Transactional and Transformational leadership sound to me like exactly what they are. Transactional leadership is acting in accordance to your clearly defined role. My example from work experience is a supervisor who is good at what they do and leads in a classic management style type of way. For example, when I worked at the front desk one of my managers would passively act in the management by exception. This person would leave me alone at the desk to handle all the guest complaints, inter-department tasks, and to make decisions with housekeeping and would only appear out of his back office after problems would arise or if I made a mistake. Then as soon as the issue was fixed this particular manager would go back to their desk and I would be left alone again at the desk. This management by exception would involve corrective criticism and negative feedback only after my mistake was made. It would always sound, ”you should have done this instead, or why would you do that, you should have known better” etc.

In contrast, transformational leadership is what most us of aspire to be today. It is the process of transforming the environment and the people in it for a positive change. This type of leadership focuses on enhancing and building better relationships within the existing system. Luckily, I have experienced many more great examples of transformational leadership than transactional leadership in my past work experiences. One example I can think of was a manager who everyone admired. They respected this person out of trust for who they were and where they were going to lead the company. This manager always treated everyone fairly and provided a clear mission that inspired the entire company to stand behind. This manager was a clear transformational leader.