Transactional Leadership

The current situation involves, in part, forming a different mindset. The department has been run by a manager that has been in the shoes of her employees and understands their situation. The previous manager set a precedent with allowing flexible hours, personal time, low turnover, and successful customer negotiation. All of this came at a cost such as longer than average wait time for customer. The approach that I would take in this scenario is not too much different from what Rasmussen did. One of the first things that I would do is to increase per user call but each customer representative. I would set a time limit for each call that a representative takes that would be on par with current national statistics. This approach would allow the company to measure the efficiency of the representative to a national statistic. Flexible work schedule would be eliminated; efficiency not flexibility will be the rule of the day. This approach may also cause some delays on customer calls but this should improve over time. This approach may also initially cause a morale problem within the department but overall this approach will increase efficiency within the department.

The two different styles that were addressed previously have their own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the strength of transactional leadership is the ideal that team members agree to obey their leader when they accept the job. In other words, obedience is paid for. The transformational or charismatic style of leadership is what true leaders are made of and they inspire their team with a shared vision that the members agree with. Other strengths that the transactional style has a reward and corrective action system that is in place. Transformational strength is its ability to inspire and motivate employees and encouraged their initiative. The weakness of transactional style is failure involves several actions which may include reduction of pay, absence of bonuses, or even dismissal. The weakness of the transformational style is having sole reliance on a leader that may not inspire his employees.