The trouble with most texts on leadership is that they are mostly
conceptual rather than behavioural. In William James' terms they are
learning about rather than learning how.(Can I say that a large amount of
the discussion on this list also falls into this category!) So if you
want to learn what it is exactly like to behave as a transformational
leader, rather than to be one, whatever that is, try looking at some of
the British texts on leadership such as
Wright, P.L. Managerial Leadership.London, Routledge, 1996
and
Wright.P.L. and Taylor,D.S. Improving Leadership Performance:
Interpersonal Skills for Effective Leadership,2nd ed.Prentice Hall 1994
In a nutshell our work here ( Bradford Management Centre ) shows that the
essential behavioural difference between Transactional and
Transformational leaders is that the former uses a higher proportion of
closed and leading questions in their interactions with their staff and
the latter uses more open and reflective questions. So if you want to
increase the amount of transformational leadership in an organisation
start by training the managers in how to use open, probes and reflective
questions.
Perhaps this is all too simple and straightforward, but like most things
in life to be able to do the crucial simple things well is the amongst
the most difficult of all human activities! Such is leadership.
Gerry Randell
University of Bradford Management Centre, Yorkshire, England.
--GA RANDELL <G.A.Randell@Bradford.ac.uk>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>