Type as antecedents of transformational leadership

The leader as an agent of change is a rapidly emerging conception of the role of management in the modern world. Many contend that traditional management that perfected the day-to-day supervision of transactions within an organization is ill equipped to take an organization beyond itself into new ways of thinking and doing. Transformational leaders, it is argued, are individuals who lead across paradigm shifts rather than managing within existing paradigms. Who are these transformational leaders and are there common characteristics that distinguish them? This paper presents some empirical evidence that behaviors consistent with transformational leadership are highly correlated with type as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Specifically, it was found that individuals high on the Intuitive (N) and Feeling (F) scales were also high on several measures of Transformational Leadership. These results are discussed within the larger context of trait and contingency models of leaderships.