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Knowledge: Great companies and great leaders are often synonymous, but what does it take to be a great leader? Dr. Angelo Kinicki is professor of management at the W.P. Carey School of Business. As a consultant, Kinicki often works with top management teams. Here, Kinicki discusses the principles of transformational and managerial leadership in increasing the efficiency of executives and the companies they lead.

Angelo Kinicki: Transformational leadership is a type of leadership that really focuses on capturing people's hearts and minds. And just for a little history on how we got to the importance of transformational leadership. Historically, academics used to think that the way to be an effective leader, it happened through the traits that you posses. What we found through research on that is that not all leaders posses the same traits.

Now, there are some that are related to being an effective leader, for example, having interpersonal skills, being intelligent, being conscientious, being honest. Those traits are related to being an effective leader. But what research has shown is sometimes people have those traits and are not effective leaders. And then what happened is people started to investigate, what are the behaviors that effective leaders exhibit?

And what we found there is there's two broad classes of behavior that effective leaders exhibit: One is a focus on people and the other is a focus on the task. However, then we found is, well, you know, sometimes you don't want to focus on the task because you need to focus on the people. And that led to an understanding that effective leadership should vary depending on the situation that a leader faces.

Well, anyway, ultimately it led to finding that effective leaders seem to exhibit what's called transformational leadership. What that is, it's a type of leadership that you really connect with people's hearts and minds such that people are willing to, if you would to use the word transform, they're willing to pursue the organization's goals over their own self interests. That's what transformational leadership is.

Now, in the study of exactly how transformational leadership works or what are the kind of behaviors that leaders exhibit to show transformational leadership. There are four of them. The first one is inspirational motivation. Inspirational motivation really involves establishing a vision that people can connect to and care about.

For example, at General Electric, when Jack Welch was the CEO there, his vision for the company was to be number one or number two, or buy, sell or change. A vision needs to be something that people see is more important than simply making money. When people connect to it, they are intrinsically motivated. They connect with the leader and they like it. That's one important component of transformational leadership.

The next component is something we call idealized influence. Idealized influence means that a leader connects with a person, and is a role model, displays ethical standards and shows sacrificing for the good of the group. When a leader behaves that way, employees tend to follow suit. So, idealized influence is a second way.

The third component of transformational leadership is called individualized consideration. This relates to leadership behaviors that show support, encouragement and empowerment. When you do that, employees again identify with the leader, they feel good about working in the organization and they're motivated.

The last component of transformational leadership is called intellectual stimulation. Intellectual stimulation is where leaders encourage employees to go beyond the status quo, to challenge what we're currently doing, to seek innovative solutions to organizational problems.

Those are the four main components of transformational leadership. Research tells us that when leaders exhibit these four things --  inspirational motivation, idealized influence, individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation -- when leaders do that, job satisfaction is higher, commitment to the organization is higher, performance goes up and people identify more with the leader.

So, that's what it is. Now, who should use it? The interesting thing that we're talking about in the leadership research area is that any manager can use it. You don't have to be a CEO to do it. Literally, any manager can use it.

Now that said, my personal opinion is, senior level executives need to use it more so than lower level executives. Primarily because it's the senior executive level group that identifies the vision and the strategic goals of an organization and, therefore, they can communicate them in a way that is interesting and exciting.

So, that's what it is, any leader can use it, but it's more prevalent at the senior levels.

Knowledge: If any leader can use it, and it's so important, why do you think the focus on transformational leadership in today's work environment is limited?

Kinicki: I think it's limited because a couple of things have been happening. Number one is we seem to, in the popular press and with academic researchers, is we're in pursuit of this charismatic, hero kind of CEO (Jack Welch would be an example, Herb Kelleher would be an example). You know, these larger than life figures, that they're the ones that we should emulate and we should be leaders like them.

While they're good leaders, there's a second thing that's happening that says maybe that's not the way to go. The second thing that's happening is, with globalization and what's happening around the world, the best organization has to execute. They have to deliver. They have to bring innovative products to the marketplace, on time, within budget and meet the value proposition that customers demand.

Transformational leadership is not what gets that done. What gets that done... I'll back up. Transformational leadership helps get that done. What's really needed is a different kind of leadership. A kind of leadership that focuses on execution or, even more basic, focuses on some of the fundamental managerial tasks that have to get done, like planning, organizing, directing and control.

Those four kinds of managerial behaviors, in combination with transformational leadership, in my mind, will lead to maximum productivity. So, what's been happening here, the popular press emulates these transformational leaders and ignores the sort of quieter ones, who do the mundane managerial tasks that get things done. So, that's why I think it's limited.

By the way, Jim Collins and his book, "Good to Great", when he studied what leads companies to go from good to great, one of the things he found was, it's not these charismatic leaders that lead companies to good to great. But, it's more leaders who were delivering results in a more humble kind of way.

