I have the incredible opportunity of developing and teaching undergraduate leadership classes in the School of Educational Policy and Leadership at The Ohio State University. The School has had a “leadership” course for many years – a course focused on team and group development. I developed two new classes this year that will add to the portfolio of leadership offerings at Ohio State. One course is focused on understanding leadership theory and the other course focuses on understanding diversity.
My class last quarter was an introduction to leadership theory. To help understand the evolution of leadership theory, I had students link transactional and transformational leadership concepts to experiences they had in their student organizations and work settings. Since the class took place during the quarter where Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States, we had many discussions about why Obama has been characterized as a transformational leader. These were some of the points students in my class made:
- Because he represents something “new,” Americans are willing to put more faith in Obama as someone who can solve old problems with new ideas.
- President Obama campaigned on hope and change, so it’s natural to make the case that he is focused on transforming our nation.
- The President faces problems of epic proportions, so we must have faith in him to solve these problems in new and inventive ways. Inventive problem solving requires using all ideas from many disciplines to create solutions. Thomas Edison’s approach of brainstorm and trial and error won’t change the economy, because the solution should emerge from what we already know. And that won’t fix the problem. A transformational approach in problem solving requires the President to think about how to re-engineer the economy.
- There are so many problems today that have been around for so long that we need to rethink how we handle the economy, racism, education, and international relations.
Students were able to understand concepts of transformational leadership relatively easily. What I noticed early on, though, was that transactional leadership techniques were judged as being negative and elementary in relation to using transformational techniques. I had to address this early on in the course so that students understood these concepts in terms of a continuum.
Homrig (2001) illustrated that transformational leaders sometimes expect so much from their followers and demand so much that soon followers are not allowed to live a life with balance…their entire being is focused on work for the organization. Obviously, this lack of balance can cause great stress and significant problems in all types of relationships.
When this was outlined for students, they were able to see that transactional and transformational leadership styles can complement each other well. Through class discussions and the use of case studies, students applied transformational leadership concepts to get a good understanding how to develop their own styles. We paid close attention to understanding the role of followers, often left out of leadership conversations. Thus, students considered how important it was to work on developing followers if they wished to be successful leaders. |
