Leadership Styles: Transformational vs Transactional in Fast Food

This presentation provides an evaluation of transformational and transactional leadership styles, examining their differences and practical applications within a work environment, particularly in the context of a fast-food restaurant company. Transformational leadership focuses on inspiring and motivating employees to achieve higher levels of performance and personal development, while transactional leadership emphasizes rewards and punishments to drive performance and compliance. The presentation explores the characteristics of each style, highlighting how transformational leaders empower employees and foster innovation, whereas transactional leaders focus on maintaining the status quo and achieving predetermined goals. Real-world examples from the fast-food industry illustrate how these leadership styles impact employee motivation, decision-making, and overall organizational performance. The presentation concludes by emphasizing that both leadership styles can be valuable, depending on the specific context and organizational goals, and that companies can benefit from understanding and adapting their leadership approach to create a more effective and engaging work environment.

LEADERSHIP IN
CHANGING
CONTEXT
Differentiate Transformational and Transactional
leadership and evaluate how the two concepts translate
into a practical work environment.

Introduction
Provided presentation is based on evaluation of two
leadership styles which are transformational and
transactional leadership and their difference in the
practical yet evolving work environment in relation to
fast food restaurant company is covered under this
presentation. Further relevant examples will be
included for better understanding of subject matter.

Transformational
leadership
Transformational leadership is referred as a
leadership method that leads to individual
change. It formulates affirmative and valuable
changes in the subordinates with the ultimate
objectives of developing subordinates into
leaders. Further, leaders as well as followers
raise each other to greater levels of motivation
and principles.

Transformational leadership in
fast food restaurant
 In this form of leadership,
managers will make decision
by considering other staff by
taking their suggestion to
provide better services to the
customers. For example chef
can suggest in menu designing
and waiters can suggest
approach for service deliveries
to increase customer
satisfaction. All employees will
work together instead of
following hierarchal structure.

Characteristics of
transformational leadership
 Transformational leader manages will manage their
work on own in restaurant without much guidance of
owners, and are self-motivated and make use of the
same to lead organization to follow the right path.
 Transformational leaders have the capability to take
appropriate risks as per environment of restaurant
which is considered as the core characteristic. They
make use of intelligence collected by subordinates to
make better decisions. The leader asks for inputs
from the subordinates to make risk-related decisions
that stimulate growth.

Characteristics of
transformational leadership
 Transformational leaders are most inspiring as
per restaurant culture, they have the capability to
encourage others and treat employees in a
valuable manner. Transformational leaders
conduct one the basis of own passion and inspire
other to indulge in the whole vision and execute
the same on all chain of restaurant management.

Transactional leadership
 Transactional leadership style concentrates on
performance, direction and organization. In this, leaders
support compliance through followers by penalizing
and rewarding. It is engaged in motivating and leading
followers by attracting to their personal self-interest. In
this leadership style, executives are based on
punishments and awards to attain better job
performance from their subordinates.

Transactional leadership in fast
food restaurant
In this leadership approach, managers in
restaurant will follow guidelines of owners and
they will motivated by reward strategy. For
example if leaders attains target they will get
bonus and in case of under performance such
as excessive customer grievances they will
get penalized.

Characteristics of transactional leadership
A transactional leader targets to extract
expected performance in restaurant from the
subordinates by encouraging them on an
exterior basis. Rewarding is conducted for
good behavior of employees such as
providing good food and sercices, and
meeting or surpassing the goals beyond the
organization expectations. For example if
employees have maximum tips or a chef
exceeds sales of dish then they will rewarded
for the same. On the other hand, employees
are penalized for any type of misconduct or
deviation.

Characteristics of transactional leadership
The transactional leadership has the
characteristic of reward performance, the
leader watches the performance of all
employees on the basis of particular
objectives and targets which are been set
already. In this leader of fast food restaurant
will supervise all employee and provide
rewards as the performance of workers.
They rapidly response when employees to
attain a pre-determined goal and will award
them in an appropriate manner.

Difference between transformational and
transactional leadership
If the fast food company uses transactional leaders, then they would be focused on the status quo, whereas if
they implement transactional leaders then they are highly oriented towards change. Transactional leadership
makes sense with pre-determined goals and the boundaries of the fast food company whereas transformational
approach does challenging with the status quo and is highly oriented towards future. Transactional leadership is
emphasized on the restaurant as a whole, awards, performance evaluation and are related with tasks and results,
on the other hand, transformational leadership aims on engagement and motivation with the future vision.

Use of transformational leadership
style in Fast food restaurant
 Transformational leaders can have a huge impact on the
leadership in fast food restaurant. This leadership seems
to be related with higher performance level and assaying
behavior in practical environment context. Moreover, the
subordinates that are apparent as transformational leaders
reflect reinforced identification with the extreme level of
self-efficacy in relation to their work.