Transformational Leadership

The Leader's position is surprisingly specific. It is often extremely demanding, but always inspirational. Doing it, one feels a great creative freedom and the possibility of a continuous personal development.

In my previous years of managing and leadership experience, I tried as much as I could to continuously develop myself in achieving good results. What I have learned is that my results were always connected with performance of my team and that I must invest a great effort in improving the effectiveness of the people who work for me.

I constantly require that each of my team members produce results beyond and out of the ordinary, especially beyond the line they thought as their maximum. To achieve this goal, I realized that I must act as a Transformer.

 

The definition of Transformational Leadership

• A person with transformational leadership style inspires his team constantly with a shared vision of the future.
• Transformational leaders are highly visible and spend a lot of time communicating.
• They do not necessarily lead from the front, as they tend to delegate responsibility amongst their team.
• The transformational leaders look after initiatives that add value.

 

Leader’s transformational work

After finding strong connection of my results with performance of my team, I finally managed to form five basic rules for transformational kind of work with employees, based on well known Reiki principles.

 

THE RULE OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT:

Leader knows that each employee has a certain role in the leader's personal development.

The rule of personal development is based on the Reiki principle of peace, non-anger, happiness and patience. By accepting this rule, a leader becomes aware of the fact that any kind of anger at employees is completely useless.

Anger usually stems from fear, and every time it shows up, the leader should ask himself what he is afraid of. Is it the fear of being mistaken, or the fear of the failure of the entire part of the task that the leader feels responsible for?

After years of using this rule I can say with certainty that the mere act of accepting this rule brings a considerable relief in a leader's work.

 

THE RULE OF MAXIMAL PREPAREDNESS:

Leader always get maximally prepared for each communication with his employees.

The rule of maximal preparedness is based on the Reiki principle of honor and discipline. By accepting this rule, the leader becomes aware of the need for discipline in his work, which eventually leads to honorable performance.

Showing interest in the employees' activities is considered part of this rule. For example, in manufacturing companies, it is indispensable that the new leader asks the employees to organize a detailed visit of the manufacturing plant as soon as possible.

The purpose of this rule is to gain complete confidence of the employees that the leader works with. Complex tasks are always risky, and risks demand confidence.

By preparing as much as possible, the leader will spot the risky parts of his workload, and probably of the mutual job with employees in general. The universal principle about honor in doing one's job, to which this rule is related, expects the leader to talk openly with the employees about these risks.

 

THE RULE OF LEADING THE GAME:

The purpose of every communication with the employees is to find the best solution.

This rule is based on the Reiki principle about non-worrying, serenity and confidence. Employees have to trust their leader, and this is why they subconsciously want the leaders to be always right.

The leader has confidence in the set of circumstances and uses his or her wisdom and knowledge to take all meetings and discussions towards finding the best solution.

Such an attitude on the leader’s part is natural and allows the leader to gain all the necessary confidence and peace of mind, and to achieve the state without any anxiety. The leader counts on his intuition supported by spiritual exercises, and on the experience acquired through working in previous jobs/companies, so that this self-confident approach fulfills the employee's desire to be led towards a successful finalization of the task.

 

THE RULE OF JOB DISTRIBUTION:

When distributing tasks among leader and employees, leader always make sure the employees get a maximal workload.

This rule is based on the Reiki principle about criticism and respecting one's interlocutor. The leader maximally respects each employee and wants to empower him or her as much as possible to work independently.

This independence can be achieved only by gathering adequate experiences, which are provided to the employees by giving them an adequate quantity of different tasks. Not giving enough work to employees would imply a lack of respect for them; it would mean that they are given finished solutions instead of being taught how to solve the problems themselves.

Job distribution according to this rule does not cause resistance on the employees' part, because they are attracted by the desire for personal development; they justly perceive the increased workload and the newly acquired skills as their chance to make a career progress.

 

THE RULE OF MERIT DISTRIBUTION:

When giving merit for a job well done, the Leader give all the merit to the employees.

This rule is based on the Reiki principle about gratitude and forgiveness. According to the previous rule, the leader will delegate to the employees all the workload that he possibly can, so that he (the leader) may successfully conceive new tasks. When the big job is finished and it becomes clear that it has been successful, it is indispensable that the leader acts according to this rule and rightly accords all the merit for a job well done to the employees.

The employees are grateful to the leader for the path that they traveled together and for all the knowledge, skills and experience gained in the process, which is the principal condition for the cooperation between the leader and the employees making a long-term partnership.

 

Conclusion

Each of the above five rules has been proved as extremely important for transforming employees from passive and idle potential into proactive, brave and satisfied working force.

Transformational leaders should continually trying to empower their team by keeping them "in the know," by keeping them fully informed on everything that affects their jobs. They want and need to feel that they are “insiders,” that they are aware of everything that is going on.