Transformational Leadership is achieved where leaders try to lift up the level of commitment by creating a greater motivation and trust among employees. They endeavor to promote behavior and activities through a common mission and shared learning experience. They communicate the logic of mission, vision, encourage new opinions as well as generating new learning experiences. They put into consideration aspirations and needs of employees in concurrence with organizational aims and goals. They have a stronger persuade on co-workers support and structuring of an ethical culture which is more than that of transactional leaders. Transformational leaders also build a respect and commitment for values that provide conformity on how to handle ethical issues. Transformational leadership “results when leaders widen and elevate the welfare of their employees, when they generate acceptance and awareness of the mission and purpose of the group, and when they stir up employees to glance beyond their own fundamental self-interest for the good of the organization or group.” Together, keen capacity and commitment are apprehended to lead to more effort and greater productivity (Soyt & Blascovichel, 2003).
Organizational situation that would call for transactional leadership is a case whereby a leader assigns a certain level of work to the subordinates; it then becomes the duty of the subordinate to see the assigned work is finished on time. If the task assigned is not finished on time then some kind of punishment is given to the subordinates that will mobilize them to increase performance while on the other side if the task is completed on time the subordinates are rewarded for the good performance.
Charismatic leaders are capable of using their individual charm to get things done in an organization. This can be an enormously powerful means to lead others. Charismatic leaders for example have the capacity to sense the gap that could be existing between what an organization is giving to its followers and what the followers desire to get from an organization. This allows a charismatic leader to come up with a future vision that is believed to be enhanced than today’s environment.
Benchmarking is one of a highly developed quality improvement method which may be incorporated into a Total Quality Management program as it matures. Benchmarking is the search for finest practices that will result to superior performance in some of the business activities in an organization. It can facilitate quality enhancement efforts to arrive at new heights by providing information and ideas about other organizations – about their level of performance and about the methodologies they use (Robert, 2005). This information will help in setting more challenging goals, and provides helpful approaches and ideas for achieving these goals.
On my opinion I do not believe that a company can not have a successful total quality management (TQM) without using benchmarking this is because benchmarking is considered as a vital tool for accomplishment of total quality management.TQM main focus is how to advance the work processes so as to get improved products. And with the assistance of benchmarking one can determine a work procedure or process and then try to set a target and improve the processes to the desired standard. This would eventually improve the efficiency and effectiveness and thus total quality management (TQM’s) goal will be achieved.
