Transactional Leadership
Essay by 24 • October 30, 2010 • 542 Words (3 Pages) • 3,400 Views
Transactional leadership involves a social exchange. It "focuses on interpersonal interactions between managers and employees" (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2005 p. 613).
In transactional leadership "Leaders are seen as engaging in behaviors that maintain a quality interaction between themselves and followers" (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2005 p. 613).
The two characteristics of Transactional leadership are: "Leaders use contingent rewards to motivate employees, and leaders exert corrective action only when subordinates fail to obtain performance goals" ( Kreitner & Kinicki, 2005 p. 613).
A charismatic or transformational leader involves transforming the thoughts of the people. A transformational leader focuses on "visionary and inspirational messages, nonverbal communication, appeal to ideological values, intellectual stimulation of followers by the leader, display of confidence in self and followers, and leader expectations for follower self-sacrifice and for performance beyond the call of duty"(organizational Science, 1993 p. 577-94). Transformational leadership can generate major changes and stimulate people to work towards organizational goals over self-interests (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2005).
I think that Hitler can definitely be described as a transformational leader throughout his career. Hitler gained, and kept his popularity and leadership with his people through actions involved with the charismatic approach. However, once Hitler gained power he also began to fall under the characteristics of a transactional leader. At that point of his career he had the power to reward or punish his subordinates or followers. If his followers were loyal to him, he rewarded them by giving them a higher authority or helping them with some other request. In the same way, if one of his followers would happen to go against him, he would punish them by death.
French and Ravens five bases of power are: reward power, which means that you have the ability to give or have a say of whether someone gets a reward; Coercive power is when you have the ability
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