The Leadership We Need Now

Two days ago I asked a group of professionals to think about the best leader they had ever worked for. Not the person with the biggest title, but the one who changed them in some way.

The answers came quickly.

Challenge. Patience. Support. Integrity.

No one mentioned authority. No one mentioned hierarchy. No one spoke about command and control.

Over the years I have asked this same question while working with leaders across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and now the United States. The language rarely changes. People describe leaders who listened, supported their growth, and held them to high standards while standing beside them. Above all, they remembered being treated with respect.

What they are describing has a name in leadership research: Transformational leadership.

The political scientist James MacGregor Burns first described this form of leadership while studying how leaders influence change. He distinguished it from transactional leadership. Transactional leadership focuses on exchange. Work is performed, goals are met, rewards follow. The relationship remains contractual.

Transformational leadership unfolds in a different way. Burns described it as a process through which leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and purpose. This idea has since become one of the most influential frameworks in modern leadership development.

The relationship is symbiotic. One does not stand above the other. At times the leader steps forward to guide direction. At other moments the leader steps back so that others can contribute their thinking and capability. Followers do the same. The movement between leading and following is fluid, grounded in humility and mutual respect.

Instead of concentrating only on tasks and rewards, transformational leaders invite people to attempt something they may never have imagined possible. The relationship becomes developmental rather than transactional.

At its core this style of leadership is grounded in values. Leaders model ethical behavior and act with integrity. Trust grows not from formal authority but from the consistency between what the leader says and what the leader does. People follow not only because they respect the person in front of them, but because they feel seen, supported, and inspired by someone whose actions reflect the values they speak about.

Transformational leaders also connect individuals to a larger sense of purpose. Work becomes meaningful when people understand how their efforts contribute to something larger than themselves. These leaders ask more of people, but they also communicate belief in what those people are capable of achieving.

Employees are invited into the thinking of the organization rather than expected simply to execute instructions. When people feel safe raising ideas or questioning assumptions, innovation becomes possible.

Another important dimension of transformational leadership lies in the attention leaders give to individual growth. People are not managed as interchangeable parts of a system. Each person arrives with different strengths and motivations. Effective leaders recognize those differences and invest time in helping others develop their capabilities.

In many organizations today we call this leadership coaching.

Leadership coaching has become a central practice in leadership development programs because it focuses on helping people grow rather than simply directing their work.

This is also where research begins to reveal an interesting pattern. The social psychologist Alice Eagly examined how transformational leadership appears in practice through large meta analyses comparing thousands of leaders. Her findings showed that both women and men demonstrate transformational leadership. Yet women tended to score higher on the dimension related to individualized support and development. Women leaders were more likely to mentor, coach, and invest in the growth of the people around them.

During my own research I heard something similar. Many of the women I interviewed did not describe themselves as leaders at all. Instead they spoke about guiding others, mentoring colleagues, or helping people discover their strengths.

One woman said it this way. "I do not think of myself as a leader. I see myself as a coach."

These findings matter because transformational leadership is connected to better performance and healthier workplace cultures.

Which raises the obvious question. If transformational leadership is linked with performance, and if women often demonstrate these leadership behaviours, why do we still see so few women at the top of organizations?

The numbers are striking. According to Deloitte, women represent about 41% of the global workforce. And, that representation narrows sharply as leadership levels rise. Women hold roughly 29% of C suite roles and in the United States fewer than ten percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by women.

During my doctoral research on women leaders across cultures I encountered stories that begin to shed light on why this gap persists.

One of the women I interviewed did not follow a conventional career path. She left Japan to study English in the United States. Unsure of her direction, she later moved to Mexico to learn Spanish. Each move required independence. There was no roadmap guiding her journey.

Eventually she opened a small restaurant that served healthy food at prices families could afford. Her ambition was grounded and expansive at the same time. She wanted to feed people and reduce poverty.

Then everything changed.

One morning she woke with painful red blisters covering her hands. The condition never disappeared. Doctors told her she could no longer cook.

Driving to see another physician, she pulled her car to the side of the road and looked down at her hands. In that moment she one question:

What are you trying to tell me?

The question shifted her thinking. Cooking had been her method. The deeper purpose had always been something larger. She wanted to address poverty and build stronger communities.

She went on to build a nonprofit organization devoted to that mission.

Leadership does not always appear in the form we expect. Transformational leaders are not always the people with the most visible titles. Often they are individuals who mobilize others around purpose and help communities accomplish something meaningful together.

For organizations, the challenge is learning to recognize leadership that does not always fit traditional models of authority and is not always the loudest voice in the room.

When people ask how transformational leadership can be developed, the answer often begins with a deliberate practice of listening and asking questions that invite reflection rather than directing action. Humility and empathy sit at the center of this approach. These qualities also sit at the center of inclusive leadership.

In many ways the two ideas intersect.

One practice I often introduce in leadership development is a process known as the Thinking Environment. The premise is deceptively simple. When people are given attention, respect, and time to think, new ideas begin to surface. Leaders who create that space enable others to contribute insight, challenge assumptions, and move conversations forward.

Inclusion in this sense is not a slogan. It is the ability to generate thinking across different perspectives.

Transformational leadership and inclusive leadership depend on the same foundation. Leaders who recognize the value of others' ideas create conditions where those ideas can multiply.

At a time when organizations face some of the most complex challenges in decades, the leadership skills associated with transformational leadership are becoming more important. The world of work now operates through interconnected systems. Technology, geopolitics, culture, and markets interact in ways that make simple answers rare.

No single perspective is enough.

Perhaps this is why people remember certain leaders long after the job is over.

The ones who challenged them.

The ones who supported them.

The ones who believed they were capable of more.

If this is the kind of leadership people remember most, what does that say about how we choose leaders today? And how might it change the way organizations select leaders tomorrow? This question sits at the center of my book Coaching Inclusion: Empowering Behaviour for Positive Change, published in April.