Transformational Leadership and the Falling Dominoes Effect

Abstract

This investigation examined the practice of tranformational leadership at two levels of management in a New Zealand government agency. Transformational leadership was defined as the extent to which a manager is seen as charismatic, as treating each subordinate as an individual, and as intellectually stimulating. Like falling dominoes, transformational leadership at a higher level of management was expected to appear concomitantly at the next lower level. Analyses of leadership behavior questionnaire data collected independently at the two levels of management generally provided support for this falling dominoes effect. However, one exception was that more charismatic first-level supervisors said they required less charisma in the second- level managers to whom they directly reported. implications were drawn con cerning the importance of developing transformational leadership abilities at upper levels of management to enhance the likelihood of such leadership at lower levels.