So, not that I'm advocating humility here -- humility is a good thing -- but what I am advocating is leadership that focuses on execution and the sort of nuts and bolts of helping employees to do what they need to do to get the job done.

Knowlege: So, what is managerial leadership and why is it important? And does it replace transformational leadership or does it augment it?

Kinicki: Managerial leadership in its broadest sense would be the kind of leadership behaviors that help managers to deliver, execute and be results-focused. Now, Larry Bossity has been talking about execution and saying that managers and leaders need to execute and if you don't execute you're not a leader. And I agree with that proposition. I think leaders ultimately, managers ultimately, we need to deliver our products and services on time and in a quality way.

So, then what does it take to execute? Well, that's where managerial leadership comes in. My own thinking is you have to go back to the very beginning and say, "Well what is it that managers do?" and what we know from hundreds of years of looking at what managers do, it can be put into four boxes.

The first thing managers do, and this is a component of managerial leadership, is they plan. So, that means they have to figure out, what are the goals that we're pursuing and how am I going to get there? That's one of the first components of managerial leadership.

Another broad aspect of managerial leadership would be to organize. Now, to organize means, once we know the strategic vision and the goals of an organization, the next thing we want to do is to organize the work environment.

So, that entails things like figuring out well, what's the work flow? And how should we schedule the purchasing of raw materials to do whatever it is we're doing? How should we schedule the work hours to deliver the products we need? What kind of internal systems do we need to help us get to where we're going? That's the organizational side.

So, we have planning, we have organization. The next thing we have is what we call directing. Directing, actually I can call that leading in a broader way, meaning, once people know what the goals are and once we have organized the work environment to be productive or set up in a way that is conducive to achieving the strategic goals, if you will, then we need to direct people.

And when I talk about directing, I mean things like coaching, being supportive, helping, demonstrating, reinforcing, rewarding. All those kinds of things are part of what we call directing or leading.

The last component that's very important in the managerial function is what I would call control. All organizations have control systems. Control systems are things that enable a manager to know whether or not he or she is achieving the results that they want to achieve. So, common control mechanisms at a broad organizational level would be keeping track of customer satisfaction, quality, error rates, productivity, profit levels.

All those kinds of metrics tell an organization and the leaders whether or not we are accomplishing our goals. As you go down the organization, the control mechanism really amounts to a simple monitoring of employee performance.

So, for example, say I'm a supervisor and I'm supervising a group of workers, whatever the job function, and they have a set of goals. The control mechanism amounts to simply keeping track of, are the people on track to meet their goals? So, you may be monitoring things via the computer, via the phone, via video or simply talking to people. So, the control mechanism is very, very important because it tells you whether or not you are on track to meet your goals.

So, managerial leadership then to answer that question, it goes back to four fundamental things: planning, directing, organizing and control. And managers do those in a very broad level. Now, underneath that, there are more specific behaviors to occur, but that's in a broad level.

Now, your second question was, does managerial leadership replace transformational leadership or augment it? Before I answer that, let me explain what augmentation means. If managerial leadership augments, what it means is that a manager should exhibit both of the things, both transformational and managerial. They augment each other, which means they make the ultimate effect of the leadership behavior stronger or better. If it doesn't augment, it means one replaces the other. So, the answer to the questions is, no they augment.

Transformational leadership is really important and so is managerial leadership. Now, I think the importance of transformational leadership and managerial leadership varies by where an individual manager is in the organization. But I think, for all managers, both of those components of leadership are important.

So let me explain that a little bit. So, let's say that I am a CEO, senior level executive. For that individual, the first thing they want to do, of course is to be transformational in the sense of find the vision, creating the strategic goals and communicating them in the organization, in a way, that stimulates people and gets people excited about the purpose of the organization. That's transformational leadership.

Now, once you do that, and you have people saying, "OK I know the goals and I'm committed and I'm excited," the next thing is we have to execute. Now, how do you execute? You execute through discipline and through the planning, directing, organizing, control components of managerial leadership. They both need to be used together.

Now, if I'm a CEO or a Senior Vice President, I'm probably doing more transformational leadership because the direct reports that report to me probably don't need as much managerial leadership. So, that's what happens at the senior levels. But, as you come down the organization, what tends to occur is managers need to do more of the managerial function because the transformational component of establishing the vision and the strategies and selling those, that's already been done by leaders above you.

Therefore, your role becomes to be transformational in the sense of explaining to your division, department or work unit, how your group contributes to that vision and strategies. And you explain that. That's being transformational. But, then you really turn to, "OK team, we need to deliver. We need to figure out how we're going to increase customer satisfaction. Or we need to figure out how we're going to increase productivity." And the way you do that is through the managerial leadership, not the transformational.

