Employees’ Perceptions of Transformational Leadership and its Relationship with Employee Productivity in Organisations

Abstract

Transformational leadership has become an important leadership approach in contemporary organisations because of its capacity to stimulate, empower and develop employees. This study explored employees’ perceptions of four transformational leadership behaviours, namely inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, idealised influence and individualised consideration, and their perceived relevance to employee performance and productivity. A quantitative approach was adopted and a structured questionnaire was administered to 101 respondents, comprising 21 managers and 80 employees, selected purposively from the study setting. Responses were measured using a five-point Likert scale and analysed using descriptive statistics. Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess internal consistency, while the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure and Bartlett’s test were considered in assessing the suitability of the items for factor analysis. The four transformational leadership items recorded an overall mean of 4.08, with respondents generally agreeing that the behaviours were present and relevant to performance. Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87 indicated good internal consistency and the KMO value of 0.78 indicated acceptable sampling adequacy. The ANOVA reported in the study showed no statistically significant difference among the mean scores of the four leadership items (F(3,400)=0.68, p>0.05); it should therefore be interpreted as a comparison of item ratings rather than evidence that transformational leadership caused changes in productivity. The findings provide descriptive evidence of positive employee perceptions of transformational leadership, but do not establish a causal effect on employee productivity. The study recommends leadership development that strengthens transformational leadership behaviours, while future research should use an independent productivity measure and relational or predictive statistical analysis to test the leadership-productivity relationship directly.