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Morality in Transformational Leadership Style I. Leadership This article aims to discuss the weakness of transformational leadership style. As we know there are two kinds of leadership styles namely the transformational and transactional leadership. Leadership occupies a strategic position and is absolutely necessary in an organization, where relationships happen between two people or more in achieving organizational goals. So that the position of a leader in the organization has a very important role in order to influence others to achieve its intended purpose (Burns, 1978).
Robbins & Judge (2006) defines leadership as the ability to influence a group towards the achievement of objectives. This is a process of directing and influencing activities associated with the work of members of the group. Leadership is also a process of social influence run by a person intentionally to structure activities and relationships in an organization. Leadership is an interaction between members of a group, which is a leader as a change agent and as someone who will better influence the behavior of others that affect them.
Leadership is also a dynamic process in which leaders and followers interact with each other. From the several opinions about what leadership can be explained that there are dominant in this sense, namely that the leader affects the subordinate, the leader was able to convince them that the subordinate personal interests to be part of the vision that the leader, and able to ensure also that they contribute to same – similar implement. Influence runs by the leaders include aspects, ideas or thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behavior.
Thus the success of a leader is to what extent he succeeded in influencing the thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behaviors desired to lead leaders. This raises the need for new leadership style, activities and skills to deal with environmental changes that took place quickly. Effective leadership is the leadership that succeeded in carrying out its role as a leader, where success can be measured from various aspects such as increased production, increased labor productivity, improved service and increased job satisfaction.
So the success of leadership is the result of cooperation or performance-led group. Many research results show that intelligence, initiative and self-esteem related to managerial levels and high performance, and the ability of the manager supervisory, the skills in using an adequate method for supervisory certain situations it can be said as an effective leader. But effective leadership is not dependent on specific properties, but rather on how closely they match the properties of the leader with the needs of the situation.
The study of leadership has been carried out by experts such as leadership theory based on the Trait Leadership Theory and Behavioral Leadership Theory (Miner, 2007). One of the situational factors that will increasingly affect the effectiveness of leadership in the coming decades is the relationship between leader and follower. The essence of these relations is the interaction between different personal motivations and the potential power, including skills, in order to achieve common goals.
Therefore, the effectiveness of various leaders in the face of today’s activity is determined by the quality of the relationship between the leaders with followers. The relationship should not only working relationships where formal employers to act as leaders for followers in the organization, but these relationships should be intertwined with the wider leader or supervisor which can act as a partner for the followers in the face of various obstacles and motivate subordinates to continue to excel in work.
So that the leaders of today must be flexible, be open to the needs of its members, willing to communicate and able to articulate the interests of the members / followers (Bolman & Deal, 1997). This interaction includes two forms of transactional leadership and transformational leadership is two concepts of leadership that emerged as a phenomenon (Burns, 2003). a. Transactional Leadership According to Burns (1978), transactional leadership occurs when one person takes the initiative to establish contact with others in order to exchange goods or things that are consider important.
Exchange could be a political economic, or psychological. Each of the parties involved in this kind of exchange of resources to realize the power and attitude possessed others. Each side looked the other as a person. The purpose of all parties is related to one another, at least in relation to the goals contained in the exchange process and can be achieved through the process. But the parties involved do not have a relationship outside the exchange. Parties that do this exchange do not have a common goal that unites them for a long time, so that after the exchange is complete, they take care of themselves.
Then Bass and Avolio, (1994) said that transactional leadership is an exchange between leaders and followers in their daily activities in which this exchange is important for the implementation of performance routines that have been agreed between leaders and followers, in other words, transactional leadership emphasizes the transaction or exchange that occurs between leaders, colleagues and subordinates/followers. b. Transformational leadership Transformational leadership is the expansion / extension of transactional leadership.
Leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with people in such a way that leaders and subordinates help each other in achieving motivation and a higher morality (Burns, 1978), a transformational leadership in relation to subordinates and colleagues to do more than just an exchange or deal in simple terms (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Transformational leaders behave in ways intended to get better results by using one of the four elements that underlie transformational leadership, namely (Bass and Avolio, 1994); 1. Idealized Influence (Charisma) Transformational leaders behave in ways that allow them to be an example to his subordinates.
These leaders are respected, trusted and also admired. They can move and inspire subordinates with a vision and mission of sense, taking risks together, only using power when necessary and not for personal interest and instill a sense of pride in his subordinates. 2. Inspirational Motivation Transformational leaders behave in ways that provide motivation and inspiration to people around them by providing new challenges for their subordinates in the work. Leaders create expectations clearly communicated to the men attracted to achieve and demonstrate commitment to the objectives and shared vision. . Intellectual Stimulation Transformational leaders stimulate his efforts to be innovative and creative with ways to question the assumptions, presents the problem in a different framework, and use new approaches to old problems that creativity get the urge to grow. Leaders did not criticize the mistakes of a subordinate in front of the crowd. Subordinates were invited to provide new ideas and solutions to creative problems, and they are included in the process of solving problems and finding solutions.
The subordinates were encouraged to try new approaches, and ideas are not criticized simply for being different with the leader ideas. 4. Individualized Consideration. Transformational leaders pay special attention to the needs of each individual to get the achievement and growth by acting as a coach or a mentor. Subordinates and co-workers developed to achieve the potential levels are higher and higher. Consideration to each individual is done in the following way: the opportunities created by new learning atmosphere that supports.
The difference between needs and wants of individuals recognized and acknowledged. Leader behavior indicates that he received individual differences. The leader encourages two-way exchange in communication and practice “management by walking around”. Interactions with subordinates carried out personally. Leaders who have individualized consideration are effectively to hear. Leaders are delegating tasks to develop the ability of subordinates. The tasks delegated, monitored to see whether subordinates need guidance or additional support as well as to assess progress.
