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- Hello. I'm Harold Lewis, a leadership expert and a member of the AMA faculty. Many leaders are transactional leaders. They motivate employees by exchanging compensation and incentives for performance. Transformational leaders go beyond this to focus on areas like employee growth, motivation, and collaboration. Each style has its place depending on the situation and the organization. So let's look at some of the pros and cons of each.

Transformational leadership can be an advantageous way to lead due to its focus on inspiration, which can result in better performance, a shared vision. This supports focus and alignment with goals, teamwork, and collaboration, which helps improve trust, and efficiency, and morale, and motivation may increase.

But there may be disadvantages like less constructive dialogue and feedback if the vision is overly powerful. Its greater focus on change may feel disruptive, and individual creativity might suffer due to the emphasis on collaboration. Transactional leadership can also offer advantages, like clear expectations and metrics, stronger compliance with rules and policies. And it may be more conducive to individual creativity.

Possible disadvantages include morale problems due to less inspirational leadership, collaboration might be a lower priority, and change, even if needed, may be seen as the enemy. So both transformational and transactional leadership styles have positives and negatives. But each can be very useful when you apply them in the right circumstances.

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