Once in a while you come across an individual in a leadership position that on the surface appears to be genuine but when you get to know this individual further a sense of ambiguity distills feels of deception to the extent that you fear surrendering full loyalty to that individual, or if you already did, you quickly retract your commitment and instead resort to a reclusive mode when working with this individual. On the surface they appear to be interested in subordinates’ success and deeply dedicated to seeing those beneath them not only achieve organizational objectives, but also reach their fullest potential in all their endeavors. They appear, in many ways, to captivate and embody the leadership style known as Transformational Leadership. By the very definition, the concept of being a transformational leader infers a commitment to subordinate’s empowerment to achieve self-actualization, stimulate motivation, and an absolute devotion to an altruistic endeavor where individualized consideration extends from leader to followers’ well-being that should in turn return steadfast fidelity and loyalty to organizational objectives and the leader’s initiatives (Northouse, 2013). These defining characteristics of a transformational leader are uniquely distinguishable as the methods leaders utilize to achieve objectives are equally distinct such that counterfeit attempts to imitate them can easily be discerned. Quasi attempts by leaders who genuinely don’t possess the ideologies of this style of leadership can be identified with little difficulty because the tell-tale intentions of bogus manipulators who attempt to gain favor by attempting charismatic influencing eventually surface and exposes the typical egocentric, conditional, and often times net return objective ambitions that are absent of concern for those that are delegated lower mundane tasks of executing the objectives to keep the organization functioning (Northouse, 2013). In other words, pseudo-transformational leader’s counterfeit attempts to simulate caring for subordinates self-actualization becomes clear because their real intention of self-aggrandization has greater value and will always surface when they see no value in helping others that don’t show promise to provide them with immediate returns.
One such pseudo-transformational leader I have had the unpleasant experience to encounter is a past supervisor named Sally (fictitious name). As the head of the department, she had the responsibility of delegating work to subordinates and ensuring that they complete their assignments according to the specifications of clients’ requirements. Working in the metal fabricating industry where customized product development calls for an individualistic approach to each assignment, it is important to gain a full understanding of customers’ expectations and a constant affirmation that those expectations are being satisfied through the developmental process. The job of the supervisor is to be the liaison between the manufacturing employee and the client to extract subtle desires, clarify enigmatic requests, and to translate the explicit interpretations of clients to allow for the delivery of exceptionally specific metal creations that exceeds the creative expectations of customer orders. As a new employee that started to work in the manufacturing side of such a company, I relied heavily on my supervisor, Sally, to give me instructions and the necessary feedback to perform my duties accurately. Upon starting this new job, I was deeply moved by the verbal pledges she gave to deliver on serving in making my instructions both clear and easy, and her seemingly devoted desires to provide all the necessary psychological, material, and unexpected needs to not only achieve my duties on the job, but to also be supportive in a similar way for me to realize many of my personal ambitions, mostly of educational endeavors. Sally seemed to have an inner sense of purpose that placed the outcomes of her subordinates ahead of her personal success, at least in her professed ambitions. Initially I felt that working under her would be a great experience, as it appeared that for the first time I saw what appeared to be someone whose intentions were to ignited motivation and stir up absolute harmony among workers. In many ways the image she projected was in complete congruence with Northouse’s (2013) definition of a transformational leader. I recall being in an orientation class hearing her speak for the first time; she captivated, at least in the verbal sense, emotions to elevate followers to surrender to a deeper sense of purpose in something greater than themselves. I felt an instant bond that fostered trust, understanding, and I was convinced that she had a sincere desire to see to it that all subordinates succeed. I thought she had genuine concern for others’ interest and that she shared a level of passion and integrity towards her followers, them achieving organizational objectives, and even towards the fulfillment of them seeking to also be leaders. Believing that I had this support invigorated me; I performed my job with absolution devotion religiously and when called to do extras, I willingly participated with heartfelt commitment that showed in my performance and the end-products of all my assignments. I was enthusiastic to maintain this exuberant purposeful work mode mostly because I felt that my contributions were valued and that my dedication earned me respect and a mutual return of considerations for my personal goals that did not go unnoticed. Truly I saw in myself and many other new hires, feelings of being mesmerized by what Zhu, Avolio, Riggio, and Sosik (2011) detail as the common pygmalion effect, where we all submitted to performing to the expectations of our superior, Sally, out of gratitude and sincerity she projected. At this moment in our journey at this new job we truly wholeheartedly became stewards of her leadership.
