What Are the Characteristics of a Transformational Leader?

Last Updated November 22, 2021

A transformational leader drives innovation and inspires new ways of thinking, harnessing a team’s creativity to respond to change. The more you know about transformational leadership, the better prepared you’ll be to lead in today’s dynamic business environment. The first step is to understand what makes this leadership style unique and what transformational leadership characteristics you’ll need to develop to make a difference.

What Is Transformational Leadership?

Transformational leadership focuses on empowering others and inspiring change. To achieve these ends, transformational leaders instill a sense of ownership and participation—in their teams and in themselves—by utilizing the four “I’s” of transformational leadership:

• Intellectual stimulation encourages innovative thinking by emphasizing new experiences and growth opportunities.
• Individual consideration builds positive relationships by mentoring employees and helping each person understand their value and potential.
• Inspirational motivation models a vision for the organization, the team and for employees to emulate and make their own.
• Idealized influence models expectations and actions for employees, earning their trust and respect.

‌These four “I’s” provide the foundational philosophy of transformational leadership, helping to differentiate it from leadership philosophies with a similar style, such as visionary leadership, and even complement those styles with opposite approaches, such as transactional leadership.

7 Characteristics of a Transformational Leader

To embody the four “I’s” of transformational leadership, you’ll want to develop certain transformational leadership characteristics or traits. These are not innate characteristics or personality traits that you are either born with or you are not. Instead, they can be thought of as “useful behaviors” that can be developed, modified and utilized based on the situation and team leadership needs.

As Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford, writes in McKinsey Quarterly, “people are not only shaped by their enduring traits but also profoundly influenced by cues and constraints that vary by situation…Characterizing leaders’ behavior as somehow dependent on inherent traits provides an easy excuse for avoiding the sort of behavior and strategies that may be required to get things done.”

In developing these seven characteristics of a transformational leader, or of any leadership style, it’s important to recognize that “leadership, the capacity to get things done, is a skill that can be improved like any other.”

1. Openness to New Thinking

Transformational leaders are constantly open to innovation wherever it may arise. They constantly look for opportunities to do things differently and are always open to new ideas, no matter where those ideas may present themselves.

Henry Ford famously developed the concept of his car assembly line while visiting a meat-packing plant. Ford’s open mindset allowed him to see the stepwise disassembly of animal carcasses and envisioned the process in reverse, changing construction procedures so each worker was responsible for assembling a single part. Within six years, his company’s output increased from 32,000 to 735,000 cars per year. 

2. Talent for Broadening Minds

Transformational leadership often involves shifting people’s views on how things should work. To do so, it’s necessary to understand the rationale behind people’s current mindsets and how to shift their thinking.

The transformational leader needs to understand where people are coming from and convince them to step outside of their comfort zone. This requires two separate skills: empathy and the ability to inspire confidence.

3. Commitment to Active Listening

It’s not enough for transformational leaders to request — or even inspire — ideas. They also need to make their colleagues and team members feel bold enough to share those ideas.

Transformational leaders hear ideas with an open mind and respond without judgment or finality. They commit to employing active listening techniques so that their team members feel seen, understood and respected. With these methods in place, they inspire others to share their thoughts without self-censoring.

4. Tolerance for Intelligent Risks

No transformation happens without some risk of failure. A transformational leader needs to be willing to consider those risks and what they might mean for the future of the organization.

If the benefits of an idea outweigh the risks, the leader must be willing to pursue it further if it seems feasible. The leader also has to recognize when the risk is too great, and a different approach is needed.

5. Willingness to Accept Responsibility

Any innovator who ventures into uncharted territory must be willing to own the results of doing so, good or bad. No leader inspires confidence if they demand that others take the fall when an idea fails. Transformational leaders must assume responsibility for each of their decisions, including green lighting the ideas of others.

6. Trust in Team Members

People need autonomy to develop and shape new ideas. The transformational leader understands this and trusts team members to define their own steps to success.

Take Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix. Hastings grants unlimited vacation time to Netflix employees as long as performance remains high and the team’s well-being doesn’t suffer. Netflix’s unlimited vacation policy began in 2003. Just four years later, the company had developed and launched its industry-disrupting streaming service.

7. Ability to Inspire Participation

For innovation to happen, it needs to be part of a team’s culture. The transformational leader needs to expect creativity from everyone — not just one or two “idea people.” The leader’s job is to model universal creativity and innovation.

There needs to be an established expectation that everyone — including the leader — will think outside the box, recognizing thoughts and ideas, even when they don’t generate paradigm-shifting results. Transformational leaders create transformational teams where everyone is an idea person.

Develop Yourself as a Transformational Leader with MSU

The world is changing faster than ever before. The strongest leaders don’t merely keep up or react to change. They are prepared to meet current needs while staying focused on the future by being proactive, agile, and visionary in their decision making.

You can develop yourself as that leader in the online Strategic Leadership & Management Certificates from Michigan State University. You’ll learn the power of positive change in your organization and how to develop the characteristic behaviors of a transformational leader that can drive success, while gaining the techniques that inspire teams to create bold new visions.