What is Transactional Leadership and When Should it be Used?

Transactional leadership is a management style linked to behavioural leadership theory. In other words, it focuses on influencing people’s actions. 

This method relies on people’s needs and a ‘give and take’ approach to keep the team on track. In this way, it is closely linked to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The rewards and punishments reflect a trade of basic human needs. The manager barters with the team, dangling the carrot of incentives such as wages or recognition while holding the stick of contract, discipline, or expulsion to maintain cohesion.

But, transactional leadership rarely gets the best from anyone. Once people have their basic needs covered — such as enough food to eat, basic shelter and security — just increasing a person’s potential resources does not necessarily lead to a proportional increase in productivity.

Therefore transactional leadership can be used to manage predictable situations but for complex problems, or when you want to develop high performing teams, other approaches are more likely to be successful.

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https://therightquestions.co/what-you-need-to-know-about-transactional-leadership/