So, at lower levels, my opinion would be managerial leadership is more important -- probably even mid-level, managerial leadership is more important. But every leader really uses both of those.

By the way, case in point, Jack Welch, when he was CEO, was known to spend 60 percent of his time on leadership, personnel, human resource-related issues. That is not transformation leadership -- that's managerial leadership. I would say to you, he knew that because he knows how important people are to the success of an organization. It's really an augmentation result that we're looking for here.

Knowlege: What are the dimensions of managerial leadership that managers can use to increase individual and organizational effectiveness?

Kinicki: I've been doing some research for a number of years now on trying to drill down, to figure out what really are the more specific kind of behavioral qualities that managers can exhibit, within those broader categories of Plan, Direct, Organize, and Control.

So what I did was, I started off reading the literature and seeing what was said about that. Then I did some focus groups with about 90 managers in different organizations. I asked them one question. I said to them, "What are the things that you do as a manager to bring projects in on time and within budget?" I took all the data from these focus groups from these managers and studied the results.

What I found was there were eight more specific dimensions of leader behavior that these managers were exhibiting.

The first one was called support and coaching, the first thing I found. Support and coaching relates to making sure employees have the resources that they need to get the job done. It's explaining to employees what needs to be done and helping them to plan for how to get there. It's being supportive when employees make decisions and backing them up. It's demonstrating, if the manager has the knowledge about what is the function that the employees is doing, showing like a coach would in a sporting event. So support and coaching would be one of the more specific dimensions of managerial behavior.

Another one that we found was setting performance objectives and expectations. This one really has two parts to it. The first part is helping the employee to set goals that connect to the higher level goals in the organization. So if I'm a manager, and I'm working with my employees, I want my employees to set goals that support my goals, because my goals should support my boss's goals, and my boss's goals should support his or her boss's goals.

So the second component is the setting objectives and the process by which you do that. What we found there in terms of the process by which you set those objectives is that doing it in a participative way is more effective than doing it in an autocratic way. So the second component of managerial leadership would be setting performance objectives and expectations.

Let me be clear about something -- the difference between a goal and an expectation. A goal is an end result that you desire. For example, I want to increase customer satisfaction by 10 percent. An expectation is expectations to the employee about how we're going to increase customer satisfaction by 10 percent.

What are we going to do to do that? What are the behaviors that we want to do? Expectations are different than objectives. So that second component of managerial behavior entails both setting the objectives and the expectations.

The third dimension that we found, which is really, really important, is feedback. Feedback is absolutely critical. Research that's been done shows that managers don't give enough feedback, and when they do give feedback, they too often give negative feedback. That's not a good thing to do.

It's nothing wrong with giving negative feedback, but if all you do is give negative feedback and no positive feedback, employees feel unappreciated. So the third dimension of managerial leadership is giving feedback.

Now, in the process of giving feedback, I did a study with a group of about 200 employees. We were trying to understand what are the characteristics -- when managers deliver feedback, how should it be done in a way that the employees can accept it and change their behavior or feel reinforced by the feedback? We found a few characteristics that were very important.

Here's the first one. When managers give feedback, it needs to be specific. They need to specifically describe the behavior that's bothering them. So, for example, if I want to give feedback to someone who just yelled at a customer, I might say, "Angelo, why did you swear at that customer?" That's very specific. You want to do that as opposed to give generic and evaluative feedback.

An example of that would be, "Angelo, you were rude to the customer." Well, when you give feedback that uses evaluative words like "rude," the employee might not know what that means. In the process of giving feedback, it's very important to be specific and descriptive when you do that.

The other thing we found about giving feedback is it should be timely. So if want to give an employee feedback, you want to do it as soon as you can to the time you saw the positive or negative behavior, assuming your emotions are in control. It's never good to give particularly negative feedback when you, as an individual, are angry or emotional about the event that's there. So you want to give feedback that's specific and descriptive, and very timely.

The last thing we found about giving feedback is employees -- this is no surprise -- employees are much more willing to accept feedback when it's positive as opposed to negative.

So the moral of the story there is, give the positive feedback whenever you need to, give negative when you need to, but let's focus, as a manager, on trying to recognize both the positive and the negative. Don't focus mainly on negative because people will feel unappreciated. So that's the second -- that's the third dimension, excuse me, in managerial leadership that we found in our research.

The fourth dimension is communication. We all know how important communication is, and employees tend to say, "I don't get enough of it." But we found that the way managers communicate is very important. It's not just the way, but it's the general communication pattern. For example, are meetings constructive? Do meetings have agendas?

When the answer is yes, employees tend to like those things. Are employees kept informed of changes in deadlines and what's going on in the organization? Employees like that.

So communication is a broad category of managerial leadership that helps employees; because they know what's going on, they feel informed, and if changes need to be made -- and you're communicating -- then employees know why we're making those changes and what's the rationale behind them. So communication is a fourth important dimension of managerial leadership.

