The apparent crisis in employee engagement levels have been well documented in recent years, with this apparent disengagement having profound impact on innovation.  The basic consensus is that the more engaged an employee is, the more likely they are both to go above and beyond their job description and also to help and support their colleagues.

Whilst there have been numerous explorations on how to improve those engagement levels for regular employees, a recent paper sets out to explore the impact of happier leaders, especially when it comes to being transformational.

What leads to transformational leadership

The study, which included over 350 managers and 1,400 employees discovered that employees believed their bosses to be more transformational at times when those leaders reported being in a good mood.

The leaders were tested for various traits, including happiness, satisfaction, calmness and excitement at work, with these forming a general score of pleasantness at work.  Perhaps not surprisingly, this pleasantness score was heavily linked to the commitment the leader had to their organization, and their overall job satisfaction.

It was only the former however that seemed to correspond with their abilities as a change agent, with job satisfaction seeming to reduce their capabilities rather than enhance them.

How leaders are treated

All of which suggests that there is a distinct advantage for organizations to pay considerable attention to how their leaders feel, with this taking equal importance alongside how those leaders then treat their team.

There also appears to be clear merit in doing all we can to bolster the commitment our leaders feel to their oganizations.  It stands to reason that committed leaders care more about its future and are therefore more likely to invest in transforming it for the better.

The authors suggest that organizations can attempt to support this by incorporating things that leaders regard as highly positive into training programs.

It’s interesting to compare the study with one I wrote about earlier this year that compared the different styles required for evolutionary versus transformational change.

It suggested that to develop a more transformational environment, we should try and create a culture whereby employees feel a strong need to forge a series of shared interpretations of the ideas that they’re generating and sharing amongst themselves.  It’s this process of winning over their peers that ensures that ideas get modified and tinkered with, and thus innovation is born.

So, if you can do that alongside providing an environment where leaders feel committed to your organization, it seems likely that your chances of achieving the transformation you desire will increase considerably.