Both Hitler and Gandhi meet the current deffinition of "Transformational Leaders." There's something intuitively wrong with saying that both Hitler and Gandhi were "moral" leaders.


James MacGregor Burns suggests that Leadership must raise followers to a higher standard of morality. This creates a difficult question: A higher moral value for whom? Hitler certainly believed he was a moral man, as did his followers. Who decides whats moral?

Questions about the nature of morality are apt to bog us down in philisophical debates. However, we can side step the issue of morality altogether and still come up with a definition of transformationl leadership that satisfies our desire to say that Gandi was transformational while Hitler was not.

If we subsitute Heifetz's "adaptive" leadership and elements of William Gardner's "authentic" leadership for Burn's morality, then we can exclude Hitler from our lists of transformational Leaders and easily disolve any aguments concerning moral relotivism or moral absolutism.



Transformational Leadership Differentiates Leadership from Power Wielding

Power Wielding: When a "Leader" uses his/her control over some power base to enfluence followers to act in a way that satisfies the leaders goals.

Follower actions are:

• Prompted by Power.
• Mostly about the Leaders needs/ wants.
• Not necessarily able to raise or lower morality of the group

"[Power] may appear in the form of money, sex appeal, authority, administrative regulaiton, charisma, munotions, staff resources, instruments for tortuere, etc." (Burns, 2003)

"power holders (p), possesiong certain motives and goals, have the capacity to secure changes in the behaviro of a respondent (R) human or animal and in the environmetn, by utilizing resources in theri power base, including factors of skill, relative to the targest of thier power-wielding and necessary to secure such changes" (Burns, 2003).

Note: Power weilders may provoke Kelman's "compliance" or "identification." These are both "public" types of opinon change (they are dependant on surveilance from the leader or sailiance of the leader's persona.) If the leader is not watching or if followers are not conciously aware of the leader then power wielding may prove ineffective at enfluencing behavior. (Kelman)

Transformational Leadership: When a Leader enfluences followers to actoin by alllining his/ her motives or wants with those of followers in a manner which enfluences and raises followers to "higher levels of motivation and moraltiy."

Follower's actions are:

• Prompted by a congruence of often unconcious needs/wants
• Mostly about the needs of followers (see Ervin Staub's Hierarchy of Needs)
• Able to raise the overal morality of the group

"Leaders address themselves to followers wants, needs and other motivations."

"Leadership is the shaping of private and public opinion"--presumably about what is moral.

"Leadership is a process of morality to the degree that leaders engage with followers on the basies of shared motives and values and goals--on the basis, that is, of the followers' 'true' needs as well as those of leaders: psychological , economic, safety, spiritual, seuxal, aesthetic, or physical." (p36)

Morals and Values:

"Values must be durable and valid rather than false and transient." (p 41.)

"At the highest stage of moral development persons are guidded by near universal ethical principles of justice such as equality of human rights and respect for individual dignity." (p. 42)
"The dichotomy of leadership is between the leader's commitment to a number of overiding, general welfare-oriented values on the one hand and his encouragement of... a host of lesser values and 'responsiblities' on the other" (p46) note: this sounds like an ethics v. effectiveness dichotomy.











TO BE CONTINUED......



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Works Cited:

Burns, J.M. (2003). Transforming Leadership. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Chapter 9, Creative leadership, pp. 152-169.

Kelman, H. Compliance, identification, and internalization: three processes of opinion change. Journal of conflict resolution, 2, 51-60.

Heifetz, R.A. (1994). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard. Introduction, pp. 1-9; Chapter 1, Values in leadership, pp. 13-27; Chapter 4, Mobilizing adaptive work, pp. 69-100; Chapter 5, Applying power, pp.101-124; Chapter 11, The personal challenge, pp. 250-276.