This paper surveys major leadership theories—including trait, transformational, transactional, authentic, psychodynamic, and path-goal approaches—before applying those frameworks to real observed leader behaviors. Drawing on works by Bennis and Nanus, Bass, Northouse, and others, the paper evaluates how leaders in one organizational setting demonstrated vision, communication, trust-building, and positive self-regard. A subsequent analysis examines how leaders perceive their roles as integrating vision, strategy, and people, and how they develop over time through self-awareness and personal growth. The paper concludes with a reflective summary of lessons for practice as a transformational leader.
Management and leadership are often used interchangeably in everyday life. Leadership is normally understood as a process that helps in directing and mobilizing people (Kotter, 1990). For the past 100 years, much attention has been paid to the subject. Some of the current theories of the nature and exercise of leadership include authentic leadership, new-genre leadership, complexity leadership, shared/collective/distributed leadership, servant leadership, and transformational leadership.
Bill (2005) described the authentic leader as one with a genuine desire to serve others through their leadership. Such leaders are more interested in empowering their subordinates to make a difference. He noted that authentic leaders are not simply born that way, and that those with natural leadership gifts still need to be fully developed to become outstanding leaders. Bass (2008) referred to the transactional leader as one who dangles the carrot and the stick simultaneously: employees are rewarded for meeting agreements and standards, or penalized for failing to do so. Through transformational leadership, by contrast, followers are encouraged to perform beyond expectations while transcending self-interest.
Northouse (2010) described the style approach as emphasizing the behavior of a leader rather than traits alone, which exclusively focus on what leaders do and how they act. According to the style approach, leadership is composed of task behaviors and relationship behaviors. Gill (2011) highlighted a number of leadership theories, notable among them being trait theories of leadership, theories of emergent leadership, leadership style theories, the Bradford model of leadership, psychodynamic theory, the path-goal theory, and contingency and situational leadership theories.
Trait theories, according to Gill, are also referred to as Great Man theories, and they address the common qualities and characteristics of effective leaders. Theories of emergent leadership suggest that leaders may emerge who have characteristics and skills that meet the needs of their group, organization, or society. Psychodynamic theory holds that the effectiveness of leaders is a function of the psychodynamic exchange between leaders and group members. Avolio, Walumbwa, and Weber (2009) posited that cognitive leadership entails a broad range of approaches, emphasizing how leaders and followers think and process information. They further noted that transactional leadership is founded on an exchange of rewards contingent on performance.
Leaders in an organization where I worked embodied strong human-handling skills: attention through vision, meaning through communication, trust through positioning, and the deployment of self through positive self-regard and what Bennis and Nanus (1997) call the Wallenda factor. Because our leaders were results-oriented, their visions and intentions were compelling, which drew many people toward them. They gained attention through their intensity and commitment rather than through coercion.
At formative stages in my workplace, I noticed that some of my line managers were unique in the way they carried out their duties and responsibilities. They never wasted time and were very clear about what they required from their subordinates. They were precise and emphatic about what needed to be done at any given moment. They were clearly fixated on outcomes and had unwavering attention to results. Their obsession with their objectives indicated a visionary disposition. They burned with a passion that was mirrored in their actions — comparable, as Bennis and Nanus put it, to a child who envisions a castle and wills it into existence.
The visions they conveyed gave employees a great deal of confidence, and we eventually came to believe that we could perform the necessary tasks. They were challengers, not coddlers (Bennis & Nanus, 1997). Our leaders made us believe that an undertaking was both vitally important and nearly impossible — a combination that generated a powerful drive and an intellectual resolve to pursue each challenge. Because of their burning desire to transform purpose into action, our leaders exhibited great powers of concentration. They clearly knew what they wanted, and they possessed a conscious awareness of their capacities and their deployment. This made them capable of strategic delay, maneuver, and principled compromise. Their resolve was founded on the belief that the harder they worked, the more they could achieve.
My leaders also understood that leadership is a transaction between leaders and followers, and that leaders cannot exist without those they lead. They therefore cultivated resonance between themselves and the workforce, paying close attention to employees and, in turn, earning our attention. They brought out the best in us, creating a genuine sense of unity (Bennis & Nanus, 1997).
Our leaders perfected the art of communication. They seemed to understand that belief in one's dreams is not sufficient, and that even the most noble intentions cannot be actualized without effective communication. Because of this insight, they projected images that inspired enthusiasm and commitment in others. They worked diligently to capture our imaginations and to align us behind the organization's overarching goals. They knew that workers have a capacity for recognizing authentic purpose and rallying behind it. They were also aware that effective leadership must integrate the management of meaning with the mastery of communication (Bennis & Nanus, 1997).
Many of our leaders were tremendously articulate and possessed strong communication styles. Those who were quieter by nature had an intensely commanding presence. Some of these silent leaders conveyed expectations by drawing models or employing metaphors. Our leaders effectively used communication to rally employees behind a given idea, packaging information so that both its form and its meaning were clear. They were capable of articulating and defining what had previously remained implicit by inventing images, metaphors, and models that provided a focus for new attention. This enabled them to consolidate and challenge prevailing wisdom.
Our leaders conveyed and shaped meaning through visual exercises, symbolic gestures, and precise verbal imagery. They recognized that it was essential to communicate a blueprint for interpreting situations so that employees' actions were guided by a shared understanding of reality. They were also aware that meaning and communication are not the same thing, and that meaning has as much to do with shared experience as with facts. Our line managers specifically dealt with problem-solving that involved a clear problem, a method, and a solution. Beyond that, however, our leaders had a taste for problem-finding — identifying new challenges — and this gave our organization direction and vision.
"Trust-building, positive self-regard, and handling criticism"
"Leaders' three-dimensional roles and lifelong personal development"
"Personal commitments to transformational leadership practice"
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