Transformational Leadership 4 of 4 (Dr. Brent Lindquist)

Hello again.  I'm back with the 4th part and the last part of my series on becoming a transformational leader.  I've been working through various issues particularly from the book "Positive Psychology in Practice” chapter 15, edited by Linley N. Joseph.  It comes up with ideas about transformational leadership and building transformational followers.  I suggested that this is an interesting parallel to the insights that we got from Romans 12 and II Corinthians 3 and I hope that you've had a chance to read some of those things.

In part 1 I talked about the four components of the Transformational Leader, and they are the idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration.

Idealized influence refers to the fact that the leader leads in ways that are the right way because they are the right way.  There is a moral sense of leadership that a good leader, a transformational leader, will follow.

Inspirational motivation encourages people to stream outside the box, if you will; to go beyond what they thought they could possibly do.

Intellectual stimulation encourages people to make decisions on their own.  We don't tell everybody what to do, but we give them just enough that they can start to draw their own conclusions.

And… individualized consideration has to do with helping people by understanding their whole world, learning from them, hearing about their personal life, encouraging them.

Week 2, we  looked at well-being and very important stuff going on because we discover that there's some really cool mental health concepts that are encouraged in a transformational environment and that they help people to truly become all that they can be.

Then last time we looked at some of the characteristics like self-efficacy, which is self judgment, trust in management, the ability to find meaning in work in organizational and occupational identity.

Today I want to offer a few comments about transformational leadership and followership in a multicultural environment.  First of all, this whole field of positive psychology is not just a North American thing.  In fact, the book that I'm referring to was edited in Great Britain and a lot of different people of different nationalities have contributed to this whole context.

What can help transformational leadership and followership whither or flower?  Well here are some ideas.  I think a leader can cause transformation to wither by basically ignoring 1 through 4.  A leader who does not have an ethical standard, who does not behave in a moral way, will cause a lot of distrust, not trust.  A leader who thinks that he or she has to inspire by belittling or by demeaning people will not get them to do more than they thought was possible.  A leader who demands precision in exactitude and following every rule and letter of his law will not get independent thinkers who can solve things that he never thought of or she never thought of.

And finally, a leader that doesn't pay attention to the fact that there are people that he or she is working with will never get any respect.  So you ignore 1 through 4 and you've just done tremendously bad things to your followers.  Now in a multicultural context, this is even more important.  If you cause somebody to lose face by your bluntness or directness, you’re not giving them individualized consideration.  Do you actually know what each culture group or nationality in your team needs?  I don't often do very well with this.  I sometimes am amazed at my own ignorance even after all these years.  And I always learn things.  I'm learning new things just this month on dealing with a multicultural team.  How I come across, how I try and get things accomplished, how I ask for input and how they process what I say.  It's phenomenally enlightening because I still have so much to learn.

Well what do we do to help flower, help this transformational arena flower, rather than whither?  I think we need to seek input from what each group needs.  How do I do that?  Well, one of the things is that you kind of lead by example or lead by case scenario.  When things are going reasonably well, develop some ideas about how to solve problems, and have people give input about how to solve them in their own context.  Help each person value the other viewpoints.  For example, somebody who has a much more indirect way of dialogue, of decision making, of control.  Help them to explain it to somebody who is much more direct.  Encourage people to try those kinds of things and also there is nothing that is better than the art of listening.  Can you listen as a leader and as a follower, can you listen?  How do we seek to do that?  I think that's a skill that's practiced every day.  Listening and then speaking.  Even before speaking, paraphrase it to make sure that you heard - that you listened well.

So here are a few points:

1.  Know where you are transforming from and where you are transforming to.  Go back and look at Romans 12 and II Corinthians 3.  Certainly there's another worldly aspect about transformation in those passages, but I think they are those worldliness issues that we can learn from.

2.  Perseverance is resilience.  I talked about the persevering things like positive self regard, perceived competence, goal directedness, autonomy, integrated functioning.  Those are all resilience-building behaviours.  To what degree are you as a leader encouraging each one of those?  Can you identify places, time, problems, situations and people in which those things showed growth, showed movement?  Do the people that you are leading have a generally positive self regard?  Do they think that they are reasonably okay?  Do they think that they can do what they are required to do?  If they can't, are they on a track where they are gaining competence or are they gaining resources for that competence?  Are the goals clearly explained or explained in a way that makes sense to people?  Are people given the opportunity to be autonomous and to be interdependent?  Are they encouraged to push the boundaries of their own personal skill set so that they're more autonomous?  Are they encouraging inter-directedness?

A third point is that transformational leaders beget transformational followers, which beget transformational leaders.  It's a circle.  It’s not a vicious circle.  Transformational leadership encourages followers to become transformational followers and if they are transformational followers, I think they are on a path towards transformational leadership in themselves.

So now where do we go from here?  Well, be realistically hard on yourself.  Build up your self efficacy.  Say, “How am I doing both as a leader and as a follower?  What are some things I need to grow with?”  Next, recognize that meaning is both doing and being.  It's not something that is one or the other.  Can you find meaning in your job, in your responsibilities and in your being there?

Next don't be afraid to dream.  What I get when I look at this stuff is the ability to dream; the ability to see boundaries as not great big walls, but places where safety and security are.  The light goes on outside the walls too.  And remember - results can be in surprising places and packages.  You never know.  Sometimes we don't know for a long time whether we've been on the right path.  I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.  Dream, empower, encourage competence, find meaning in surprising places.  Those are all good points.  I'm going to end with that.  Talk to you next time.