This was a statement made by the trainer of a leadership program that I attended through my employer. Their premise was that each employee can be motivated to perform better. However, all of the motivation and encouragement may not make them better. The problem may be that they do not have the skill set to perform those duties well, yet, they do have value at something. One example would be a person who is working as a waiter in a restaurant who has trouble taking customer’s orders. They continue to get the customer’s orders wrong. The customers are frustrated, the waiter is frustrated and the restaurant suffers. This waiter, though, is very good at interacting with the customers throughout their stay in the restaurant. The waiter is very attentive to customer needs and engages them socially to the point of getting praised by them and management. In this situation, the manager can work with the waiter to improve their performance or recognize their talents and move them to a host type position. A leader’s role is to determine where people are a ten, and help them get to a place where they can utilize that strength. Transformational leadership is the best approach to determining employee’s strengths and helping them move to a position where they can use those strengths.
Transformational leadership involves leaders working with their followers to encourage them, build trust, and make them feel valued (Northouse, 2016). Northouse describes this style of leadership as one that transforms people through its concern for values, goals, ethics, and emotions; satisfying the needs of the follower and treating them with respect. Adair (2011) claims that people will follow a leader who makes them feel valued. Bass and Riggio (2006) believe that this style is popular because of its follower development and the mentoring and coaching aspect. The need to feel valued is in both leaders and followers and what Burns (1978) referred to as the need for gratification.
Bass and Riggio (2006) describe the four components of transformational leadership. Idealized influence (II) is where the leaders serves as a role model for the follower. The goal is for the follower to respect and trust the leader to where they want to emulate them. Inspirational Motivation (IM) is where a charismatic leader will shine. The premise is that leaders will be optimistic and motivate through inspiring their followers. Intellectual Stimulation (IS) happens when the leader works with the follower on alternative solutions to problems and asking questions thatrequire some thought by the follower. The leader also solicits feedback from the follower which is part of the last component of Individualized Consideration (IC). This component is at the core of what I mentioned above as one of the reasons for the popularity of transformational leadership. Leaders will spend time learning about follower’s needs, wants, desires, and the characteristics that make the follower unique. This is where coaching and mentoring take place to develop the follower.
These four components are part of the Full Range of Leadership Model which also include components of laissez-faire leadership, charisma, transactional leadership, and pseudo-transformational leadership (Bass and Riggio, 2006). There is a large amount of detail spent on each of these in their book but they present the evidence that the four components described have proven to be the most effective aspect of transformational leadership. Laissez-faire leadership, which is a hands-off approach to leadership or mainly non-leadership, has been shown to be the least effective.
Bass and Riggio (2006) clearly state that the development of followers is the heart of transformation
al leadership. They devote an entire chapter to the subject of empowering followers which is a result of individualized consideration where leaders provide some autonomy to each follower. Their research showed that this component yields increased performance and self-efficacy. Much of this focuses on increasing performance by an individual within the same job function. What if the performance does not increase? The development, mentoring, and coaching aspects will provide information to the leader regarding why the individual may not be increasing their performance as well as revealing to the leader strengths and weaknesses that can be used to determine if there is a better job function more suitable to the individual.
The time a leader spends with a follower should not be solely focused on observing task performance and correcting errors to increase performance. Time should be spent to develop them. As mentioned earlier, the focus is the needs, wants, and desires of the follower. The transformational leader will spend time getting to know the individual to learn these characteristics. This is where the leader learns at what the follower is a “ten.” The leader can then determine if the task needs adjusted so that the follower’s strengths can be used or if the follower will need to be in a different job function. If the latter is determined, the leader can then use their contacts to find a place where the follower will shine. Again, the transformational leader’s objective is the well-being of the follower even if this means mentoring them to find another job.
Since a major component of human nature is a need to feel valued, and the core of transformational leadership is follower development, one can easily see that transformational leadership is effective at increasing performance. The mentoring and coaching by the leader will develop the relationship between the leader and the follower where the leader focuses on discovering the strengths of the follower and works with them to determine how to increase performance or find them a different role. Keeping in mind that everyone has value and is good at something has helped me even with colleagues or senior management relationships.
References
Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York, NY: Open Road Integrated Media.
Adair, J. (2011). Leadership and motivation: The fifty-fifty rule and the eight key principles of motivating others. Philadelphia, PA: Kogan Page Limited.
Bass, B. M. & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Matt,
Excellent point regarding the generalization to larger corporations. I was of the same thinking prior to my discussions with our trainer. He mentioned that this leadership style of everyone being a ten at something stemmed from one of our VPs in one of our call centers. He has taken three of our call centers from worst to first on measured metrics in different parts of the country. The trainer described how this person would work with the call center employees to find out what they were good at and would help them find a position within the company where they could grow their skills, talents, and career.
Granted, not everyone is going to have that go-getter attitude and underperformers usually get the boot if they cannot perform their tasks. However, this is where the trainer distinguished the VP from other leaders because the VP took the time to spend with the employees to develop that relationship and the understanding of what they were good at. Again, not every employee became a ten at the call center or wanted to move to a different location but many others did.
Like I said in my post, this has stuck with me and I have used these techniques personally and where I hit my “aha” moment was when I learned that about 30% of the adult US population earns a bachelor’s degree or higher. That leaves 70% of the population who are looking for employment with a high school diploma at most. To your point, I agree that people are hired to do a specific job and usually those with higher education find a field in which they have some knowledge or skills. I will use my own career as an example. I went to Penn State right out of high school for Architectural Engineering. I did not complete my degree and worked as an architectural draftsman as this is where I had skills. The company closed up and I was left looking for a job. I found one as a receptionist at a local software company and the VP of Engineering saw something in me and asked me to work in technical support and from there I went on to a number of other technical positions all better than the previous.
I firmly believe that this type of leadership scales well in larger organizations where the bulk of the workforce is hired with minimal skills for the job function. Getting them to perform well at that job may not be something they can do, however, everyone in the workforce is good at something and a good leader will work with them to find that out and mentor them.
Well, I will say this, you definitely took transformational leadership identification to the next level. The analysis you put behind it with leaders and their functions as a leader is on point. It provides anyone a great opportunity to understand a little more what a good coaching and counseling session can do for some employee to either “light a fire” underneath them or to motivate an already great employee to make them better.
However, from the start I wasn’t so sure I would have finished the way I did. You bring up an example of an underperforming waiter, yet the potential to be a great host. You mention that a leaders job is to see the potential and get the employee to do “10” work in that job they can do because they lack the skills in other areas. If companies had the ability to “plug and play” employees to best suit a “10,” this world would be absolutely full a phenomenally performing companies. I say this with a hint of sarcasm and jest because we both know this does not happen.
Employees are initially hired because they have the resume to provide evidence of past skills and performance. When an employee comes in and then underperforms they are either given specific training for the job they were hired for or they are let go of because they did not meet the expected minimums for that required job. They just are not sat down and asked “is there a place where we can make you a “10” versus the “5” that you’re currently giving us?” This seems highly unlikely that any company would have the wherewithal to hold on to employees that underperform. Simply put, people are paid to do the job they were hired for and if they cannot do that, then they are released. Would you agree?
I’m interested to hear about your correlation between the waiter/host example you gave, transformational leadership, and the actual reality of that specific example happening in a large organization that can’t nor will afford itself and the employee an opportunity to swap jobs to see if it works out better. Thanks!
Matt