Transformational leadership refers to a style of leadership in which the leader raises the motivation, commitment and capacity of others by building a shared sense of purpose, supporting individuals and encouraging them to rethink established practice. In schools, the term usually describes principals who work on teachers’ beliefs and capacities and on the culture of the school, rather than mainly on routine administration or direct supervision of teaching. Together with instructional leadership, it has been one of the two dominant models of school leadership in the research literature (Hallinger, 2003; Stewart, 2006).
Origins
The concept began in political science. In his book Leadership, Burns (1978) contrasted transactional leadership, in which leaders and followers exchange things each of them values while pursuing their own ends, with transforming leadership, in which leader and followers engage in a way that raises the motivation and moral purpose of both (Stewart, 2006).
Bass (1985) carried the idea into organisational psychology and studied why some leaders draw exceptional rather than merely adequate performance from their followers. In the version that became standard in research, transformational leadership has four components: idealised influence (or charisma), inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration. Transactional leadership covers contingent reward and management by exception, and a further category, laissez-faire leadership, describes the absence of leadership (Stewart, 2006).
Leithwood’s school model
Bass’s model was developed for business and military settings. In the 1990s Kenneth Leithwood and colleagues at the University of Toronto adapted it to schools. Leithwood’s model, as summarised by Stewart (2006) from Leithwood (1994), identified seven transformational dimensions, to which he added several managerial dimensions (staffing, instructional support, monitoring school activities and community focus).
| Dimension | What it involves |
|---|---|
| Building school vision and setting goals | Developing a shared view of where the school is going and agreeing priorities |
| Providing intellectual stimulation | Encouraging staff to question assumptions and try new approaches |
| Offering individualised support | Attending to the needs and concerns of individual teachers |
| Modelling best practices and organisational values | Setting an example through the leader’s own conduct |
| Demonstrating high performance expectations | Communicating expectations for quality and achievement |
| Creating a productive school culture | Fostering norms of collaboration and professional learning |
| Developing structures to foster participation in decisions | Giving teachers a real role in school decision-making |
In later work these practices were grouped into three broad categories: setting directions, developing people and redesigning the organisation (Leithwood et al., 2004). Developing people, in this account, includes intellectual stimulation, individualised support and modelling. Leithwood and Sun (2012) later observed that several widely advocated models of effective school leadership share many of these practices, which is one reason they called for more attention to specific practices than to labels.
Debates and criticisms
The sharpest debate concerns the relationship with instructional leadership. Instructional leadership focuses directly on curriculum, teaching and the monitoring of learning, whereas transformational leadership works on the people and conditions that make improvement possible. Hallinger (2003) argued that neither model is suited to every school; which is more useful depends on the school’s context and stage of development. Marks and Printy (2003), studying 24 restructured elementary, middle and high schools in the United States, concluded that transformational leadership was necessary but not sufficient. Schools performed best, in terms of the quality of pedagogy and student achievement, where it was combined with shared instructional leadership, an integrated form of leadership.
Other criticisms are conceptual. Gronn (1995, as summarised by Stewart, 2006) described the model as heroic and paternalistic and pointed to a narrow methodological base. Evers and Lakomski questioned whether questionnaires such as the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire can capture leadership at all and noted the difficulty of separating transformational from transactional behaviour (Stewart, 2006). In the wider leadership field, van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) argued that charismatic–transformational leadership lacks a clear definition, that its theories do not explain how the separate dimensions produce their effects, that the construct is confounded with its own outcomes, and that the main instruments do not reproduce the expected factor structure. They recommended abandoning the label in favour of more precisely defined leadership behaviours.
What the evidence shows
Leithwood and Jantzi (2005) reviewed 32 empirical studies published between 1996 and 2005. They found that transformational school leadership had significant effects on student achievement and engagement, but that these effects were largely indirect, operating through school culture, teachers’ commitment and job satisfaction and a few other conditions. A later meta-analysis of 79 unpublished studies reported moderate positive associations with school conditions, the strongest associations with teachers’ internal states such as commitment and efficacy, and small but significant associations with student achievement (Leithwood & Sun, 2012).
The comparison with instructional leadership has been influential. In a meta-analysis of 27 published studies, Robinson, Lloyd and Rowe (2008) compared the two models using 22 of them. The mean effect size on student outcomes was 0.42 for instructional leadership and 0.11 for transformational leadership. A second analysis of leadership dimensions found the largest mean effect, 0.84, for promoting and participating in teacher learning and development. The authors concluded that leaders who keep their attention on teaching and learning have more influence on students.
Taken together, the evidence suggests that transformational practices are consistently associated with teachers’ attitudes and with school conditions, and less strongly and more indirectly with pupils’ results. Most of the underlying studies are cross-sectional surveys, so they show associations rather than causal effects.
