Transactional leadership

Transactional leaders use conventional reward and punishment to gain compliance from their followers.

Interaction and Motivation

They have continuing, often unspoken interaction that take such forms as::"Do as I say and you will get a raise.":"Meet this quota or you will get fired."

These are extrinsic motivators which bring only minimal compliance from followers. Some followers will supply their own internal (intrinsic) motivation such as pride in their work, but this is a matter of chance.

Transactional leaders accept the goals, structure and culture of the existing organization. In co-opting those aspects of the organization, the transactional leader must make change incrementally. This iterative change tends to be long lasting and influential as opposed. This is in contrast to charismatic leadership, which typically only lasts as long as the leader is present.

Types of Transactional Leadership

There are two components of Transactional Leadership

Contingent Reward

Here the leader provides rewards if, and only if, subordinates perform adequately and/or try hard enough.It contracts exchange of rewards for effort, promises rewards for good performance, recognizes accomplishments.

Management by Exception (MBE)

MBE is a conservative approach whereby additional resources are applied in response to any event falling outside of established parameters. It seeks to minimize the opportunity for "exceptions" by enforcing defensive management processes.

Personal Characteristics of Transactional Leaders

Transactional leaders tend to be directive and sometimes dominating. They tend to be action oriented.

ee also

*Transformational leadership