According to Odumeru (2013), transactional leadership, known as managerial leadership, focuses on the role of supervision, organisation, and group performance; transactional leadership is a style of leadership in which the leader promotes compliance of his followers through both rewards and punishments. Within the context of Maslow 's hierarchy of needs, transactional leadership works at the basic levels of need satisfaction, with rewards being given for good work or positive outcomes. These types of leaders focus on contingent positive reinforcement or contingent negative reinforcement, Transactional leaders contingent rewards and punishments such as praise and suspensions.The qualities of the Transactional leader use reward and punishments
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Rather than motivating employees through intrinsic influences the way transformational leaders do, transactional leaders use tangible rewards and punishments to enforce order, regulations and hierarchy within the organisation (The Leadership Cocktail, 2016). Transactional leadership techniques are most effective in environments where creativity from the workforce is not required. Moreover, transactional leadership approach needs to be implemented in cases where quick, small scale change is required as argued by Burnes (2004). However, this type of leadership style seems to be less and less popular as the time goes on. Bass (1991) argues that transactional leadership can in many instances lead to mediocrity at best. Especially if the leader mainly depends on, what Bass describes as, passive …show more content…
Zaleznik goes on to say leaders, can tolerate chaos and lack structure i.e. constantly changing, this can be likened to the qualities of transformational leaders. With that said, Kotter, (2001) highlights the differences between management and leadership. He notes that transformational ‘leaders’ set a direction to construct the basis for change ‘this is where we’re going’, where as transactional ‘managers’ plan and budget ‘this is how we are going to get there’. Where leaders align people to create; coalitions, understanding of the change and engage commitment, managers in turn organise staff to accomplish tasks and plan carefully. Finally, Kotter suggests that transformational leaders motivate and inspire to keep projects and change moving, whereas transactional managers aim to ensure the achievement of changes by controlling and solving problems through various methods of reporting and meetings etc, then to counter the problems discovered the process of organising begins
Rather than motivating employees through intrinsic influences the way transformational leaders do, transactional leaders use tangible rewards and punishments to enforce order, regulations and hierarchy within the organisation (The Leadership Cocktail, 2016). Transactional leadership techniques are most effective in environments where creativity from the workforce is not required. Moreover, transactional leadership approach needs to be implemented in cases where quick, small scale change is required as argued by Burnes (2004). However, this type of leadership style seems to be less and less popular as the time goes on. Bass (1991) argues that transactional leadership can in many instances lead to mediocrity at best. Especially if the leader mainly depends on, what Bass describes as, passive …show more content…
Zaleznik goes on to say leaders, can tolerate chaos and lack structure i.e. constantly changing, this can be likened to the qualities of transformational leaders. With that said, Kotter, (2001) highlights the differences between management and leadership. He notes that transformational ‘leaders’ set a direction to construct the basis for change ‘this is where we’re going’, where as transactional ‘managers’ plan and budget ‘this is how we are going to get there’. Where leaders align people to create; coalitions, understanding of the change and engage commitment, managers in turn organise staff to accomplish tasks and plan carefully. Finally, Kotter suggests that transformational leaders motivate and inspire to keep projects and change moving, whereas transactional managers aim to ensure the achievement of changes by controlling and solving problems through various methods of reporting and meetings etc, then to counter the problems discovered the process of organising begins