Measuring transformational leadership
The most widely used instrument is the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) developed by Bass and Avolio. Its standard form, the MLQ 5X Short, has 45 items covering transformational, transactional and passive–avoidant leadership and several outcome scales. The MLQ is copyrighted and distributed commercially by Mind Garden, so researchers must buy a licence to administer or reproduce it (Bass & Avolio, 1995).
School researchers have also used instruments built on Leithwood’s model. A systematic review of transformational school leadership studies notes that work based on Leithwood, Aitken and Jantzi’s model has used the Nature of School Leadership survey, alongside the MLQ and other tools (Heenan et al., 2023). Because the two families of instruments rest on different models, scores from MLQ-based and Leithwood-based studies are not directly comparable.
Evidence from Turkish Research
In Turkey, transformational leadership has been studied mainly through teacher surveys that relate perceptions of principals’ behaviour to teacher attitudes. Principals work within a centralised system in which many decisions on staffing, curriculum and budgets are made by the Ministry of National Education, which limits some of the organisational redesign that Leithwood’s model assumes. Studies therefore tend to focus on the interpersonal side of the model: vision, support and motivation.
- Kurt, Duyar and Çalık (2012), in the Journal of Management Development, surveyed a cluster-random sample of 813 primary school teachers using the MLQ. Principals’ transformational leadership was significantly related to teachers’ self-efficacy, and the relationship ran largely through collective efficacy.
- Aydın, Sarıer and Uysal (2013), in Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, meta-analysed 12 Turkish studies and found that transformational leadership was positively related to teachers’ organisational commitment and job satisfaction, with both higher where leadership moved from transactional towards transformational.
These studies are correlational and rely on teachers’ self-reports, so they describe associations rather than effects. For related Turkish evidence on other leadership models, see the digests on instructional leadership and teacher work engagement and empowering leadership and teacher well-being.
Related concepts
- Instructional leadership: leadership focused directly on curriculum, teaching and learning; often compared and combined with transformational leadership.
- Distributed leadership: leadership understood as spread across many people rather than held by the principal alone.
- Transactional leadership: leadership based on exchange, contingent reward and correction of deviations.
- Teacher leadership: teachers’ influence on colleagues and school practice beyond their own classrooms.
- Collective teacher efficacy: teachers’ shared belief that they can improve student learning, frequently studied as a mediator of leadership.
Key takeaways
- Transformational leadership originated with Burns (1978) and Bass (1985) and was adapted to schools by Leithwood and colleagues.
- Leithwood’s model centres on setting directions, developing people and redesigning the organisation.
- Its associations with teacher commitment and school conditions are consistent; its associations with student achievement are smaller and mostly indirect.
- The evidence favours combining it with a direct focus on teaching and learning rather than relying on it alone.
References
- Aydın, A., Sarıer, Y., & Uysal, Ş. (2013). The effect of school principals’ leadership styles on teachers’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 13(2), 806–811.
- Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. Free Press.
- Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1995). Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Mind Garden.
- Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. Harper & Row.
- Hallinger, P. (2003). Leading educational change: Reflections on the practice of instructional and transformational leadership. Cambridge Journal of Education, 33(3), 329–351. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764032000122005
- Heenan, I. W., De Paor, D., Lafferty, N., & Mannix McNamara, P. (2023). The impact of transformational school leadership on school staff and school culture in primary schools: A systematic review of international literature. Societies, 13(6), 133. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13060133
- Kurt, T., Duyar, İ., & Çalık, T. (2012). Are we legitimate yet? A closer look at the casual relationship mechanisms among principal leadership, teacher self-efficacy and collective efficacy. Journal of Management Development, 31(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621711211191014
- Leithwood, K., & Jantzi, D. (2005). A review of transformational school leadership research 1996–2005. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4(3), 177–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700760500244769
- Leithwood, K., Seashore Louis, K., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). How leadership influences student learning. University of Minnesota, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement; The Wallace Foundation.
- Leithwood, K., & Sun, J. (2012). The nature and effects of transformational school leadership: A meta-analytic review of unpublished research. Educational Administration Quarterly, 48(3), 387–423. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X11436268
- Marks, H. M., & Printy, S. M. (2003). Principal leadership and school performance: An integration of transformational and instructional leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 39(3), 370–397. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X03253412
- Robinson, V. M. J., Lloyd, C. A., & Rowe, K. J. (2008). The impact of leadership on student outcomes: An analysis of the differential effects of leadership types. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(5), 635–674. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X08321509
- Stewart, J. (2006). Transformational leadership: An evolving concept examined through the works of Burns, Bass, Avolio, and Leithwood. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 54.
- van Knippenberg, D., & Sitkin, S. B. (2013). A critical assessment of charismatic–transformational leadership research: Back to the drawing board? Academy of Management Annals, 7(1), 1–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2013.759433
Last reviewed: October 2026