Transformational Leadership Reflections

This assignment encourages students to reflect on their experiences with transformational leadership. They analyze its effectiveness based on personal encounters and academic research, highlighting both its positive aspects and potential challenges. The reflection also delves into the practical application of transformational leadership behaviors in real-world situations.

Running head: LEADING AND CHANGING ORGANIZATIONS
Reflective Journal- Leadership
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Introduction
Leadership is the process of leading a group of people to accomplish a common goal.
Leaders motivate people in transforming a particular vision into reality (Anderson, 2013). In this
reflective journal, I have analyzed and described three vignettes of leadership from my personal
experience and I have critiqued the story by reviewing the literature of leadership. The leadership
theories from discussions in class have been beneficial in scholarly critiquing the stories of
leadership. In this journal I have narrated three vignettes of my experience of leadership. I can
recollect from my experience that I played leadership role while organizing a cultural event in
our school. I have also raised awareness about disability and homelessness among members of
our community while working with a charitable organization and prepared a business plan with
my cousins for the opening of a restaurant in the locality. In this reflective journal I described
each experience, and then analyzed each experience with theories of leadership. For instance, I
have analyzed the experience of organizing the cultural event at school with support from
theories of situational leadership. The theory of transformational leadership helped me to analyze
leadership experience of raising awareness about disability and homelessness among members of
community while working with charitable organization. I could relate transactional leadership
with preparation of the business plan with my cousins (Antonakis & Day, 2017).
Discussion
Situational Leadership
I have demonstrated the role of situational leadership in school. My professor asked me
to organize a multi-cultural event in my school for the celebration of cultural day in school. India
is a land of diverse culture where people from different culture and religion reside in harmony.

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The celebration of cultural day in my school provided the opportunity for each student to display
the specialty and uniqueness of their culture. My professor selected ten students from my class
who belonged to different parts of India and spoke different languages to participate in the multi-
cultural event. I was selected as the team leader and my responsibility was to organize the multi-
cultural event and make this event a grand success for the celebration of cultural day. This
situation gave me the opportunity to demonstrate the style of situational leadership. I was
responsible to organize the rehearsals for students. During the rehearsals, students got the
opportunity to practice under experienced trainers which prepared them for the final performance
of different multi-cultural events like dance, singing, story-telling of different culture by
performance of skit and drama. I had to co-ordinate among the trainers and the students; it was
my responsibility to ensure that students get adequate scope for practicing of cultural activities. I
along with my class-teacher prepared a schedule for the students which mentioned the particular
dates, time and duration of the practice sessions. My class-teacher gave me the responsibility to
organize a food festival where students were asked to cook special foods of their culture. I had to
announce the celebration of cultural event during morning announcement sessions and I played
leadership role by ensuring that each student wears traditional outfits on the cultural day which
will reflect their own culture. I also prepared a communication plan for the cultural event. The
linguistically diverse parents of my school were invited to celebrate the cultural event. I ensured
that parents receive invitation by e-mails and I also handed over flyers about the cultural event to
my class-mates so that they can carry them home. I ensured to make this event a success on the
cultural day. I demonstrated leadership quality by collaborating with various suppliers,
administrators and organizers of the event, for instance, I ensured that the make-up stylists reach
on time to dress up the students for performance of skit and drama. I took leadership roles by

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monitoring the event on the cultural day and managed risks effectively by ensuring noise-levels
were not high so that the neighborhood is not disturbed by the event.
The concept of situational leadership was developed by Kenneth Blanchard and Paul
Hersey. The research on the best style of leadership has found that successful leaders adapt their
leadership style to meet the demands of a particular and unique situation the situation. Thus the
role of situational leadership becomes instrumental for success of a leader (Bordas, 2012). The
celebration of cultural event helped me to demonstrate qualities of situational leadership because
I had to handle different situation like collaborating with organizers of the event, inviting
linguistically diverse parents as well as ensuring students get opportunities for rehearsal sessions.
The Situational Leadership Model suggests that the task behavior and the relationship behavior
are of paramount importance for situational leaders. Task behavior is the one-way
communication process from a leader to followers where a leader explains the followers about
the process of tasks and the role each follower has to play to accomplish a task (Anderson,
2013). I could demonstrate task-behavior while organizing cultural-event because my role was
to schedule rehearsals for students, communicate to students and remind them to actively
participate in rehearsals. The relationship behavior suggests the way a leader provides socio-
economic support to followers by providing them psychological support (Anderson, 2013). Few
of my class-mates were unwilling to participate in rehearsals because they felt it would adversely
affect their studies, I provided psychological support to student to overcome this mental barrier
by creating effective communication plan between teachers, students and trainers. The
Situational Leadership Model displays four styles of situational leadership 1) Situational
leadership behavior style that demonstrates high-task and low-relationship 2) Situational
Leadership Style that demonstrates high-task and high-relationship behavior 3) Situational

