Transformational Leadership

(Tannenbaum; Weschler; Massarik, 1961) .

             It must be noted that the word 'leadership' as such is a very widely used word indeed, and social workers, political activists, orators and scholars and of course numerous others all utilize it in their speech and in their writing. However, what must also be noted is the fact that not everyone agrees about its actual and true meaning; among the social scientists, leadership has come to represent something that will always constantly shift and change, and transform its primary focus first on one thing and then another. There is a lot more work to be carried out before it can be truly stated that there is indeed a systematic and a basic theory for leadership, and a full fledged framework developed upon which to accurately measure effective leadership. When taken through history, leadership studies have been effectively showing the shifting focus on theoretical orientation of leadership studies; whereas early studies concentrated on the study of the leader as a person, to the exclusion of various other variables, later studies laid emphasis on isolating the physical and the psychological characteristics of the leader, and these were considered to be traits which were in fact differentiating the leader from all the other members of the group. (Tannenbaum; Weschler; Massarik, 1961) .

             Likewise, the concept of spirituality in leadership is a relatively newer idea, and one that researchers have started to analyze only recently, having been ignored as a concept for the past hundreds of years before today. However, one must not forget that throughout our social history, man has been able to identify his own inner moral as well as spiritual standards, and seen them for the influence they tend to cast upon human actions in general. In fact, it can even be stated that it is man's inner sense of spiritual wholeness that defines mankind as such, and also determines man's inner values, his sense of morality and justice, and therefore tends to direct man's actions and the various decisions that he makes in his daily life and also in his working life.

Related Essays: