"We want more leaders and fewer bosses!" Does this famous quote speak to you? The role of the manager is evolving along with the aspirations of the company and its employees. Today, you need to learn how to guide your team, embody a strong vision and unite around shared values. Discover the characteristics of transformational or benevolent leadership!
What is transformational leadership?
Transactional leadership vs. transformational leadership
Transactional leadership is designed to maintain the company's stability, by limiting changes in methods. Communication is (often) unidirectional, employees perform their tasks and are rewarded.
Transformational leadership, on the other hand, seeks to improve the way the organization functions, even if this means "shaking up" conventional strategies. The benevolent leader proposes more open communication and encourages conversations.
Characteristics of benevolent leaders
Transformational leaders have very specific qualities:
- They are respectful, caring and human;
- He has a natural charisma, enabling him to be listened to and followed by his team;
- He knows how to motivate and rally the team around a common vision (rather than being task-oriented);
- Gives meaning to everyone's actions and reaffirms values;
- It supports decision-making through exchange and discussion.
What are the benefits of transformational leadership?
1. Improved team performance
Your team feels listened to, guided and reassured = they act with motivation, rigor and strength to achieve the company's objectives and vision. Caring leadership has a real positive impact on employee productivity!
2. Reduced employee turnover
Transformational leadership helps stabilize the team, reduce turnover and downtime. Employees adapt more easily to change, since they are involved, listened to and integrated into the transformation process.
3. Improved well-being & self-esteem
Less stress and pressure means less mental fatigue for employees! As the leader is an excellent leader (and mediator), the team feels secure and develops a positive state of mind. Improved self-confidence and self-esteem are powerful motivators.
How to become a charismatic leader?
1. Work on self-leadership
A genuine human resources management tool, self-leadership is the basis for successfully guiding your team!
The objective? Get to know yourself (strengths and weaknesses), so you can better manage your colleagues. Understanding human psychology, the interactions between body and mind, and self-awareness are among the elements to be worked on.
Self leadership
2. Create a clear & transparent message
As a transformational leader, you'll help define the corporate vision. This concept provides a clearer vision of objectives, priorities and tools for measuring results.
To make this vision convincing, you'll need to work on your communication with the team. A clear, authentic message that's easy to understand, visualize and adopt! Storytelling is an excellent way of conveying your company's vision.
3. Motivate & inspire your team
The transformational leader has the ability to embody the corporate vision.
This means motivating, inspiring and convincing your team to make the objectives a reality. This skill applies particularly to major projects: once the initial enthusiasm has "worn off", you'll need to keep the team motivated over the long term!
You can do this by highlighting the team's shared results and reaffirming the vision.
Would you like to learn how to lead a team with ambition and confidence? Train in benevolent management to improve your skills.
Team leadership
The "risk" of transformational leadership (and how to avoid it)
As you can see, benevolent leadership is based on trust in your team. More trust also means more autonomy and responsibility for employees!
While some employees enjoy challenging themselves, others may feel stressed. In other words, transformational leadership is not suitable for all profiles, nor for environments where there is little change.
A "good" transformational leader implements personalized management. You'll need to understand what motivates each team member, so you can adapt to different profiles:
- Competitive spirit?
- Bonuses?
- Autonomy?
- Support and boost?
To understand this, talk to your employees regularly and listen to them (really listen)!
Based on the exchange between the leader and his or her team, transformational leadership is spreading widely within organizations. To develop your skills and become a benevolent manager, get trained!
J’apprends la gestion d’équipe
