How to Become a Transformational Leader
Meaningful change within a company can be the difference between booming success and unfruitful business. This change starts with an organization’s leadership – and transformational leadership is a key driver in kick-starting that change.
What is transformational leadership?
Transformational leadership is the process where leaders gain a dedicated relationship with their employees. They engage and influence them through different means, like motivation, active listening, building a transparent and trust-based workplace environment, and much more. These positive leadership characteristics inspire and cultivate creativity, which can transform a workforce.
But how do you become a transformational leader? There are many ways you can look at transformational leadership, but understanding the key principles that inspire and ‘transform’ a workforce is key in taking on the role as a leader.
Elements of transformational leadership
What is transformational leadership style? Let’s take a look at some of the elements that make up this approach.
Idealized influence
Idealized influence is all about leading by example and becoming a role model to your workforce. Charismatic, motivated leaders are far more likely to inspire those around them to want to be more like them, influencing their work output to match that of the leader. Transformational leaders are often pioneering, and open to new ideas without being intolerant to the potential risks. This can inspire a workforce to think the same way, and through this creativity often comes successful and innovative ideas. This is the premise of idealized influence to cultivate positive change.
Inspirational motivation
This element of transformational leadership is one’s ability to inspire confidence and purpose within a team in order to motivate them.
This is hugely influenced by a leader’s communication skills, how they portray their goals, and how they inspire their same commitment and enthusiasm to these goals within their workforce. Whilst connecting with employees is key here, demonstrating a similar sense of authority is also fundamental.
Giving your employees direction and being optimistic about the future you’re looking for within a business is, no doubt, going to be motivational and help to engage your workforce with a sense of purpose.
Intellectual stimulation
As previously mentioned, transformational leadership can cultivate a real sense of creativity within a business. As a transformational leader, your job is to support this creativity, fuel it, and stimulate even further creative thinking. Giving your employees autonomy and freedom within their goals but supporting them when needed gives them the intellectual stimulation to expand ideas, which can be fundamental in positive and successful business transformation.
Individualized consideration
Any leader will know that within a workforce, every individual has different needs, wants, and desires. Each of these individualized needs is what is going to be motivational for that person. So, understanding them is key to engaging and motivating your workforce, which is why individualized consideration is an element within transformational leadership. Understanding different people’s needs can be difficult, but if a transformational leader provides the opportunity for personalized coaching, then understanding and motivating a workforce of individuals can become far easier.
Whether it’s through organizing internal coaching sessions or investing in external one-to-one coaching, considering your individuals and showing them you care for their growth, development, and wellbeing is key in instigating a healthy business environment and seeing positive changes. As a transformational leader, this should be a priority.
Skills of a transformational leader
Transformational leadership can also be looked at in a skills-based way, rather than taking a look at the elements that make up the model. When looking to become a transformational leader, building on these skills is the first step to success.
Here are some of the skills needed to create and become a transformational leader:
The ability to build trust
The ability to encourage
The ability to inspire with passion
Innovation
The ability to coach others
Emotional intelligence
The ability to build trust
Without trust, leaders won’t have the ability to get people to follow them, undertake their goals, and have faith in their vision. Without gaining that trust from your employees, chances are you won’t get far with any new business ideas!
But it’s not just about getting a workforce to trust you as a transformational leader. It’s about having trust in your team too, to be left autonomously to innovate. Building a work environment where trust and transparency are at its core is a much-needed skill for any transformational leader.
The ability to encourage
This one’s simple. Encouragement drives motivation, and motivation drives performance.
The ability to inspire with passion
Having a charismatic, inspirational presence within a company is going to not only show your passion but motivate those around you to feel the same way and get them working towards goals that will transform a business with the same drive you have.
Innovation
Not only does being innovative and creative yourself aid business transformation, but having the skills to encourage innovation elsewhere and tolerate the risks that come with new and creative ideas is a key skill for transformational leaders.
What’s better? Being able to instill this innovation within a workforce. One individual isn’t going to innovate a business, you need a workforce operating together for that.
The ability to coach others
Transformational leaders have the skills needed to help others to develop and grow through coaching, allowing employees to believe in their abilities and increase their self-confidence.
Emotional intelligence
Studies suggest that transformational leadership is strongly related to emotional intelligence. This translates to being able to solve difficult decisions and problems, whilst understanding and empathizing with the individuals within a workforce.
How to become a transformational leader
When learning about how to become a transformational leader for your business, it’s easy to start by thinking big: big ideas, big changes, big goals.
But when building yourself up to become an effective and transformational leader, learning the skills highlighted above, working on self-awareness, and starting small is how you’ll eventually captivate, inspire, and lead a transformational workforce that creates change and shapes the future of the organization.