Most common contemporary leadership models include charismatic, transformational and transactional leadership.
Transactional leadership is based on an exchange of service for various kinds of rewards that the leader controls, at least in part (Leithwood, 1992) Transactional leaders should be able to identify the rewards that would motivate their followers in order to achieve their goals. Transactional leadership focuses on the rigid hierarchy of the company and that there must be rules, procedures and standards in place to ensure that efficiency of worker’s performance will increase. Eg. If workers do well, there will be rewards given. If worker’s performance is not up to standard, they will have to serve punishment.
Transformational leadership is defined as “the collective action that transforming leadership generate empowers those who participate in the process” Transformational leaders are capable to bring up with a significant change. It facilitates the redefinition of a person’s mission and vision, a renewal of their commitments, and the restructuring of their systems for goal accomplishment. (Leithwood, 1992) Transformational leaders focus on communication and clear vision of the organisation’s goal. They open up opportunity to workers and at the same time, encourage creativity amongst the workers and allowing them to speak up to their ideas. They are also able to inspire their followers to have the same passion and motivation towards the same goal.
Charismatic leaders have uncanny powers over their followers. Charismatic leaders are leaders who by the force of their personal abilities are capable of having profound and extraordinary effects on followers. The followers of charismatic leaders are loyal and trust the charismatic leader’s values, behaviours and vision (Borkowski, 2005) Charismatic leaders use their own personal power instead of position power to influence followers in order to achieve their goals. Charismatic leader