characteristics-of-transactional-leadership
Leadership

What are characteristics of Transactional leadership

1. Supervise and give direction

  • Supervision is the most important element in the functioning of management.
  • Always provide context for the task to be completed.
  • Transactional leadership always focuses on the performance of each employee.
  • They supervise and instruct their employees on the progress of routine work.
  • In this, they also take feedback regarding the accomplished task.

2. Practicality

  • Transactional leaders adhere more to realism over idealism.
  • They clearly understand the difference between skill and will of their employees.
  • They are practical enough to link the result obtained to the goal of the organization.
  • Transactional leaders work by considering all the realistic constraints.

3. Require a structured environment

  • Transactional leadership is best suited in a well organized structured working environment.
  • Transactional leaders are loyal to the company structure, procedures, and policies instead of their employees.

4. Passive leadership type

  • They focus mainly on maintaining status quo (existing state of affairs) and the normal flow of operations.
  • They interfere only when standards, expectation and target are not met.
  • Transactional leadership does not take proactive steps to solve problems.
  • They do not pay any attention to problems happening outside the employee performance.
Transactional leadership

5. Tends to inflexibility

  • Transactional leaders impose their own orders and instructions on their employees.
  • There is no creativity and innovation in this leadership style.
  • In this style of leadership empowerment of employees are not taken into consideration.
  • Fear of punishment can create stress in their employees.
  • This may create a lack of trust among employees and the leader.

6. Reward performance

  • The term ‘transactional’ refers to the exchange of rewards for performance.
  • Transactional leaders give reward in terms of incentives for their performance.
  • They also aware their employees regarding the punishment for poor performance.
  • This keep employees motivated and also keep aware of their responsibilities.

7. Extrinsic motivator

  • Extrinsic motivation refers to behavior that is driven by external rewards such as money, fame, grades, and praise. 
  • It is totally opposed to intrinsic motivation, where dedication develops from inside.
  • Transactional leaders use disciplinary orders, instructions and give incentives to motivate their employees.

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Premratan Kushwaha
Mechanical Engineer turned career enthusiast. After facing issues in finding the right job for myself and then realising that despite my degree I don't completely understand the significance of various profiles in the industry, I decided to make career out of helping others in finding the right career path.

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