Can Transactional Leadership Keep Your Team in Shape?

Maslow''s Hierarchy of Needs demonstrates that most people are more likely to act when they expect rewards or fear punishment. Any social system is more effective when a hierarchy clearly exists. People who are hired to work, implicitly agree to heed all of their manager''s instructions, and that is the main reason that subordinates are employed.

If you have ever studied Abraham Maslow''s "hierarchy of needs," you know that a motivator for many people at lower stages of the hierarchy is whether they will be rewarded or punished for an action. In business, the application of this is that lower-grade employees need clear structures and direction from the higher-ups to feel motivated. For example, an employee in a company should be ready to give up their own agenda and take direction. If you are subordinate to a manager, things work best when you are ready to obey your manager''s instructions.

The director of the transaction works on creating lucid structures, therefore making it apparent to employees exactly what is entailed, as well as the rewards commensurate with meeting those requirements. Reprimand is frequently obliquely declared, but usually understood, with recognized regulation practices extant.

Discussing the agreement where the subordinate is given an income and other remuneration, and the company (and by inference the worker''s supervisor) acquires power over the worker is handled early period of Transactional Leadership.

When the Transactional Leader allocates work to a subordinate, they are considered to be fully responsible for it, whether or not they have the resources or capability to carry it out. When things go wrong, then the subordinate is considered to be personally at fault, and is punished for their failure (just as they are rewarded for succeeding).
The transactional leader usually leads with the philosophy that if things are going smoothly and working at acceptable levels of success, they don''t need to be addressed. Performance that goes above and beyond the expected standard is of course commended, while poor behavior is given some type of punishment and/or corrective measure.

There are several differences between Transformational and Transactional Leadership. Transformational leadership denotes positive change, and persuading others to participate in achieving this positive change. A good transformational leader will impart the same enthusiasm for achieving the team''s goals that the leader himself has. A transactional leader, on the other hand, is concerned with a hierarchical approach -- one of stating what he expects from his subordinates and what they may expect from him. There is no sense of "team" and the subordinates may or may not become personally enthusiastic about completing the task. They may receive praise if the leader deems their work acceptable -- or they may be penalized for poor work.

Though a good amount of research indicates the shortcomings of Transactional Leadership, it remains a popular approach to management for many. In fact, it is clearly toward the management end of the scale of the Leadership vs. Management spectrum.

To have an effective model of human behavior, we can''t assume that people are mainly motivated by reward and are very predictable. This fallacy is supported by the psychological theory of behaviorism, which was made famous by Pavlov''s classical conditioning and Skinner''s operant conditioning experiments. Unfortunately, these experiments are often performed in controlled lab conditions using animals as subjects, negating the complexity of the human mind and motive.

When applied to real life there is a lot of actuality in Behaviorism to sustain Transactional approaches. If you look at Maslow''s Hierarchy of Needs along with the effects of the supply and demand of employment you can see the correlation. Transactional Leadership isn''t enough when demand for a certain skill erodes the supply.

Steve Wilheir is a project management consultant. Read more Articles about Management, learn about Abraham Maslow and the Maslow pyramid.