Sarah Rogers
Individual Leadership Paper
As I reflect on our curriculum and the various types of leadership styles I learned about,
I want to be a transformational leader. While this may be the most difficult style to achieve, I
believe it is the most effective and the one that aligns most closely with my personality. A
transformational leader is focused on creating an inspiring vision for a company and building a
culture where people are challenged, stimulated and motivated to deliver that vision. These
leaders portray a style that uses rapport and inspiration to engage followers. They strive to truly
understand their workers, align them into integral units and optimize each individual’s potential.
They achieve this style by focusing on four critical elements: idealized influence, intellectual
stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration.
At the foundation of this style is idealized influence, which is used to draw people into
your mission by acting as a role model and setting the example for others to follow. Intellectual
stimulation focuses mainly on changing the way people think and learn in order to challenge
followers to use alternate perspectives to solve problems and not just repeat what they did the
last time. After expectations have been established and the employees are feeling challenged, a
transformational leader will utilize inspirational motivation to further energize the team by
instilling confidence that they are close to achieving the goals. Lastly, transformational leaders
serve as coaches and mentors giving each individual personal attention to make sure they are
developing to their fullest potential.
I desire this type of leadership position because I am the type of person that has a
creative and challenging mind and is always looking at situations in life and the opportunity to
make them better in some way, whether they are personal or professional. I am never content
with just the status quo. I am also someone who is focused on a collective or team approach,
believing that the best outcomes in life result from combining the best attributes of several
people as opposed to any one person alone. I see this in group projects at school where the
collective outcome is better than any one person could deliver. I also believe that one of the
hardest things to do as a leader is instill appropriate motivation within a team or organization
and engage people to work to their fullest potential and see meaning in their work. I have
experienced this first-hand in my recent summer internships. While working at Phillip Lim, my
boss took a very hands-off approach. She gave me a data analysis project at the beginning of the
summer and left me on my own to complete this for the next 10 weeks of the summer. After just
a few days I became bored and unmotivated due to the monotonous and repetitive excel work I
was doing by myself each day. In direct contrast, this past summer I interned at a small start-up