From this description can be seen that transformational leadership has a long-term perspective, where this approach not only emphasizes attention to the current situation but also consider the situation and consider future. II. Organizational Development and Morality Transformational leaders can play an important role in the development process of an organization. They can use observation or a lot of many techniques in the understanding of group dynamics. White and Wooten (1986) show that sometimes abuse and misrepresentation happens in this organizational development process.
In this emotional conflict, individual interests are likely to be sacrificed for the sake of improving the organization. In order to assess the ethics of power then we need to recognize the reality to distinguish between the authoritarian personality and directive leader. For the good of an organization, leaders can act as an agent of change. The authoritarian personality has characteristics such as anti-democratic, not flexible, subject to a higher authority, conventional thinking, and prefer taking low risk in highly structured situations.
Meanwhile, a directive leader has characteristics such as: told what to do, usually with an explanation, give orders, and make decisions for themselves and others, and usually give reasons for decisions and orders given to subordinates. Conflict in values continues to occur in an organization. That what is more important, whether the productivity, safety, cost reduction, efficiency, welfare of employees and managers, profit, survival, or growth? Some say the interests of shareholders are paramount. Meanwhile, other parties argue that morality is necessary in maximizing the welfare of employees.
Transformational leaders seek ways to harmonize these interests. Graham (1995), and Kohlberg (1981) explains that transactional leadership is at the level of “pre-conventional” in the level of moral development such as the emphasis and contract requirements. Transformational leadership according to Kohlberg (1981) is at the level of “post-conventional” level of moral development as an emphasis on universal principles of justice and the interests of all stakeholders in the organization (Turner & Barling, 1998).
Based on the concept of transformational leadership by Bass said that charismatic leadership is the leader who has “emotional, irrational, and thus risky” (Beyer, 1999, p. 321), it can be argued that transformational leaders have a greater emotional effect than rational. Bass (1985) argues that a transformational leader to try to empower and improve the organization rather than to make his weak or dependent. “There is nothing in the Transformational Leadership model that says leaders should serve followers for the good of followers” (Graham, 1991, p. 110).
Yukl (1990) even assume that Bass will include leaders such as Adolf Hitler and the Reverend Jim Jones in the list of transformational leadership in a leadership although they had negative effect on his followers. Indeed, Hitler had finally not included in the list and put Hitler in category “transformational and yet reconciling immoral leaders” (Bass, 1985, pp. 20-21). Burns argues that Hitler is not a transformational leader because he thinks more bad qualities than good character. Hitler and Jones had already made significant changes in people’s lives. However, whether it is a positive change or negative change to date is still a debate.
Jim Jones is a leader who led 912 followers to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-containing beverages (Yukl, 1990). Sendaya (2005) said “it is true that transformational Leadership is not necessarily immoral or brutal, immoral and brutal leader cannot be arguably transformational”. For that reason, so no surprise when Bass admitted that there had been a serious theoretical error after he published Leadership and Performance beyond Expectations in 1985 (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999). III. Conclusion This paper shows that there is no good leadership without morality. So that should be common opinion that the importance of moral values.
Bass himself even admitted that he made a mistake in the theory of leadership by not considering the moral values it. Transformational leadership style in this 21st century is a better leadership style, and it will be the best if it has morality in it. Morality has become a reality that had manifested in the physical world. Aspects of morality and intellect when combined will form a good leader. Without the two aspects, a leader in order in changing the organizational development will experience obstacles and delays because it is done by people who are not immoral and not with intellectual mind.
Morality is closely related to faith and a person’s ability to respect the norms so as not to do anything or take out a policy that unethical and unlawful act, whether positive law to any religious law. In conclusion the writer says that “without morality a person could become a leader, but with morality a leader will be a good leader”. Reference List Bass, BM. & Avolio, BJ. (1994) Improving Organizational Effectiveness through Transformational Leadership. CA: Thousand Oaks. Bass, B. M. (1985) From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), pp. 9???31. Bass, B. M. (1985) Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. New York: Free Press. Bass, B. M. & Riggio, R. E. (2006) Transformational leadership. 2nd ed. New Jersey : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Bass, B. & Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, character, and authentic transformational leadership behavior. Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), pp. 181???217. Beyer, J. M. (1999) Taming and promoting charisma to change organizations. Leadership Quarterly, 10 (2), pp. 307???330. Bolman, L. G & Deal, T. E. (1997) Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership 2nd ed, California : Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Burns, J. M, (1978) Leadership, New York : Harper and Raw. Burns, J. M. (2003) Transforming Leadership. New York : Grove Press. Graham, J. W. (1991) Servant-leadership in organizations: Inspirational and moral. Leadership Quarterly, 2(2), pp. 105???119. Graham, J. W. (1995) Leadership, moral development, and citizenship behavior. Business Ethics Quarterly, 5, pp. 43-54. Kohlberg, L. ( 1981) The meaning and measurement of moral development. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Miner, J. B. (2007 ) Organizational Behavior 4 : From Theory To Practice, New York : M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
Robbins, S. P. & Judge, T. A. (2006) Organizational Behavior, New Jersey : Prentice Hall. Senjaya, S. (2005) Morality and Leadership: Examining the Ethics of Transformational Leadership. Journal of Academic Ethics 3 (1), pp. 75-86. Turner, N. & Barling, J. (1998) Moral reasoning and transformational leadership. Kingston : Queens University. White, L. P. & Wooten, K. C. (1986) Professional ethics and practice in organizational development: A systematic analysis of issues,alternatives, and approaches. New York: Praeger. Yukl, G. (1990) Leadership in Organizations. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.