While Sally’s verbal gestures were filled with promises to energize and support subordinates, her actions said otherwise. When challenges emerged her true self came to the surface; she became spiteful, manipulative, and at times even vindictive. The façade that she initially demonstrated quickly came down. Her former assurances to be supportive were instantly replaced by blaming, competitive dismissing, and at times irrational behavior that made it difficult to perform the job optimally. Almost all of the signs that uncover her true self came as a result of adversities of the job and manifested themselves in the form of self-centered ambitions, such as her desire exult her abilities, diminish others accomplishments, unwillingness to share her skills and knowledge, and her attempts to stagnate progress to preserve her dominance. Some examples of how the real Sally came to light are when conflict arose between a client’s expectations and a worker’s progress. Instead of seeking the truth and clarifying the misunderstanding, she almost always immediately blamed her employees. She had a clear lack of confidence in others ability to interpret instructions and follow through. She would often be seen arguing with manufacturing personnel with the usual outcome of them being written up without a true and full investigation. It delivered a crushing blow to the respect we had for her as a leader and lowered our ability to trust that she truly had our best interest at heart. Northouse (2013) identifies this as a major distinguishing aspect that divulges psuedo-transformational leaders. He outlines that that the two major opposing categories to transformational leadership, transactional and laissez-faire counterparts seek either an equitable balancing of give and take exchanges to manage subordinates drive to accomplish tasks. The other, he surmises, lacks the fortitude and consideration to independently get involved. In either case, they both fail to invest sufficiently in building subordinates independent ability to function autonomously. Northouse (2013) furthers that transformational leadership contrasting outlook features a steadfast objective of improving subordinates’ both in terms of their ability to complete the immediate organizational objective and in building improved self-efficacy of subordinates, even beyond their tenure at the organization. Sally, in her lacking of confidence of subordinates failed to execute on this vital aspect of being a transformational leader and contradicted her initial projections that she cared for her subordinates in this way. Instead, she resorted to diminishing subordinates’ competency and blamed them without a full investigation.
At times when a client commended the company for an excellent job, Sally quickly step forward and took the credit for accomplishing the work of her subordinates. This sort of behavior, Northouse (2013) suggest is against the practices of true transformational leadership. Northouse (2013) declares that this sets apart transformational leaders from their counterparts by the direction of the accrediting of praise they project in terms of the accomplishments of the organization. He clarifies that this can be demonstrated in the use of their word choices when they identify the responsible parties and those who belong to the organization. He says they will use phrases that affiliates team effort such as: “I just completed …” or “I have in my inventory.” Even when non-transformational leaders attempt to impersonate transformational leaders, these personal perspectives become dead giveaways of the internal sentiments they possess, as they often slip in their consistency of attempting to mask their true feelings of being self-consumed. Sally completely fits this characterization of an imposter attempting to be a transformational lead, as she often engaged in behavior that attempted to shine the light on herself at times when the team received accolades.
When it came to disclosing true and complete secrets to master completing organizational objectives, Sally always shies away and refuses to disclose her key strategies to overcome challenges to her subordinates, especially if she sensed that a specific employee had long term goals of leaving the company. This Northouse (2013) outlines to be yet another flag useful in identifying pseudo-transformational leaders. He posits that the lack of involvement of non-transformational leaders in instructing subordinates is yet another separation in actions that differentiates them from sincere transformational leaders. While transformational leaders’ investment to model and enrich subordinates goes without question, non or pseudo-transformational leaders have great difficulty submitting completely to this requisite (Northouse, 2013). Instead, they revert to their true selves and distance themselves, leaving subordinates to either struggle on their own or be given unjustified instructions that lack reasoning and lead to independent thinking. This aspect of leading differs significantly on a rudimentary level between transformational and non-transformational leaders on a very basic philosophy – the failure to see the value in enriching subordinates. Alike the previous factor of giving confidence to subordinates, instructional involvement centers on the leader seeing the long-term value in employees, regardless of their tenure at the organization. Non-transformational leaders’ feeling of loss investment in employees that move on to another organization miss the intrinsic value in the spread of the company’s legacy and return of increased influential reach. According to Bennis (2009), regardless of the convoluted turns a past employee takes in their career growth, if the time they spend at a specific organization was richly rewarding, they will always continue to have some level of loyalty to the organization that will eventually pay off in the long run for the previous employer. Bennis (2009) furthers that the lack of understanding of being altruistic by non-transformational leaders diminishes the expansive nature they potentially can have and causes a break in relations of hopeful loyal connections.