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Leadership that demonstrates high-relationship and low task-behavior 4) Situational Leadership
where low-relationship and low-task behavior is demonstrated(Chemers, 2014 ).I demonstrated
situational leadership with high-task and high-relationship behavior while organizing the cultural
event. I had to maintain rapport and build good relationship with my class-mates to make this
event a success. I communicated effectively with my classmates and demonstrated trust in their
individual abilities. At the same time I had to accomplish multiple tasks like scheduling of
rehearsals, collaborating with stakeholders of the event, monitoring risks during the event. The
cultural event has taught me to adapt my leadership style based on a particular situation and I can
thus relate this experience with situational leadership.
Transformational Leadership
I have worked with a charitable organization Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust in Mumbai to
raise awareness about disability. Disability is a problem that not only affects the middle-class
and affluent families of the Indian society but there are community members who belong to poor
families in India and still they are the victim of disability. The purpose of our charitable
organization was to raise awareness about Disability in the community of Mumbai. I played
leadership role in a charitable campaign named “Disability Free Mumbai”. In this campaign, we
provided prosthetic to disabled members of poor families free of cost. I played leadership role
while organized camps among disabled people who lived in slums of Mumbai. The charitable
organization gave me the responsibility to interact with families of disabled children and youths
in the slums of Mumbai. I visited the slums along with my team members of the charitable
organization to understand the necessities of the disabled people. During these camps, my
responsibility was to support my team members to take measurements of the disabled people so
that we can arrange prosthetics for them. I played instrumental roles in organizing counseling

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sessions for the families of disabled youth and children where we provided psychological
support to the parents of victims. I used my networking skill and invited few celebrities and top
level donors in the charitable event to advocate the charity as well as to raise funds for charity.
This charity function for raising funds was a huge success and we managed to raise enough funds
to order prosthetics for the disabled community. I collaborated with my team-members to contact
local manufacturers and order for the prosthetics. I can recollect the success of our distribution
camps where we distributed these prosthetics to the disabled community and also trained them to
use these prosthetics.
The term transformational leadership was first introduced by James MacGregor Burns in
the year 1978. Transformational Leaders helps an individual, a group or social systems to
embrace positive changes. Transformational leaders aim to convert followers into leaders by
reinforcing valuable and positive changes in followers (Roueche, Baker III & Rose, 2014) I can
relate my experience of working with Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust with transformational
leadership. This charitable event gave me the opportunity to demonstrate leadership qualities
and transform the lives of the disabled community of Mumbai. Burns stated that transformational
leaders articulate a challenging vision and goal to followers and this type of leaders work
towards the benefit of community and organization (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013). According to
Bernard M. Bass, transformational leaders fosters a sense of identity in followers and because
of the charismatic qualities of transformational leaders, these types of leaders are trusted,
respected and admired by followers (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013). I can clearly relate this theory
of transformational leadership to my experience because I was trusted and respected by my team
and the disabled community during organization of the counseling sessions where I provided
psychological support to the families of victims. There are four elements of transformational

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leadership which could be identified. These are inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation,
individualized consideration and idealized influence. Avolio and Bass has stated that
transformational leaders instills a power of confidence and power in followers, gives priority to
the needs of the followers and followers try to emulate transformational leaders(Komives &
Wagner, 2016). The idealized influence of transformational leaders can be displayed from this
behavior. I got the opportunity to play the role of transformational leader by instilling
confidence among disabled community. The behavior of inspirational motivation is displayed by
transformational leaders because these types of leaders create an environment of optimism and
enthusiasm with a team and motivates team member to achieve challenging goals. . I encouraged
my team to organize display of motivational videos and inspirational story-telling sessions which
fostered motivation among the disabled community. The transformational leaders display
behavior of intellectual stimulation because these types of leaders solicit new and creative ideas
from followers without criticizing the followers (Islam et al., 2012).The transformational leaders
play the role of a mentor or coach and provide attention to individual needs of the followers and
create a supportive environment and thus the behavior of individual consideration is displayed by
transformational leaders. These theories of transformational leadership can be related to my
experience (Lopez-Zafra, Garcia-Retamero & Martos, 2012). I played attention to the
individual needs of the disabled community members while taking measurement of the
prosthetics. I also ensured that disabled community members receive personalized care during
the counseling and motivational session. The training session organized by me trained each
disabled member individually to use the prosthetics. Thus the charitable event helped me to
develop qualities of transformational leadership and these altruistic qualities proved to be
beneficial for me in the journey of life.

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Transactional Leadership
I have demonstrated transactional leadership while preparing a business plan for the
opening of a restaurant in the locality with my cousins. My family ensured to cultivate a culture
of entrepreneurship among us since childhood. I took the leadership role to prepare this business
plan along with five of my cousins. The activity started with brainstorming. I encouraged my
cousins to write down random ideas on a piece of paper. I played leadership roles to ensure that
there was a free flow of ideas during these brainstorming sessions. My idea was to list down as
many ideas as possible without judging if an idea was a “good idea” or a “bad idea”. Once I
created a long list of potential ideas, the next step was the evaluation of the best idea by
considering the practical feasibility of the idea. During the evaluation process, I ensured to avoid
personal biases among my cousins to choose the best idea. I had to manage conflicts among our
team because different members preferred different idea. The best idea was to open the
restaurant in the locality because it supported our budget and resources; also our locality had
many corporate offices, so we targeted this group of customers. I ensured that all the sub-plans of
the business plan were created efficiently. I prepared SMART goals for these plans and allotted
responsibility to each team member for specific tasks depending on their ability, for instance, I
asked my cousin who was studying advertising to prepare the communication plan. Thus the
end-result was an effective business plan which included background information and purpose of
the company, operational plan, financial plan, marketing and communication plan and human-
resource plan.
Max Weber in the year 1947 described the concept of Transactional Leadership, and then
Bernard Bass discussed the concept further in the year 1981. The transactional leaders play

