Master transformational leadership: Inspire and empower your team

Brett Pyle was recently at a funeral when he caught himself thinking about transformational leadership.

A former 10-year Vistage Chair and 2022 Speaker Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Pyle focused on the words mourners said about the deceased. He began to think about the significance of their messages, about the impact this individual had on those around him. Those at the funeral were grateful to have known this person, but they were also grateful for how they grew because of that person.

That, Pyle thought to himself, is transformational leadership.

“As we unpack this concept called transformational leadership, it brings together those two things,” the Greenville, South Carolina-based Pyle says. “Did we find and fulfill the life of meaning and purpose for which we were created, and are we lifting others along the journey?”

Transformational leadership is a powerful ability to inspire teams, foster innovation and drive organizational success. By embodying core principles such as idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, leaders can enhance employee engagement, boost performance and encourage creativity.

Transformational leadership requires a clear vision, trust-building and a commitment to continuous learning. While challenges like resistance to change and sustaining momentum may arise, overcoming them can unlock transformative results.

“Transformational leadership is the ability to move people, processes, products and an entire ecosystem to a significantly improved position or place,” says Holly G. Green, CEO and managing director of The Human Factor, Inc., in Parker, Colorado. “Transformational leaders can guide with vision and intent to create something different.”

Understanding transformational leadership

To understand transformational leadership, Pyle believes it’s important to consider the two words separately. To him, “leadership” means lifting other people up, whether it is part of a job description or not.

“If we’re going to live a life of meaning and significance, it’s got to be about more than just ourselves,” he says. “In that sense, everyone who is here and doing something meaningful is a leader.”

That definition is fairly straightforward. “Transformation, on the other hand, can have many meanings,” Pyle says.

There is physician transformation, intellectual transformation, emotional transformation and spiritual transformation. Each is significant and represents a powerful change.

A classic example of transformation is a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly. That’s a physical transformation. It physically becomes something different.

Transformation doesn’t have to be seen. Often, the change that comes is internal. Transformation appears in a feeling, mindset, or attitude that may never have shown itself before.

For example, reading insightful books can transform how you think. Having a child can transform how you feel.

Pyle says the key concept to understand is that transformation is always happening. There is no middle ground, so leaders must decide whether they are positively or negatively transforming their teams and organizations.

“It’s always a battle,” he says. “We’re either going to move forward in this thing called growth and development, or we’re going to slip backward.”

Four core components are critical to effective transformational leadership: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration.

• Idealized influence means leaders are serving as role models for ethical behavior.
• Inspirational motivation relies on leaders to articulate a compelling vision.
• Intellectual stimulation encourages innovation and creativity throughout an organization.
• Individualized consideration means leaders attend to individual team members’ needs.

Benefits of transformational leadership

When Green thinks of transformational leadership, her mind immediately goes to Paul Brown.

Brown spent five years as CEO of Arby’s, where he was credited with transforming the company thanks to, among other things, an innovative mindset and a team member training program. In 2018, he founded Inspire Brands, a fast-food restaurant franchise company that now owns Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’ Donuts, Jimmy John’s, and SONIC Drive-In.

The goal was to create a company that can ignite and nourish flavorful experiences. Today, Inspire Brands’ portfolio includes over 33,000 restaurants across more than 50 global markets.

“Paul Brown was able to envision a model of service, embed core values, and lead others to create entities that far exceed their competitors,” Green says. “His balance of IQ and EQ is crucial in ongoing success.”

In 2023, Newsweek named Inspire Brands one of America’s Greatest Workplaces based on employee satisfaction. Having a motivated and committed workforce like that is a key benefit of transformational leadership.

While many leaders may think the best way to develop a motivated workforce is to offer various incentives, Green says leaders should instead focus on their image and tone. They need to model what it means to be motivated.

“Leaders cannot motivate others,” she says. “Individuals must be motivated themselves. You can create the conditions by informing, inspiring and engaging continuously.”

Green believes transformational leaders can help develop a motivated workforce by providing clarity on seven distinct aspects of the business:

1. The mission statement says why you exist
2. Guiding principles dictate how you will behave
3. Value propositions explain what you offer to key stakeholders
4. Destination points highlight where you want the company to go
5. Strategic priorities offer areas of focus for the organization
6. Key initiatives outline what you will do to reach your destination points
7. The difference details what changes will impact an individual, their responsibilities, and their team

“Engaged employees bring more than just their bodies to work,” Green says. “They bring their hearts and souls, as well as their best thinking, and they are more productive if fully engaged.”

That productivity, coupled with creative thinking, adds to the benefits of transformational leadership. However, these attributes don’t develop on their own. Organizational leadership must create and model the culture and mindset.

Role-modeling techniques to think differently are great ways for leaders to encourage creativity and innovation within their organization. That includes making sure everyone within the company has the core set of skills required to be innovative.

“You have to develop practices and processes that provide the time and space to ponder, wonder and explore periodically,” she says. “Encourage questioning ‘the right answer.’ Develop structures that force changing perspectives with intention. Grow abilities to unlearn since what got us here won’t get us to the next place.”

