal goals, and consequently, the goals of the organization.
Several studies on transformational leadership style and change have demonstrated how transformational leadership has contributed to organizations by giving positive support to several decisive factors related to change, as climate, innovation and perception of change.
Although transformational leadership has offered a lot of contributions for a broader understanding of leadership in organizations, there is a need of more research that helps solve, consolidate, and clarify the theoretical view to obtain a deeper accuracy and reliability of the approach.
REFERENCES
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Prosci, 2014. Change vs Change Management What is the difference and why does it matter?. [Online] Available at: http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-change-vs-change-management-mod2.htm [Accessed 14 12 2016].
Prosci, 2017. Prosci Arkad Model: A goal oriented change management model to guide individual and organizational change.. [Online] Available at: http://empower.prosci.com/the-prosci-adkar-model-ebook-thank-you?submissionGuid=e0a8faa1-1560-47b2-9360-67cde2c9eaa5
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