It became very clear that Sally had strong equitable feelings that prevented her from enriching subordinates and broadly elevated the company’s achievements completely. This was very evident when she attempted to prevent new technology that she was unfamiliar with to be introduced for employee use. In frequent conversations she was heard saying things like, “I have been in this field for many years and we have never had a need for new technology, can’t these incompetent rookies do the job with the tools they are given?” Over time it was understood that she did not want technology she had no experience with or didn’t have the time to learn so she could maintain her superiority and perpetuate her dominance. Northouse (2013) identifies leaders that attempt to manipulate their environment and not allow progress to diminish their control to be in direct contrast to true transformational leaders. He postulates that perhaps their reason for this could stem from the fact that their focus is less centered on subordinate improvements and instead on method initiative acts. In the narrative that accepts the notion “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude, non-transformational leaders, alike their other known trait of minimal involvement, have the tendency of not challenging the process (Northouse, 2013). Perhaps if they engaged the human aspect more with the desire to create subordinate autonomy, they could capitalized on the reasoning voice of followers and captivate challenges as they occur. Instead, they are left with the only option of a reactive response and suffer the consequences of missing progressive quick-thinking proactive planning that can be strengthened with improved subordinate involvement and implementation of newer and more productive technologies (Bennis, 2009). This fallacy of non-transformational leaders become a self-defeating cycle, as they will repeatedly experience missed opportunities to capture the competitive advantage. Spotting this high propensity of pseudo-transformational leaders will be easy as the flawed notions, unless improved, will continue to render them to this vicious cycle. Sally’s selfish leadership showed signs of suffering from the consequences of this when her department, internally within the organizational, began showing signs of waning in performance in comparison to that of other departments. While other departments’ improved in their output by way of greater turn-around-times, increased production, and more complex contract assignments, Sally’s suffered from high tardiness, low retention, and an overall unwillingness by her subordinates to comply with organizational policies. This all attest to the dying grip she had on maintaining motivation and follower influence that Northouse (2013) outlines as a consequence of this cycle.
Collectively, the understanding that leadership benefits greatly from strong relational bonds that form trust, understanding, the share level of passion and integrity leaders have towards subordinates, and commitment to organizational objectives extended from sincere desire for subordinates to suceed – transformational leadership, can be a strong impetus to optimal organizational objective execution and the leveraging of high level subordinate motivation and overall more cohesive leader-subordinate relations. Encountering pseudo-transformational leaders may at first appear to be difficult to differentiate, but upon closer inspection, especially through difficult challenges faced, they can be identified unmistakably by the surfacing of internal selfish desires, power oriented actions, and high equitable intentions that are manifested in irrational behaviors. The pernicious outcomes that await these self-centered egotistical leaders are clear indicators of their internal perspectives and the personal convictions they harbor. In the end, they will return to the ways of their hearts and suffer the consequences of limited growth, diminished connections, deteriorating dominance, weakened influence, and an overall doomed future as a leader (Bennis, 2009; Northouse, 2013; Zhu et al, 2011).
Reference
Bennis, Warren G (2009). On Becoming a leader (4th ed.) Philadelphia, PA: Perseus Book Group.
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Zhu, W., Avolio, B. J., Riggio, R., & Sosik, J. (2011). The effect of authentic transformational leadership on follower and group ethics. The Leadership Quarterly, 22, 801-817.