Impact of Transformational Leadership on Team Effectiveness: A Study of  Team Leaders  in IT Sector.

Dr. Rajeesh Viswanathan

Volume : IV, Issue : VII, July - 2015

Impact of Transformational Leadership on Team Effectiveness: A Study of Team Leaders in IT Sector.

Dr. Rajeesh Viswanathan

Abstract :

Organizations have been expanding and to maintain the same pace they need to survive in the market. A market filled with tough competition. In such a scenario, success comes when we have an effective leader. A leader who is able to reach out his thoughts across the team. The process should be such that they should be able to motivate and transform the employees. This happens when the employee�s readiness level is high. If the readiness level is low, then performance would be more of transactional in nature. Transformational leadership is one in all the foremost dominant paradigms within the up to date leadership literature (Judge and Piccolo, 2004). It‘s allied with many worker outcomes, like well-being (Nielsen et al., 2009), ability (Shin and Chow, 2003) and task performance (Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006). The transformational leadership vogue has been outlined as �the method through which leaders and followers facilitate one another to advance to the next level of morality and motivation� (Burns, 1979, p. 21). Therefore a transformational leader could be a virtuously mature leader to motivate followers� behaviours and attitudes to come up with higher levels of ethical reasoning in followers (Burns, 1979). However, transformational managers don‘t influence subordinates� attitudes and behaviours in a very straightforward method. Team effectiveness is for sure since its members are closely net and chosen consulting each others. However, in the current scenario , due to shortage of skills, members are posted into various teams, where by the autonomy of the team leaders are lost. The study was done on the employees of Software industry. four major IT hubs viz. NCR, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai were selected. For Each IT hub 8 companies were selected making 32 companies in total. A tool of 600 questionnaires were sent to these 32 companies out of which 278 responses were received. For the study only 233 completely filled questionnaires were considered and the rest discarded due to incomplete data The Current study shows that success of team performance on a long term basis depends purely on having transformational leader. Absence of transformational leader and presence of a transactional leader would lead to performance but not to the desired level. Projects will be completed but the level of engagement from the employee would be minimal. Hence, it shows there exist a close correlation between transactional leader and team effectiveness. From the results of the direct influence, it is felt that (HR) managers who aim to generate levels of employee engagement on the long term, and enhance team effectiveness, to offer new programmes and training workshops that improve transformational leadership behaviour