University Essay: Transformational Leadership and Project Management

This essay provides an analysis of transformational leadership, a leadership style where leaders work with their teams to identify necessary changes, create a vision, and execute the change with committed team members. It begins by defining transformational leadership and its origins, referencing the work of James MacGregor Burns. The essay argues that transformational leadership is effectively utilized by project managers, highlighting its role in resolving critical issues and ensuring project success. It then explores the core components of transformational leadership, including idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individual consideration, and intellectual stimulation, as well as the importance of finding opportunities in change. The essay concludes that transformational leadership is a popular and effective approach to leadership, emphasizing its ability to improve working skills and foster enjoyment among followers. The essay references academic sources such as Firestone (2014) and Mortensen et al. (2014) to support its arguments.

Running head: TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Transformational Leadership
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
An ideal leadership style is the one that takes in account the input of others. For more
than a decade, leadership theories have been the key source of many studies. Both in personal
as well as professional life, many have tried defining what allows the authentic leaders to
stand apart from the mass (Welty Peachey, Burton & Wells, 2014). Some of the most
widespread theories that define the different types of leaders include the transactional
theories, contingency theories, behavioural theories, transformational theories and great man
theory.
In this essay, transformational leadership is discussed through theoretical
considerations like transformative theory. Therefore, the thesis statement of the essay is to
discuss the implications of transformational leadership on the discipline of Project
management.
Transformational leadership is the style of leadership where a leader works with his
team for identifying the required change, creating a core vision for guiding change through
inspiration as well as executing the change in terms of tandem with the committed team
members (Firestone, 2014). This concept of leadership was first introduced by James
MacGregor Burns who defined this leadership as “a process where the leaders and their
followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation.”
Transformational leadership is used by most of the project managers. This approach
has been effective in terms of ensuring success through the means of resolving the critical
issues. Project leadership has acquired the topmost position among the Project Management
Competence Factors. Typical evidence of this lies in conducting the personality tests on the
staffs for mapping the impact on the overall performance. Different projects need different
leadership styles, possessing different outcomes. In this context, Mortensen et al., (2014) time
plays an important factor, affecting the selection and choice of the project leadership style. It

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has been seen that projects conducted on the autocratic leadership style are mostly successful.
This is because the managers emphasize on the aspects of participation, empowerment and
trust. Based on this, the connection between project management and leadership can be
established as follows:
According to Firestone (2014), “transformational leaders motivate their employees
through setting goals, implementing incentives, and providing opportunities for personal and
professional growth”. This type of leadership includes idealising the influence, inspirational
motivation, individual consideration and intellectual stimulation. These are the four different
factors that make the transformational leadership lay impact on the followers. Furthermore,
Mortensen et al. (2014) in this context have opined that “transformational leaders look for the
opportunity in change instead of the limitations”. When change takes place, transformational
Transformational leadership
Project Manager’s experience
Switch leadership
Project success
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leaders start practicing finding the opportunities in it. They tend to find out the good about
the situation and what they can learn from it. In this way, the transformational leaders do not
waste their energy while resisting the change and they further focus on creating something
new with the very change.
Hence, from the above analysis it is to conclude that transformational leadership is
one of the many leadership approaches and is the most popular leadership style. These
leaders always try to implement the concept of inspirational motivation among their
followers. Motivation from the transformational leaders not only assist the followers to
improve their working skills but at the same time, also let them enjoy it more.

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References:
Baumane-Vitolina, I., Cals, I., & Sumilo, E. (2016). Is Ethics Rational? Teleological,
Deontological and Virtue Ethics Theories Reconciled in the Context of Traditional
Economic Decision Making. Procedia Economics and Finance, 39, 108-114.
Firestone, W. A. (2014). Teacher evaluation policy and conflicting theories of
motivation. Educational researcher, 43(2), 100-107.
Mortensen, J., Lichty, L., Foster‐Fishman, P., Harfst, S., Hockin, S., Warsinske, K., &
Abdullah, K. (2014). Leadership through a youth lens: Understanding youth
conceptualizations of leadership. Journal of Community Psychology, 42(4), 447-462.
Welty Peachey, J., J. Burton, L., & E. Wells, J. (2014). Examining the influence of
transformational leadership, organizational commitment, job embeddedness, and job
search behaviors on turnover intentions in intercollegiate athletics. Leadership &
organization development journal, 35(8), 740-755.