%% #📓 #📚 #🔴 %% # The Transformation of Transforming Leadership **Author:** Richard A. Couto **Citation:** Richard Couto (1995). The transformation of transforming leadership. In J. Wren (Ed.), _The leader's companion: Insights on leadership through the ages_ (pp. 102-107). Free Press. --- # Summary ## Key Takeaways # Notes & Important Ideas ## Connections to Other Materials --- # Personal Reflections & Application ### Interaction Between Leaders and Followers Couto asserts that in Bass's terms, transformational leaders transform followers in a one-way direction of influence, unlike Burns's model in which followers "could transform leaders by the _interaction_ of leaders and followers" (p. 104). I'm not sure I entirely agree with this, although I have not read Bass directly. But in the secondary sources I've read it seems that Bass's theory still leaves room for multi-directional influence and transformation. I still think it is possible for transformational leadership to be a process whereby leaders interact with followers in a way that leads to transformation in both leaders and followers in addition to the accomplishment of advanced organizational goals; significant transformation that is bigger than mere change or performance improvement but falls short of the grand social change Burns advocates for. ### Transforming Leadership Not Accessible Couto (1995) made one observation that gets to the heart of why I've been struggling to relate to the kinds of transforming leadership we've been reading about, and watching, in this class. He said that "Burns's examples of epoch change risk idealizing and idolizing transforming leadership and removing it from the grasp of ordinary humans" (p. 106). He goes on to say that "while Burns's transforming leadership is attractive, it may be unattainable and distract us from the important task of being as effective as one can be to transform this set of conditions and causal factors in the here and now...." (p. 107). # Other References ## Tags