It can be tempting to equate “transformational leadership” with a leader’s personality—thinking that strong, enthusiastic and/or passionate personalities are what drive transformational thinking, vision and change within an organization.
Most credit the concept of transformational leadership to James MacGregor Burns, a political science and leadership researcher, who in the 1970s defined the actions of transformational leadership as “when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.”
Burke and Litwin’s Transformational model of change emphasize on the leadership behaviour and how leaders influence the behaviour of others by acting as role models in the organization.