Key Takeaways
- Transformational leaders are enthusiastic and inspire their team’s full potential.
- Encouraging creativity helps people stretch their limits and not feel discouraged.
- Motivating followers can be done by recognizing and rewarding their work.
How would you describe a strong leader? One study cited leadership qualities such as assertiveness, adaptability, intelligence, and conscientiousness as the most important.
Transformational leaders are positive, empowering, and inspiring. They value followers and inspire them to perform better. So, what can we do to embrace these valued leadership qualities and become stronger and more effective leaders?
Start by Understanding Your Leadership Style
Understanding your current leadership style is essential. What are your strengths? Which areas need some improvement? One way to start assessing your skills is to take this leadership style quiz to get a general idea of how you lead.
This leadership styles quiz was reviewed by Rachel Goldman, PhD, FTOS.
Once you have completed the quiz, read about the major characteristics of your dominant style. Are these qualities helping or hindering your leadership? Once you’ve determined which areas need work, you can look for ways to improve your leadership abilities.
Encourage Creativity
Intellectual stimulation is one of the leadership qualities that define transformational leadership. Followers need to be encouraged to express their creativity. Effective leaders should offer new challenges with ample support to achieve these goals.
One way to foster creativity is to offer challenges to group members, making sure that the goals are within the grasp of their abilities. The purpose of this type of exercise is to get people to stretch their limits but not become discouraged by barriers to success.
Serve as a Role Model
Idealized influence is another of the four key components of transformational leadership. Transformational leaders embody the behaviors and characteristics that they encourage in their followers. They walk the walk and talk the talk. As a result, group members admire these leaders and work to emulate these behaviors.
Research suggests that leaders are able to foster a specific belief and then transmit that inspiration to their followers. As a result, followers are optimistic and have high standards for performance and achievement.
If you want to become a better leader, work on modeling the qualities that you would like to see in your team members.
Be Passionate
Would you look to someone for guidance and leadership if they did not truly care about the goals of the group? Of course not! Great leaders are not just focused on getting group members to finish tasks; they have a genuine passion and enthusiasm for the projects they work on.
You can develop this leadership quality by thinking of different ways that you can express your zeal. Let people know that you care about their progress. When one person shares something with the rest of the group, be sure to tell them how much you appreciate such contributions.
Listen and Communicate Effectively
Another important quality of transformational leadership involves a focus on providing one-on-one communication with group members. Transformational leadership is effective when leaders are able to communicate their vision to followers, who then feel inspired and motivated by this vision.
Good leaders should express sincere care and concern for the members of their group both verbally and nonverbally.
By keeping the lines of communication open, these leaders can ensure that group members can make contributions and receive recognition for their achievements.
Have a Positive Attitude
Transformational leaders have an upbeat, optimistic attitude that serves as a source of inspiration for followers. If leaders seem discouraged or apathetic, members of the group are likely to also become uninspired.
Even when things look bleak, and your followers start to feel disheartened, try to stay positive. This does not mean viewing things through rose-colored glasses. It simply means maintaining a sense of optimism and hope in the face of challenges.
Encourage People to Make Contributions
Let the members of your team know that you welcome their ideas. Leaders who encourage involvement from group members are often referred to as democratic or participative leaders. While they retain the final say over all decisions, they encourage team members to take an active role in coming up with ideas and plans.
Research has shown that using a democratic leadership style leads to greater commitment, more creative problem-solving and improved productivity.
Motivate Your Followers
Transformational leaders also provide inspirational motivation to encourage their followers to get into action. Of course, being inspirational isn’t always easy. Fortunately, you don’t need motivational speeches to rouse your group members.
Some ideas for leadership inspiration include being genuinely passionate about ideas or goals, helping followers feel included in the process and offering recognition, praise, and rewards for people’s accomplishments.
Offer Rewards and Recognition
Another important quality of a good leader involves knowing that offering effective recognition and rewards is one of the best ways to help followers feel appreciated and happy. It may also come as no surprise that happy people tend to perform better at work.
Keep Trying New Things
Who says leadership is a one-way relationship? As you work toward developing some of these leadership qualities, don’t forget to look to your followers for feedback and inspiration. Pay attention to the things that have been effective in the past and always be on the lookout for new ways to inspire, motivate, and reward group members.
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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Cekmecelioglu, HG, Ozbag, GK. Leadership and creativity: the impact of transformational leadership on individual creativity. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences. 2016;235(24):243-249. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.11.020
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Hayati D, Charkhabi M, Naami A. The relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement in governmental hospitals nurses: a survey study. Springerplus. 2014;3:25. doi:10.1186/2193-1801-3-25
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Steinmann B, Klug HJP, Maier GW. The path is the goal: how transformational leaders enhance followers’ job attitudes and proactive behavior. Front Psychol. 2018;9:2338. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02338
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Amanchukwu RN, Stanley GJ, Ololube NP. A review of leadership theories, principles and styles and their relevance to educational management. Management. 2015;5(1):6-14. doi:10.5923/j.mm.20150501.02
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Riggio, RE. The 4 elements of transformational leaders. Psychology Today. November 15, 2014.
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Gillbert SL, Kelloway, EK. Leadership, recognition and well-being: a moderated mediational model. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences. 2018;35(4):523-524. doi:10.1002/cjas.1477
Additional Reading
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Bass BM, Riggio, RE. Transformational Leadership (2nd ed.). Erlbaum; 2016.
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