The fifth dimension we found is monitoring performance. And monitoring performance goes all the way back to what I said about the control function of managers. Monitoring performance simply entails [that] somebody needs to keep track of: Is the employee on target to meet their goals?

Now, again, at senior management levels, CEO's and senior vice-presidents, don't engage in a lot of monitoring, because the people who work for them are generally at a experience and education level where they are doing that themselves.

So monitoring performance becomes much more something that leaders must do as you go down the organization, and they must develop mechanisms for doing it. One of the things I like to do -- with the people who work for me -- is I will schedule regular weekly meetings, call them update meetings, and in larger organizations we have operational review meetings, where the goal is reviewing the status of progress towards achieving our goals.

That needs to be done. If it doesn't get done, here's the problem: how can you have feedback? If you're not monitoring, what happens to the feedback component of managerial leadership? Well, without the data that would be obtained in the monitoring function, then the feedback sessions tend to devalued and generic, which is the opposite of what I said they should be.

So, the monitoring function is very, very important. And it's important for managers to devise a mechanism for tracking the progress of their employees towards achieving their goals. Many managers that I've worked with in organizations do that via using spreadsheets and other devises where they can keep a regular track of how progress is going. So that's the fifth dimension -- monitoring performance.

The sixth dimension of managerial leadership that we found in the research that we were doing is what I call: providing consequences based on performance. And this one is pretty straightforward. Managers need to reward and recognize the people that work for them. And this is critical because it is related to both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Now, intrinsic motivation is the motivation that we feel when we get amiable rewards for our work. So when managers reward people with bonuses, incentives, promotions, sending them to training, those are rewards -- if they're tied to performance –- that create extrinsic motivation.

But, managers also create intrinsic motivation by recognizing people. Intrinsic motivation is where people will feel motivated internally because they have done a good job. And managers, the main way to do that is to simply recognize people via words, thank you [and] good job. Those kinds of behaviors let people know that they're doing a very good job. So providing consequences, and I also use the words, providing consequences based on performance, to highlight that.

Managerial leadership to be effective needs to reward the right behavior and performance. So it's critical that managers know what the results they want are and they reward accordingly. If a manager rewards the wrong kind of performance and behavior then it can actually lead to lower productivity because you're rewarding the wrong behavior.

So providing consequences based on performance is actually very much related to the second dimension of managerial relationship that I mentioned, which is setting objectives and expectations. Once you set objections and expectations, you then reward and recognize consistency with those objections and expectations.

The seventh dimension of managerial leadership is called team empowerment. What that represents is managers encouraging a participant environment. [That is] managers empowering people to not only make decisions, but to be proactive, to work with each other and to solve problems on their own.

What we have learned through history of both research and examples in organizations is the best ideas come from the people working closest to the customers. So if you want to empower people, you want to get people to get ideas while working close to the customers. [Then] to propose those ideas upward in the organization so we can find innovative ways to improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and quality -- those kinds of things. So having an empowering work environment was the seventh component.

And the final component of managerial leadership that we found is what I call accountability. And accountability relates very clearly to the dimension of setting performance objectives, expectations and the dimension of providing consequences based on performance.

Accountability simple is what it is -- holding people accountable. And here's an interesting thing I have found about that. That, in many organizations, it's hard to do. And the reason it's hard to do it, [well] a couple reasons. Number one, you don't have good objectives and if you don't have good objectives, then how can hold people accountable, it's pretty hard. So you need to have good objectives at the get go.

The second reason it's hard to hold people accountable, is because when you hold people accountable, and they are not doing well, it can frequently lead to conflict. So, human nature can be, “I don't like conflict; I would rather avoid conflict.”  So what that leads to -- in many organizations -- is rather than deal with the conflict, we ignore the conflict. Or even in some cases, we reward poor performance by saying to an employee, “your performance is ok,” even when it's not ok. That's a horrible thing to do.

So accountability is the last component. And by the way, holding people accountable -- to do that effectively -- not only do you need the proper objectives like I mentioned a minute ago, but you also need feedback skills. Because if I'm going to hold people accountable, I want to give them feedback about how their doing and then, obviously, I want to support and coach.

So I don't know if this has become clear by what I've said, but in these dimensions of managerial leadership, and I'll repeat them just to make my point: support and coaching, setting objectives and expectations, giving feedback, communicating, monitoring performance, providing consequences based on performance, empowering people in the work unit and accountability.

These behaviors are interrelated. For example, again, to hold people accountable you need to have objectives, you need to be able to give feedback, and then you need to do support and coaching. 

So, what I found through subsequent work is [that] managerial leadership really entails a host of categories of leadership behavior that need to be done in tandem if you're going to find maximum productivity amongst the work unit.