ВЛИЯНИЕ СТИЛЕЙ ЛИДЕРСТВА НА ПРОИЗВОДИТЕЛЬНОСТЬ ПОДЧИНЕННЫХ И ПОСЛЕДОВАТЕЛЕЙ

Научная статья
Выпуск: № 1 (20), 2014
Опубликована:
2014/02/08
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Токбулатова А.Т.

Магистрант, Казахстанско-Британский технический университет

ВЛИЯНИЕ СТИЛЕЙ ЛИДЕРСТВА НА ПРОИЗВОДИТЕЛЬНОСТЬ ПОДЧИНЕННЫХ И ПОСЛЕДОВАТЕЛЕЙ

Аннотация

Цель данной статьи заключается в исследовании влияния трансформационного стиля лидерства на производительность подчиненных и последователей. В данной статье рассматриваются личные результаты деятельности последователя, такие как расширение прав и развитие возможностей, доверие и мотивация, а так же несколько подходов, такие как «Теория пути и цели» и «Теория обмена между руководителем и подчиненными». Понимая и осознавая влияние стилей лидерства на личные результаты, упомянутых выше, лидеры могут мотивировать поведение последователей таким образом, что оказывает положительное влияние не только на подчиненных, но и на всю организацию в целом.

Ключевые слова: Трансформационный стиль лидерства, производительность подчиненных и последователей, расширение прав и развитие возможностей, доверие.

Tokbulatova A.T.

Master’s Degree student of Management, Kazakh-British technical university

THE IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP STYLES ON SUBORDINATE AND FOLLOWERS’ PERFORMANCE

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of the transformational leadership style on subordinate and followers’ performance. This article examines the following personal outcomes of the subordinate/follower: empowerment, trust, and motivation. Additionally, this article reviews several contingency approaches that focus on the exchange between leaders and their followers, such as Path-Goal Theory and Leader-Member Exchange. By understanding the impact of leadership styles on personal outcomes mentioned above, leaders can influence and motivate the behavior of subordinates in such a way that the resultant behavior has a positive impact on the organization as a whole.

Keywords: transformational leadership, subordinate and followers’ performance, empowerment, trust.

Under modern conditions with dynamically changing socio-cultural environment the importance of introducing innovation and rapid change in the organization is greater than ever. In such circumstances, success can achieve the organization that organizational culture initiates innovative behavior of employees. The possibility of forming such organizational culture is greatly facilitated by its leaders and managers.

The study conducted by Glukhov showed that transformational leadership style of managers inherent in organizations with a high level of innovation development during the crisis. Managers with the transactional leadership style equally represented in organizations with both high and low levels of innovation development during the crisis. Empirical research showed that a high degree of innovation development of organization provided by a complex interrelated personality traits of managers, including a transformational leadership style.

There is a widespread belief that the leaders create a difference and can have a profound impact on individuals, groups and entire organizations, and this has caused to conduct a lot of researches. Researchers have stayed mainly on two aspects of leadership: (1) why some members of the organization are leaders and others are not, and (2) why some leaders are more effective and successful in their work than others. In general, these studies have confirmed the popular belief that the leadership is the most important component of individual, group and organizational effectiveness.

According to Toney (1996) the most successful leaders have four core characteristics that seem to dominate the consistent attainment of goals:  the trait of honesty, focus on the organizational goal, high degree of technical competence in the skills of goal achievement and moderately high competence in their functional field, and critical analysis of alternatives. Moreover, they build a foundation of supporting activities that result in goal achievement; one of them is applying people skills. Good leaders activate group employees and the organization as a whole and encourage them to work at high levels and achieve their goals. Conversely, often the lack of effective leadership can be explained by poor performance of work at all levels of the organization.

Studies have shown that leaders indeed affect their subordinates or supporters on their levels of motivation, performance, absenteeism, turnover and the quality of decisions.

 Several theories or approaches to dealing with management have been proposed, which take into account the features of the manager as well as the impact of the situation that allows deeply understand and explain the effectiveness of the leader. The combination of these additional theories with the approach based on characteristics or behavioral approach gives more complete picture to help better understand the performance of leaders and fully explain why they are able to achieve effectiveness. Path-Goal Theory describes how leaders can motivate their subordinates to act at a high level and can help them get satisfaction from working in diverse situations. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) takes into account that leaders often refer to all subordinates in different ways setting them different types of relationships.

Considering the importance of the theme of leadership in educational and popular literature it is not surprising that in this area there are more and new theoretical and research works.

