Transactional leadership style: meaning, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages

Transactional leadership style: meaning, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages

Joined
Apr 27, 2019
Posts
32
Reaction score
12
In this article we are going to discuss about transactional leadership, which is one of leadership styles used by leaders and managers to lead their teams or groups.

What is transactional leadership?
Transactional leadership is a style of leadership that based on using rewards and punishment to motivate and inspire followers or team toward reaching the targeted goals. This leadership style is more effective when a team pursuing short term goals and when a team perform repeatedly tasks that are monotony in nature. This because, teams may feel bored when perform the same task every day which may lead to low working morale and poor performance, thus the use of rewards or punishment may help to raise again the performance in a team. However transactional leadership may discourage creativity and self- motivation as the team members may start doing tasks so as to be rewarded or to avoid punishment.

Characteristics of transactional leadership
The following are the characteristics of transactional leadership style.

1. It focuses on achievement of short term goals:
Transactional leadership based on motivating the followers or team members to achieve short term goals through the use of rewards and punishment.

2. It based on using rewards and punishment:
This leadership style depends much on rewards and punishment to boost motivation and increase the performance of the team.

3. The followers are not self-motivated:
In transactional leadership style members of a team are usually neither self-motivated nor passionate to tasks they do. They may show good performance so as to get rewards or avoid punishment.

Advantages of transactional leadership
Below are advantages of transactional leadership style.

1. Quick achievement of short term goals:
The rewards and punishment can help to increase performance in a team which may also lead to easy and quick achievement of set goals.

2. Raises motivation and productivity:
The rewards given to the members can boost working morale and performance which can lead to high productivity in a team.

3. Clear expectations:
In this leadership style the team members know what is expected since rewards and punishment or penalties are clearly defined.

Disadvantages of transactional leadership
The disadvantages of transactional leadership style include:

1. It may destruct self-motivation:
This leadership style may discourage self-motivation and the team members may start working in order to get rewards or avoid punishment.

2. It discourages creativity:
Transactional leadership style focuses on motivating members to accomplish the given tasks rather than creating environment that can foster creativity in a team.

3. It can't work to all members:
Not everyone can be motivated through rewards or punishment, thus, this leadership style can't work effectively to every member in a team.

References:
1. Transactional leadership style: meaning, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages
2. 10 Management Styles For Effective Leadership (Pros, Cons, When to use them) And Factors Influencing Management Styles
3. Best 10 Effective Management Styles For Leaders
 
Back
Top Bottom