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instrumental role in setting SMART objectives for the followers. The smart objectives include
Specific, Measurable. Attainable, Realistic and Timely goals(Chemers, 2014). I have
demonstrated transactional leadership while preparing the business plan because as a team leader
I had to create SMART goals. For instance, it was the goal of our team to complete 50% of the
business plan within 15 days. Transactional leaders play an important role by providing useful
resources to followers which help them to achieve their goals and set clear expectations for the
followers (Daft, 2014). I can easily relate my experience with this theory of transactional
leadership because I played instrumental role to communicate targets to my team. I ensured that
my team which comprised of my cousins had access to internet so that they can do secondary
research by taking help from online library, scholarly articles, books, journals and newspapers to
prepare the business plan. Transactional leaders also provide contingent rewards to followers on
accomplishment of the goal. I ensured to provide rewards to my cousins on accomplishment of
each sub-goal. For instance, I demonstrated transformational leadership by arranging a lunch
break for my team members at a nearby restaurant on successful completion of the marketing
plan. This break not only provided them a motivation to accomplish the task on time but also
helped us to study the ambience of the restaurant because to prepare a competitor analysis.
Transactional leaders play instrumental role in motoring the activities of the followers. The
transactional leaders monitor deviation from standards and rules so that corrective actions can be
implemented in the work process facilitating the followers to accomplish the goals. Transactional
leaders emphasize on short-term goals and this type of leadership fosters a structured and
directed environment (Northouse, 2015). I got opportunity to play the role of transactional
leadership by subdividing the business plan into sub-goals like generation of idea, evaluation of
idea and creation of each part of the business plan, for instance, the operational plan. I also used

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tools of project management to monitor this project, for instance, I used Gantt chart to plan the
project. However, this type of leadership is often not effective as charismatic leadership because
transactional leaders assume that the followers are motivated by extrinsic rewards and thereby
demonstrates leadership in a controlled and structured environment where the work environment
is not flexible (Odumeru & Ogbonna, 2013). It can be critiqued that transactional leadership
creates an environment where there is less degree of freedom and less opportunity for open
communication for followers (McCleskey, 2014). Transactional leadership plays an instrumental
role on accomplishment of goals and objectives of a team and organization. This theory of
transactional leadership is useful for providing a critique of my experience of transactional
leadership role for preparation of a business plan. My team-members had to go through a well-
structured procedure while preparing the b-plan because I has to prepare targets for them, there
was very less freedom.
Conclusion
Leadership is of different types, for instance, transformational leadership, transactional
leadership, charismatic leadership, situational leadership, servant leadership and autocratic
leadership. I could contemplate that the appropriate situational leadership that will be
demonstrated by a situational leader will depend highly on the level of readiness of the followers
to accomplish a task on a particular situation .I developed the understanding that the concept of
situational leadership suggests that there is no particular leadership style that is best, but the
highly effective situational leaders modify their style of leadership to respond to the specific
needs of the followers and to handle a particular situation because different situations demand
different leadership styles. My idea about situational leadership changed and I realized that the
foundation of situational leadership is interplay among 1) The task behavior of the leader 2) The

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socio-economic support of a leader and 3) The level of readiness exhibited by a follower. I
understood that readiness is the willingness and accountability displayed by followers based on
the responsibilities the followers are willing to take depending on a particular situation. I have
developed the concept that situational leadership highlights that the when a follower displays
an increased level of readiness to accomplish a particular task, situational leadership can be
demonstrated by a leader by reducing the level of task behavior and increasing the level of
relationship behavior. The experience of organizing the multi-cultural event in school helped me
to demonstrate situational leadership in diverse environment where I learnt to respect different
cultures and linguistic diversity. I could contemplate from this reflective journal that the topic of
transformational leadership has been widely researched by researchers across the globe. The
global researchers have highlighted the augmentation effects of Transformational Leadership
because transformational leaders enhance the performance, effectiveness and satisfaction of
followers. My experience of working with Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust provided the foundation
step for me to develop qualities of transformational leadership. However, I have found that there
is gap in research about the practical implication of the transformational leadership behavior.
Ambiguity and uncertainty revolve about the way a transformational leader behaves in a
particular situation. Developing qualities of transformational leadership was essential for me
because I believe empathy and altruistic quality can help me transform life of others. My
experience of working with my cousins to prepare the business plan provided me the opportunity
to demonstrate qualities of transactional leadership. I could contemplate that though transactional
leadership provides a rigid and structured work environment for followers, yet this type of
leadership is beneficial to accomplish short-term goals.

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Reference Lists
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