Pyle agrees.

“Inspire me,” he says, ” then empower me and take the obstacles out of the way.”

Implementing transformational leadership in your organization

It’s great to say that transformational leadership is important, but how do you incorporate it into your organization? Here are 4 steps to building transformational leadership.

1. Develop a clear vision

It starts with developing a clear vision that is more than a set of words. The vision needs to be crafted and communicated strategically in a way that resonates.

Doing that requires leaders to go beyond the words and focus on the impact.

“Talk about what it means to yourself,” Green says. “Create a clear picture of the win with specificity, using language that defines it with meaning consistent to all.”

2. Build trust and credibility

The Masser Family of Companies, an eighth-generation family-owned farming company in Pennsylvania, exemplifies this. The company farms and transports potatoes and potato products across the country. Its mission is straightforward: Grow experiences that nourish.

“It is crucial to this family-owned business that they nourish the community, employees, consumers, everyone in their ecosystem,” Green says. “It answers the question, why do we exist? It’s not what we do, but why.”

Explaining that “why” builds trust and credibility between leaders and those who report to them. However, to truly understand the organizational “why,” a leader must first understand their own “why”.

3. Encourage continuous learning

According to Pyle, self-awareness is pivotal for transformational leadership. A key component of this is sharing past failures and the lessons learned from them.

Did you make a bad business decision? Did you advocate for a product that ultimately failed? Pyle suggests being comfortable with those mistakes, learning from them, and then sharing those lessons across the organization. That openness demonstrates authenticity and integrity and shows the importance of continuous learning.

“It’s just a matter of saying, listen, none of us are going to get this perfect,” Pyle says. “Let’s be human as we go along. Let’s give each other grace when we fail, and let’s be on the path to lifting everybody. If we’re all lifting others, then the organization is getting bigger and stronger as we go.”

4. Provide supportive feedback

Transformational leaders help lift others — and their organizations — in part because of how they provide feedback. Constructive feedback is an art, and it can be done in a variety of ways.

When Pyle started his career, he learned to view feedback like a sandwich — start and end the conversation with positive observations, and in between, provide areas for improvement. While that can be effective, one of the most memorable critiques Pyle ever received came before his career even started.

Growing up, Pyle spent a summer working at a local drugstore. He enjoyed interacting with customers, but he despised getting new merchandise from the warehouse and having to stock shelves. When it was time to do that, he went slow. He was careless.

Simply put, Pyle mailed it in, and his boss called him on it.

Her name was Connie. Pyle doesn’t remember her last name, but 50 years later, he still remembers what she said. She told him that she knew this was just a summer job and that he would likely grow to have countless professional opportunities in his life. Then she pointed out other workers who were more committed — workers who likely would not have the same type of long-term opportunities.

“‘Your future is so much bigger than this particular store, but I want you to compare the effort you’re giving versus the effort of people who aren’t going to have your opportunities,’” he remembers her saying. “‘I want you to ask yourself, Is this the very best you can be doing? Because these guys are giving more than you are.’ She didn’t put nice stuff on the front end. She didn’t put nice stuff on the back end. She just went right after that thing.”

That was all Pyle needed to hear.

“The beauty of what she did was she said, ‘Listen, I know you’re better than this,’” Pyle says. “This was this idea of ‘I have high expectations of you. I also have a high belief in you.’”

Challenges in adopting transformational leadership

Belief is great. So, too, is giving space to innovate, create, learn and grow. But no matter the organization and no matter how supportive and authentic leaders are, there will always be resistance to change.

Transformational leadership comes from understanding the different phases of reactions to change. There are six phases, according to Green:

1. Shock
2. Denial
3. Frustration or anger
4. Depression or a lack of energy
5. Acceptance and willingness to experiment
6. Integration

“Recognize where you are in these cycles when change happens and help others to recognize where they are in the phases as well,” she says. “Remember, you start over in the phases every time there is an unexpected change, so manage the phases constantly.”

Transformational leadership also comes with resilience. Resilient people are positive, focused, flexible, organized and proactive.

“Grow your resilience so you manage through transition even more effectively,” she says. “Resilient people get the right things done with a great attitude, and they are always focused on continuous improvement without getting worn down by constant changes. They spring back, bend and adapt to achieve.”

Embodying transformational leadership

That flexibility brings Pyle back to the funeral he recently attended. He’d previously been to a funeral where the speakers didn’t have lots to say about the deceased. The person was nice, but they didn’t inspire those around them.

This person, at the most recent funeral, clearly did.

“What I saw was people standing up and talking about this individual who had passed and the impact that he had on them,” Pyle says. “It becomes part of our legacy. I think in that gentleman’s final moments, it proved deeply fulfilling and satisfying as he reflected back on the life he had and all the people he was able to influence.”

Now that you understand how to master transformational leadership, read why Pyle believes purpose is the gateway to transformational leadership.

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