Summary Transformational leadership effectiveness:
an evidence-based primer
By Human Resource Development International
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rhrd20
This is a summary of a very interesting article that is a meta analysis of leadership research conducted over 3 decades. It compares Transformational with Authentic, Ethical and Servant leadership models.
Definitions of leadership are operationalised in two ways:
- Roles
- Social Influence
The article poses the current problem that proliferation of models creates confusion and redundancy i.e. “Construct empirical redundancy” means the whole body of understanding is weakened.
Practically the problem this creates is HR confusion, leading to unprofitable spending on ineffective ‘fads’. It was estimated approximately US$3.5 billion was spent on leadership development in 2019.
Rather than ‘cherry pick’ models, an analysis of the research was conducted, to gain an aggregated understanding of the relationship between leaders' behaviours and various outcomes.
Recent models, Authentic, Ethical and Servant, were found to be highly correlated with the well researched Transformational model.
Correlations:
Transformational with Authentic = 75%,
Transformational with Ethical = 70% and
Transformational with Servant = 52%
The meaning of Total, Explained, Error and Incremental Variance was discussed.
Outcome/Interpretation of the Meta-analysis
“New models explain very little in Incremental variance beyond the Transformational Leadership Model. In some instances…added to the prediction of some behavioural, attitude, and relational perception outcomes”.
“However, many unique contributions are relatively small when compared to the large contribution for the Transformational Leadership model”.
“Therefore, in a practical sense, it is unclear whether additional contributions from new leadership models translate into noticeable changes in various individual, team, and organisational outcomes related to leadership”.
Deb Maes
We are incredibly grateful to our sponsors:
