Abstract

This paper aims at exploring emotional intelligence and how it is manifested in transformational and transactional leadership approaches. The introduction part defines the transformational and transactional leadership theories and emotional intelligence. It includes a literature review where that compares and contrasts the transformational and transactional leadership, where the transformational leader is presented as best suited to learn the employees' pulses and influence their behavior. The findings include what is learned from the research and after understanding the literature review. The final part includes the recommendation for future research.

Introduction

Transformational leadership involves leaders acting as mentors to followers by encouraging them to learn and achieve development at a personal level. It involves maintaining contact with them and empowering them so that they can self-actualize. Transactional leadership is more reactionary and passive is mostly involves a give-and-take relationship with the followers. Emotional intelligence refers to various abilities that enable an individual to generate, express and evaluate own emotions and those of others so as to shape the thinking and actions that can handle environmental demands. Emotional intelligence for leaders is important since it helps them to understand and regulate emotions and integrate them in leading and inspiring others. In order for a leader to understand and communicate with the followers, he or she must learn and manage their emotions and then inspire them to achieve the highest level of productivity and performance.

Literature review

There are varied claims from research on the relationship between transactional and transformational leadership and emotional intelligence (Harms & Credé, 2010). Effective leaders tends to be sensitively intelligent, and the intelligence involve the capacity for recognition and management of personal and organizational member's emotions (Harms & Credé, 2010). Leadership should possess specific characteristics so that to achieve commitment and job satisfaction among the employees and these include clear vision and empowerment (Harms & Credé, 2010). This means that between the transformational and transactional leaders, the one with these characteristics is considered to be consistent with emotional intelligence.

The transformational leaders are the leaders and managers who persuade their followers to improve their performance beyond expectation by providing them with a clear vision and inspiring them to transcend personal interests for the wellbeing of the larger unit or group.  A major characteristic of a transformational leader is the huge personal effect he or she has on employees' values and thinking regarding work and interpretation of happenings (Antoniou, 2005).  Idealized influence of which is a great aspect when it comes to transformational leadership defines the leader's attitude towards the followers such as trust, respect, and faith while showing dedication and appeal to their hopes. The leader assists followers in their work while making them feel that their contribution is important (Goleman, 2001). Intellectual Simulations defines the extent to which the leaders influence followers to creatively handle old problems while creating a tolerant environment to extreme positions while nurturing individuals to weigh their beliefs and values including those held by the organization. Individualized consideration defines the extent to which the leader shows interest in the welfare of others, assigns tasks as per individual capabilities and pays attention to members who appear less involved in the team (Goleman, 2001).  The transformational leader is charismatic in that he has a compelling attractiveness that arouses devotion in followers.

On the other hand, the transactional leadership is defined by various aspects which comprise contingent reward indicates the extent to which the leader informs followers what to do so that they can be rewarded. The emphasis is on what is expected of the members of the organization and recognition of their accomplishments (Harms & Credé, 2010). The second aspect is management-by-exception (active), which involves an assessment of whether the managers inform others of job requirements, are satisfied with the expected performance and where mistakes arise, correction is made. The third aspect is management-by-exception (passive) involves leaders who believe in the notion that "if it is not broken, don't fix it" (Harms & Credé, 2010). The leader waits for the mistakes to arise and then corrects them.  The leader may avoid making decisions, hesitate taking actions and can even be absent when needed.

A major development in the research on transformational leadership and emotional intelligence involves the view that emotional intelligence enables the leaders to improve organizational commitment, effectiveness, and commitment (Kumar, 2014). The transactional leadership majorly involves maintaining the operations in a normal flow, while using the disciplinary power and other related range of incentives as a way of motivating high performance in employees.  The leader normally does not have a future strategic focus to guide the organization to market leadership but rather his major concern is the normal flow of operations (Kumar, 2014).  The transformational leadership focuses beyond daily operations and comes up with strategies aimed at leading the organization to high performance. The transformational leader emphasizes team-building, members' cooperation and motivation at every managerial level to achieve the expected performance. Managers with behavior similar to that of transformational leaders are normally seen as effective and satisfying than transactional leaders (Kumar, 2014). 

The transformational leadership appears to motivate and empower organizational followers but since transactional leaderships emphasize rewards or threat of rewards withdrawal, it seems to suppress the commitment of followers to quality and productivity in the organization (Kumar, 2014).  Trustworthiness is an essential aspect of the make-up of a leader since where there is no trust, a lot of effort and time are used in non-productive activities because leaders feel compelled to focus on procedures even for the simplest of transactions. When the subordinates have no trust in the leader, creativity vanishes since individuals are busy guarding their backs. Transformational leaders exhibit behaviors that enhance empowering cultural norms, increased employee motivation, improved productivity and quality. These aspects relate to shared assumptions and basic values that place emphasizes on the importance of collaborations and roles of members in the organization through motivation instead of through competing (Kumar, 2014).  The individualized considerations and inspirational motivation aspects of transformational leadership relate to the capacity to manage and monitor personal emotions and those of other people. Transformational leaders exude excitement, energy, and enthusiasm that empower followers (Harms & Credé, 2010). They employ their strong emotions to stimulate similar feelings in their audiences, and their dual effect enables them to influence followers through personal identification creation with the manager and social identification within their work team (Harms & Credé, 2010). Finally, the varying kinds of identification can result in differential outcomes. 

Transactional leadership can be damaging since it is founded on negativity and this leads to a regressive impact on the satisfaction and performance of followers. It is devoid of chances that leaders can use to engage emotional intelligence but such leaders will only be available when mistakes are to be corrected. This is very true for passive management-by-exception, where the leaders do not make any initiative to influence the workers' feelings and actions towards high performance and productivity. In fact, the leadership style is seen as "immobilizing, self-absorbing, and finally manipulative” since the aim is to control followers through providing for their lowest needs (Maidenberg, 2017). There is no chance for inspiring and motivating the members of an organization to achieve the highest productivity and performance. The leader does not have the ability to monitor and manage their own emotions and those of the followers and thus cannot build trust and excite the enthusiasm and energy of the followers (Maidenberg, 2017). Lack of trust also means that the leader is not able to communicate with the followers so that to build the emotional connection. Even though transactional leadership can be effective for completion of an agenda, it does not have the ability to stimulate followers. It also seems to appeal to a one-size-fits-all approach, where managers can act in a similar manner with every follower and achieve desired positive results (Maidenberg, 2017). This may not always be true and could lead to illogical expectations since followers are different. The lack of active participation in the operations can curtail the communication process which entails listening and getting feedback. With transactional leadership, there is no enhanced creativity that is promoted by emotional intelligent leaders.

However, the transformational and transactional leadership characteristics can interact in the organization to achieve the desired results. The transformational characteristics normally build on the transactional traits so that transformational leadership exists in a manner that it supplements the transactionally related management approaches. Hence, a certain manager or leader can possess both the transactional and transformational leadership qualities (Hamilton, 2010). In regard to the application of emotional intelligence, there are certain circumstances where the transformational leadership may be inappropriate. Managers in an organization should rely more on charismatic leaders' resources who are capable of inspiring followers and ensure high productivity levels that would not have achieved while employing only the transactional approach. Every leader should show both the transformational and transactional factors so that his or her profile portrays more of one approach and less of the other (Hamilton, 2010). On the other hand, the transformational leader is capable of relieving followers of any fears stemming from uncertainties, makes them feel responsible for their tasks allocated and utilizes analytic thinking together with emotionality to get the best out of the individuals. Through socialization, the transformational leader is best placed to take the pulse of the followers, understand their unspoken currents of concerns and thoughts (Hamilton, 2010). Hence, the leader can communicate with the followers in ways that they can understand and embrace. The transactional leader is associated with laissez-faire approach which has no relation to emotional intelligence since it is passive and involves non-leadership kind of behavior. Self-awareness and emotional management are important aspects of effective leadership and this can only be associated with the transformational approach to leadership.

Findings

In this research, I have found that transformational and transactional leadership styles have varying sets of skills that sets them apart. I understood that the two leadership approaches have different characteristics that define the leaders' behavior and which determine their approach to people management in an organization. As a leader in an organization, I found it necessary for one to work towards developing skills of the employees so as to assist in motivating them to produce and perform at the highest level. The exploration of the two leadership styles helped me understand how emotional intelligence plays an important role in learning employees' pulses and managing their emotions and thus inspire them to attain the highest productivity. I also learned that there are certain skills that enable leaders to inspire their followers – employees – and these skills are derived from the characteristics of the transformational and transactional approaches. Through the research, I have found out that emotional intelligence is a core aspect of effective leadership in an organization, and it's built upon self-awareness, self-control, social skills, and motivation. I can relate most of these qualities to the transformational leadership approach since the leader is able to have self-awareness and manage other peoples' emotions. The transformational leader can easily learn and manage the emotions of others and through communication, inspire them to achieve the highest performance and productivity. However, I found out that no single leadership approach is appropriate for every situation and the transactional approach may be applicable in some instances. Having reviewed the various studies done, I observed that transformational leadership is definitely correlated with emotional intelligence apart from the few exceptions. Self-awareness relates to individual influence that eventually brings about intellectual stimulation. Social skills exhibited by the transformational leader enables them to have inspirational motivation on the employees in the organization.

Recommendations for future research

The review of emotional intelligence's relations with the transactional and transformational approach to leadership highlights the best method of understanding people's pulses, communicating with them and managing their emotions. However, since the transformational approach is not suitable for all situations, there is a need to further research on how the transformational and transactional approaches can interact to strongly influence the employees' behavior and satisfaction. This should also include how the transactional leadership can be used to promote organizational productivity and employee satisfaction where transformational approach alone may not be sufficient.

References

Hamilton, M. (2010). The interaction of transactional and transformational leadership. Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development, 3(3), 4.

Kumar, S. (2014). Establishing linkages between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. Industrial psychiatry journal, 23(1), 1.

Harms, P. D., & Credé, M. (2010). Emotional intelligence and transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analysis. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 17(1), 5-17.

Goleman, D. (2001). An EI-based theory of performance. The emotionally intelligent workplace: How to select for, measure, and improve emotional intelligence in individuals, groups, and organizations, 1, 27-44.

Antoniou, A. S. G. (2005). 41 Emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. Research Companion to Organizational Health Psychology, 633.

Maidenberg, J. (2017). Transactional and Transformational Leadership and Emotional Intelligence for Athletic Coaches.