Communication: Analysis of Transformational Leadership Styles

This essay delves into the concept of transformational leadership and its profound impact on employee empowerment and goal achievement within organizations. It examines various leadership styles, including transactional and transformational approaches, emphasizing the latter's ability to motivate, inspire, and foster innovation. The essay highlights the significance of transformational leadership in the context of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) implementation, illustrating how effective leadership can drive positive cultural change and enhance employee performance. Furthermore, it provides real-world examples of transformational leadership, focusing on the contributions of Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos to their respective companies, Apple and Amazon. These case studies showcase how these leaders influenced their organizations through vision, innovation, and a commitment to employee development. The essay also briefly touches upon servant leadership, contrasting it with transformational leadership and exploring its relevance in the IT industry. Overall, the essay underscores the crucial role of transformational leadership in creating a thriving work environment and achieving organizational success, particularly in the dynamic landscape of the IT sector.

Running head: COMMUNICATION
Communication
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

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Introduction
The present developments of the Information and Communication Technology or ICT
have brought enormous changes within the organizational setting. There are various researches
conducted to analyze the technological, environmental, organizational and interpersonal factors
that can contribute to the business functioning and allow the companies like Apple, Amazon to
gain higher profit and competitive advantage in business. There are various organizational
factors along with the top-level management support to manage the behaviors and personalities
of the managers, administrator and the leadership styles too (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013). The
success of an ICT implementation depends upon the IT literacy and skills and how it has
managed to make the leaders adopt effective structures, strategies, reward systems and resources
for fostering high level of creativity and innovation all throughout. Leadership is defined as an
effective process for influencing the behaviors of individuals and groups to accomplish a
common goal or objective furthermore influence the staffs, students, policy makers and
employers towards the achievement of goals in terms of higher productivity and profit in
business (Kark & Shamir, 2013). Within the academic environments, the school principals,
deputy principals and technical administrators play important roles of leaders to adopt and
implement effective ICT in the IT industry.
Body
Shifting from various leadership styles, traits and behaviors, there are transactional and
transformational leadership styles. The transformational leadership is focused here on here to go
beyond the inducements for achieving the desired performances and ensuring maintenance of the
organizational standards. The transformational leadership style could keep the students and

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employees from the organizations to remain motivated and empower themselves to achieve the
expected performance, furthermore define the needs for change, develop new vision and
concentrate on the long term goals and objectives with ease and effectiveness. This would
influence the staffs go according to their interests and even facilitate the formation of a positive
work culture (Braun et al., 2013). It would not only improve the working conditions but would
also allow them to take greater roles and responsibilities for the development of theirs as well as
others within the organization. The major traits and behaviors of transformational leadership
include charisma, individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation for maintaining good
relationships with the staffs, ensure job satisfaction among theirs and reduce the turnover of
staffs largely too. The principal’s leadership and implementation of ICT are not something new;
rather it has facilitated the transformational leadership style and promoted a positive culture to
empower the employees and creating innovation and creativity too (Tourish, 2013). Therefore, it
could be stated that the principles of transformational leadership style played important roles in
implementing the school initiatives and perceived the technological aspects by creating positive
impacts largely (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013).
One of most important significance of managing transformational leadership style is the
management of integrity and aligning the actions with the actions that they undertake. This can
make the followers, students from schools and employees from the organizations to perceive a
high level of congruence between the leader’s opinions and the things expressed through actions.
The leaders are prepared to take challenges as well by encouraging and motivating the students
and employees to take risks and treat the mistakes as opportunities for enhancing the learning
procedures’ efficiency (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). This creates high level of innovation
and creativity all throughout. Another transformational leadership style benefit could be the

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management of impressions and behaviors among the leader, which could help in take care of the
people and treat them as valuable assets of the organizations. It would not only make them feel
valued for the organization, but also their performance would improve, thus resulting in business
efficiency. The Information Technology Management Integration framework integrates the
transformational leadership into the IT management activities and even communicates the vision,
empowers the individuals working within the organization and states about the mission statement
(Roueche, Baker III & Rose, 2014). The transformational leadership style also helps in making
the employees of the organization to be influenced and provide their useful ideas and opinions
considered as useful while making decisions during ICT implementation. The corporate
governance within the IT sector enables development of rules, regulations and managing the
roles and responsibilities for allowing the managers or leaders to maintain disciplined process
(Zhu et al., 2013). This would not only support the business decisions regarding the IT
management, but could also deliver value propositions for the betterment of business
(Choudhary, Akhtar & Zaheer, 2013). The transformational leadership and information
technology management integration framework are linked together for managing the IT
governance and make decisions regarding IT activities with ease and effectiveness. Therefore, it
can be argued that the linking of transformational leadership and information technology
management integration could facilitate the decision making process and bring positive results.
The servant leadership is another effective leadership theory that manages the power and
authority and the manager or leader properly does the allocation of roles and responsibilities. The
servant leadership also enables the leaders to consider the needs and preferences of others at first
and develop them to perform to their potential. The servant leadership style turns the power
pyramid upside down rather than the people who work at the organizations to serve as a leader

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(Breevaart et al., 2014). The leaders change their behaviors and mindsets to serve the people
working under him at first and then make them understand the purpose, which further helps in
engaging people all together and make them competent to handle tasks properly. The servant
leadership or ethical leadership theory creates proper management of values and beliefs and
enable the leaders to act accordingly, furthermore can make the leaders learn about becoming
more effective (Noruzy et al., 2013). Within the IT industry, the opinions and ideas of the
employees must be considered and so the servant leadership theory played a vital part in putting
their opinions at first and then gains the potential and ability to influence the society positively.
The transformational leaders are responsible for performing these kinds of roles, which can
empower he staffs and in turn, obtain the best of performance from theirs (Van Dierendonck et
al., 2014). Thus, it could be argued that the servant leadership could allow obtaining the
feedbacks and responses of individuals and then make a decision for the achievement of business
growth and development.
Within the IT industry, the most prominent example of transformational leadership could
be Steve Jobs. He is the cofounder, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc. The transformational
leadership style focuses on meeting the needs of followers and Steve Jobs surely met the
benchmark of transformational leadership by transforming the individuals on a personal and
emotional level. Jobs managed to transform others by helping them strive towards success and
remain influenced to perform to their potential too (Carter et al., 2013). He possessed idealistic
vision and brilliance to perform as a responsible leader and created positive impacts on the
followers. Their motivation level, morale and performances of the followers were improved and
thus he was considered as a major charismatic and transformational leader as well (Zhu et al.,

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2013). Therefore, it is clear that the leader’s influence play a vital part in enhancing the morale
level and influence them to perform to their potential.
One of his quotes was “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower”. It
demonstrated the importance of maintaining positive relationship between a leader and a
follower to promote innovation and creativity. The market share dipped largely during the year
1997, and this issue was handled by Steve Jobs by reviving Apple Computer and established
itself as a market leader. The transformational leadership style helped in satisfying the current
needs through rewards provided to its followers and for ensuring growth and development. Steve
Jobs expected high performances from the workers while forming a vision to remain successful
in the future and influencing the followers by integrating work with its meaning and purpose
(Bellé, 2013). The roles of teams are important in the present business environment and for the
management of transformational leadership style. Steve Jobs had some unique personal skills
and abilities including innovation, creativity and ability to gain a vision for influencing the
followers to focus on developing the vision. Steve Jobs was considered as an effective leader
who empowered the individuals to remain focused on the vision of the organization (Van
Dierendonck et al., 2014). It could therefore be stated that Steve Jobs was an empowering leader
who kept the staffs motivated to perform their best at the organizations.
Another example of transformation leadership style was Jeff Bezos’ immense
contribution in empowering people and influencing their behaviors to perform to their potential.
Jeff Bezos was considered a transformational leader because of his ability to manage core
repositioning, enabling growth through the creation of new products and services and better
financial performance, achieved through enhanced stock performance when compared to the

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relevant benchmark (Herman & Chiu, 2014). The real transformational leadership style was
managed by making Jeff Bezos maintain humility, passion and vision to bring his followers and
subordinates to a higher level of performance. According to Jeff, customers are the greatest and
most important assets of Amazon. Thus, he created a performance monitoring system for
tracking the performances and relating those with the objectives achieved considering the
satisfaction of customers. The major principles followed by the leader were simplification,
motivation, determination, mobilization, preparation, facilitation and innovation (Moriano et al.,
2014).
Jeff Bezos spoke clearly and communicated the relevant information and messages to
provide a right direction to the team while the motivation skills among the transformational
leader helped in raising the vision of the team. It was necessary for understanding the interests of
the employees and how they could be kept satisfied. Jeff Bezos displayed strength, stamina,
courage and perseverance for understanding the vision and proving that hard work really paid
off. Jeff Bezos was considered as transformational leader because of his ability to make Amazon
push its employees to be curious and feel interested to perform to their potential (Kark & Shamir,
2013). Within the changing business environment, Jeff Bezos identified the needs for change and
initiated the approaches accordingly for bringing cultural change and drive engagement of
followers to accomplish tasks with dedication and commitment. Thus, both these leaders Jeff
Bezos and Steve Jobs are considered as responsible leaders who followed the transformational
leadership style to empower employees and bringing out the best for the organizational benefit
(Braun et al., 2013).

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Conclusion
The essay was prepared to discuss about the concepts of transformational leadership style
and its impact in empowering the employees and influencing them to achieve the goals and
objectives properly. The examples showed Jeff Bezos’ and Steve Jobs’ contribution to the
organization by following the transformational leadership style. Jeff Bezos contributed his
leadership skills for the facilitation of a cultural change to drive engagement of the employees
and ensuring accomplishing the tasks with convenience. On the other hand, Steve Jobs was
inclined towards empowering the employees for making them feel interested. Their needs were
prioritized the most, which made them feel valued for the organization too. Thus, the
transformational leadership managed within these organizations helped in improving the
performance of the organization and brought innovation, efficiency and creativity within the IT
industry.

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