Researcher in the field of leadership Bernard Bass proposed a theory that analyzes how managers have a significant impact on their followers and their organizations by transforming them. According to Bass, transformational leadership is realized when the leader transforms or changes his subordinates in three important ways, leading to the fact that the followers begin to trust manager, choose behaviors that contribute to organizational goals and become motivated to work at a high level.

  1. Transformational leaders increase subordinates/followers awareness the importance of their tasks and the need to perform them at high level.
  2. Transformational leaders lead subordinates/followers sought to personal growth, professional development and achievements.
  3. Transformational leaders motivate their subordinates/followers to work for the organization and not exclusively for their own benefit.

The four components of leader behavior are traditionally associated with transformational leadership: idealized influence, whereby leaders influence followers by arousing strong emotions, respect, trust, and loyalty from them; inspirational motivation, whereby a leader communicates high expectations, uses symbols and imagery to focus effort, and expresses the importance of organizational purposes; intellectual stimulation, whereby a leader increases subordinates  awareness of problems and encourages them to view problems from innovative and creative perspective; individualized consideration, whereby a leader provides support and encouragement by paying attention to each individual’s need for achievement and growth by acting as a coach or mentor.

How leaders influence the type of transforming their subordinates/followers and cause these changes? To answers these questions two hypothesis were developed:

H1: The transformational leadership style will have a positive impact on subordinate/ followers’ trust.

H2: The transformational leadership style will have a positive impact on subordinate/followers’ empowerment.

Trust

Leadership theorists show that transformational leadership requires followers to change their motivational concept from egoistic interest in personal benefit to commitment to implement collective mission. House and Shamir (2003) prove that leaders can carry out this transformation by affecting the followers so that they are tied to the achievement of personal satisfaction with the group's goals. Leader's ability to provide this type of influence is based on the achievement of trust between leader and follower. Howell and Shamir (2005) stated that in order to minimize the occurrence of personalized charismatic relationships, organizations need to attend constantly to the development, maintenance, and enforcement of norms of trust, collaboration, openness, integrity, and respect for expertise.

H1: The transformational leadership style will have a positive impact on subordinate/followers’ trust.

Empowerment

Transformational leaders are charismatic personalities. They have their own idea how to improve the situation in the organization compared to its current state. Bass and Avolio (1990) stated that transformational leaders enhance followers' capacity to think on their own, develop new ideas, and question outmoded operating rules. Transformational leaders also display individualized consideration by paying special attention to specific followers’ needs for personal growth and achievement, and trying to meet their needs and satisfy their expectations for future development. Avolio and Gibbons (1988) posited that a major goal of transformational leaders is to develop follower self-management and self-development. Shamir (1991) similarly stressed the transformational effects of charismatic leaders on follower independence. They also empower followers to recognize the importance of their work and develop their knowledge, skills and abilities to reach their full potential, and motivate these employees to find innovative ways to solve problems.

Transformational leadership is often different from the type of transactional leadership. Transactional leaders expect followers to achieve agreed-upon objectives by giving them a reward for higher performance, noting the error, pointing to them and deviations from the set targets in the work, but do not encourage them to assume greater responsibility for developing and leading themselves and others.

Transformational leaders can also use transactional leadership style (e.g. by giving them a reward for higher performance), but they go further, actually encouraging subordinates to share their vision, to put aside personal interests and put first the interests of groups and organizations, as well as to take responsibility and help solve arising problems. Transformational leaders exhibit charismatic behaviors, arouse inspirational motivation, provide intellectual stimulation, and treat followers with individualized consideration. These behaviors transform their followers helping them to reach their full potential and generate the highest levels of performance. The study conducted by Barling et al. (1996) found that on training those managers on transformational leadership, the subordinates/followers perceived higher intellectual stimulation, charisma and individualized consideration and organizational commitment increased significantly.

H2: The transformational leadership style will have a positive impact on subordinate/ followers’ empowerment.

Thus, the results suggest that transformational leadership can encourage and motivate subordinates and followers to achieve better results at work and at the same time contribute to their personal, professional development and achieve greater job satisfaction. Transformational leadership may be especially important for organizations that find themselves in a difficult situation and are not able to reach their goals.

References

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  2. Barling, J., Weber, T., & Kelloway, K. E. Effects of transformational leadership training on attitudinal and financial outcomes: A field experiment // Journal of Applied Psychology. – 1996. Vol. 81. – P. 827-832.
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