e their followers to respect and admire them.
Transformational leaders influence their followers by intellectually stimulating them to become aware of problems in their groups and Organisation and view their problems from a new perspective - one consistent with the leaders vision. A transformational leader causes followers to view problems differently and feel some degree of responsibility for helping to solve them.
LEADERS: BORN OR MADE
When things go wrong in an Organisation, blame is most often laid at the leader's door. Colby Chandler, a past CEO of Kodak Corporation, for example is commonly thought to be responsible for many of Kodak's trouble in 1980s. Likewise, Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, has been blamed for the troubles that have caused that company's earning to plummet and many of its employees to be laid off. Similarly, when organisations are doing particularly well, people tend to think that their leaders are doing an especially good job. A classic example of this penetration was the stunning turnaround of Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s, attributed to CEO Lee Iacocca. More recent examples come from Sony Corporation's success under the direction of Akio Morita and Microsoft's achievements under Bill Gates. Because leaders are thought to affect organisational performance, when an Organisation like IBM runs into trouble, a new leader like Lou Gerstner is often brought to turn the Organisation around.
In addition to being held responsible for the success or failure of whole Organisation, leaders are also held responsible for the performance of the individuals and groups within an organisation. The leadership capabilities of the manager of a group of car sales people may be questioned when the group's annual sales performance becomes the lowest in a geographic region, for example. Similarly the high sales performance of another group may be attributed to the exceptional leadership provided by the group's manager.
The common belief that leaders " make a difference" and can have a major impact on individuals, groups and whole organisations has promoted organisational behavior researchers to devote considerable effort to understanding leadership.
Researchers have focused primarily on two leadership issues:
(1) why some members of an organisation become leaders while others do not and
(2) why some leaders are more effective or successful than others.
In general, research confirms the popular belief that leadership is indeed an important ingredient of individual, group and organisational effectiveness. Good leaders spur on individuals, groups and whole organisations to perform at a high level and achieve their goals. Conversely, a lack of effective leadership is often a contributing factor to lackluster performance.
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