The behavioural and personality correlates of transformational and transactional leadership

Presented byDr. Renalde Huysamen

agenda• Introduction and background.• Transformational and Transactional

leadership and Creativity• Research Methodology and Composition• Analysis and Results• Conclusions and Recommendations• Limitations of the research• Managerial implications of the research

External threats

Leadership with creative traitsSustainable institution

Introduction • Based on personal experience I have

found that one of the biggest challenges in leadership development is to identify specific development needs and focus training accordingly.

• Even more problematic is the selection of creative people

Introduction • I believed that if a positive correlation

could be found between creativity and leadership style then institutions would be able to:

1. Select creative people2. Focus training and leadership

development initiatives and3. Enhance a performance culture in

institutions.

INTRODUCTION• Literature:

Leadership & Creativity has been studied extensively but …………………….

separately.

TRANSFORMATIONAL AND TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP (Bass and Avolio 1985)Transformational leadership style:

• Comprises 4 components: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration (behavioural)

• Most appropriate in managing changes in institutions in that they motivate others to do more than they even thought possible. They set more challenging expectations and achieve higher performance's

BUT

Can not be taken for granted that this leadership style will also be creative (personality) at the same time

TRANSFORMATIONAL AND TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP

Transactional leadership style:• Focus on interpersonal transactions

between managers and employees. Helps the follower to identify what must be done to accomplish desired results (better quality output/more services/reduced costs).

(Getzels, Greeno, Sternberg, Chand and Runco, Cougar, Ansburg, Finke, Guilford, Mednick)

• Contemporary views on creativity recognise its multifaceted nature. Kneller (1967) defines fluency of thought and originality as traits of a creative person and he believes the traits can be acquired

FLUENCY OF THOUGHT• The number of solutions that fit the

requirements of the problem.• Associational fluency of thought= list words

that bears relation to a given word, and • Ideational fluency=rapid listing of ideas

ORIGINALITY OF THOUGHT• The number of unusual or unique solutions that

are generated by very few other people.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND COMPOSITION

Research question: what is the correlation between TF and TR leadership and the creativity traits namely: fluency of thought and originality?

Design: Quantitative approach was followedLocation of data: Students enrolled for MBA and

M.Com degrees at different universities in Gauteng. (N=178)

Sampling type: non-probability, judgemental as purposive.

Research instruments1. Leadership style measured by Multifactor

Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) developed by Bass and Avolio (1985).(20 min). It measures a broad range of leadership styles from laissez-fair to TF and TS. MLQ consists of 45 items loading on 4 factors that represents the meaning of each construct of the Full Range Model.

• These measures of leadership style represents the variable.

2. Creativity (ideational fluency and originality) was measured by two divergent thinking ability testslist the uses of a paper clip(3 min) & list possible solutions for crime in SA(3 min)

3. Associational fluency measured by Remote Associates Test(20 min) (Thompson 1993)

++

=

These measures ofcreativity represents the

variable

MLQ

RAT

3 Raters

1

2

Statistical consultation services3

ANALYSIS • MLQ-principle factor analysis

• Items inter-correlated and eigenvalues of unreduced intercorrelation computed.

• To overcome differential skewness of items, sub- scores in respect of each factor was computed by adding items with high loadings on one factor together.

• Factor matrix rotated to a simple structure by means of Oblimin Rotation.

Results • 4 Factors were extracted, as 4 of the eigenvalues were greater than

unity.2 of the factors were poorly determined with low reliabilities...therefore a three factor solution was tried and:3 factors were extracted with a substantial loadings on all three factors. However from an inspection of the communalities it was apparent that several of the subscores shared only a small proportion of their variance with other subscores. In order to identify the obtained factors the items associated with each factor were grouped into categories as given by Bass (1999)

The three factors of this research differs from Bass in the sense that items are grouped differently.

• Factor 1= transformational leadership/transactional (reliability of 0.752)

• Factor 2= non-transactional (reliability of 0.494)• Factor 3= transformational leadership/leadership outcome (reliability of

0.837)

ANALYSIS &RESULTS• Fluency of thought

and originality yielded 4 scores.

• 2 scores were derived form RAT (associational fluency)

• These 6 scores were subjected to factor analysis and only one eigenvalue was greater than unity.

• All 6 six scores had substantial loadings on the same factor. This factor represents fluency and originality of thought. (reliability of 0.735)

ANALYSIS & RESULTS

between 3 scales of MLQ and 6 scales of creativity.

1. Transformational/transactional correlates positively with all 3 creativity tests (65% of items loaded on transformational leadership.

2. Transformational/transactional positively correlated with RAT

3. Transformational/leadership outcome is inversely related to 6 creativity scores (only 39% if items represented transformational leadership in its pure form)

ANALYSIS & RESULTS

• The 2 x regression analysis indicate that only two predictor variables were included in regression equation (i.e

• scale 1: transformational/transactional &

a combination of scale 1 and scale 3:transformational/ leader

outcome)

• From the ßeta coefficients it is clear that scale 1 (transformational/transactional) is a better prediction of creativity.

CONCLUSIONS1. There is a statistically significant

positive relationship between leadership style and creativity.

2. There is a higher statistical significant positive relation between transformational leadership style and creativity than between creativity and the other leadership styles.

1. Measurement of creativity necessitates an element of subjectivity-rater bias.

2. Can originality be measured in terms of rarity of a response?

3. Judgements of creative ability can only be made with reference to actual output.

4. It would be worthwhile pursuing means of upgrading the MLQ and RAT.

5. Superiors of respondents should also rate respondents.

1. The MLQ can be recommended as a test in the selection process.

2. If transformational leadership style is identified..

the head/line manager can assume that the person will also be creative.

3. Focus training and leadership development initiatives.

4. Enhance a performance culture in institutions.

Thank you…………..Huysamenca.rd@mail.uovs.ac.za