Military Leadership And Transformational Leadership

In the military, regardless of whether or not they are in one’s chain of command, virtually all military members practice a form of passive management by exception dimension of transactional leadership. This means that members address each other about failure to comply with standards, correcting each other to help maintain a culture of excellence. The function of a leader in this dimension is a more active role of identifying and avoiding deviations from standards, correct the issue, and provide remediation if necessary areas in a more active role.

Transformational leadership goes beyond defining roles and duties and consistent quality performance of organizational members in favor of an approach that affects member’s values in an effort to improve worker satisfaction and success. Transformational leadership, as the name implies, focuses on change and reform by, “influencing, inspiring, moving, and literally transforming followers to achieve organizational goals beyond their self interest” (Burns as cited by Weiss, 2011). Bass

Military organizations are constantly changing, as are their business counterparts. With these changes, leaders and their leadership styles must change as well. Effective leaders utilize changing environments to their advantage as opportunities for growth as well as lessons to impart to subordinates. The more adept a leader is to handling change, the higher the likelihood of increased leadership responsibility is. Not only are leaders required to ensure self-development is ongoing, they must also provide developmental opportunities for their subordinates. Imparting new skills and enabling personal growth opportunities for subordinates is also a necessity due to the importance of developing team members as people, experts, and future leaders