In high school, I had a teacher who I believe perfectly exemplifies a transformational leader. This teacher was the best teacher I’ve ever had and I think most of the kids I went to highschool with would agree with. He was a very positive, funny, and kind person. He always say the best in people and he saw potential in every single one of his students without ever judging anyone.

 

I think my teacher was a great example of a transformational leader for many reasons. One reason is, he always had a good vision (PSU WC, 2019, L. 10). Whenever a student was struggling with anything from school work to problems at home, he was able to see this and try to help. If a kid was struggling in his class, he would always ask the kid to stay after class for a few minutes to talk. During these talks, he would help you figure out what the problem was and talk through different ways that these problems could be fixed. I remember one day I was feeling really down because my dog had just died the day before. He could see this in my demeanor and asked me to stay after class for a quick chat. Once I told him why I was sad, he connected with me by sharing a story about how his wife had passed a few years ago. He then gave me suggestions of ways that I could handle the situation better and ways to make me feel more at peace.

 

Another transformational leader characteristic my teacher displayed was his rhetorical skills. A transformational leadership has good rhetorical skills which is described as someone who is talented at sharing they vision and inspiring others to reach their vision or goal (PSU WC, 2019, L. 10). Since after high school everyone was going to college, our teacher gave us many talks about college and life after it. He would inspire us to truly go to whatever college we wanted without caring about the prestige of it or who of our friends are going there. He told us his story of going to college in Nebraska. He said that he had zero friends going there since he was from Philadelphia and he was scared. He then went on to explain how in college most people will meet new friends that will continue to be a part of your life for the rest of your life. He inspired us to embrace many different visions of ours; our jobs, our friends, our decisions, and basically all aspects of life.

 

My teacher also had a very good example of personalized leadership. Personalized leadership is another characteristic of a transformational leader and is described as someone that builds strong, personal bond with their followers and can pick up on their follower’s emotional states (PSU WC, 2019, L. 10). My teacher displayed this all the time, a good example like I said earlier is from when he noticed my mood was different after my dog died. My teacher also always built strong bonds with all of his students, and I mean always. He was the most well-known and liked teacher at the school and we even had a day dedicated to him each year where he was celebrated. He was able to build these strong bonds because he paid attention to everyone’s emotional states and was always trying to make people happier. He would try to get to know each of his students personally by interacting with everyone and asking questions about our lives and sharing things from his own life. He was also able to build strong relationships because, like Collin Powell’s rule #11; Remain calm. be kind, he was always kind to everybody all the time. Even when kids were acting up or doing something that he didn’t find appropriate for the class room, he would never get mad. He would explain why he thought we shouldn’t be doing something and really helped to see why it was wrong and he was very kind about it.