Transformational vs Transactional Leadership: Niels Brabandt

Why is sustainable leadership critical to team success? What is the science of effective leadership?

Episode 144 (Niels is based in London, England)

In this conversation with Niels Brabrandt, we explored:

• What is the science behind effective leadership?
• Why leaders must discard silly motivation phrases
• What are the tools of sustainable leadership and hence sustainable teams
• What is the difference between transactional and transformational world?
• Why is the role of an opinion critical to the team?
• How to lead in the hybrid workplace

About Niels Brabandt:

He successfully built and sold a business, so he speaks from real-world experience regarding leadership.

Unlike others, he did the scientific research on leadership which means that he has proof and evidence for his claims.

Niels not only practiced leadership in business but also in sports: he was a professional football (soccer) referee for decades.

Learn more about Niels and his programs at

http://www.nb-networks.com/

Connect with Niels at

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielsbrabandt/

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Excerpts from this conversation with Niels Brabandt:

Yeah, sustainable teams are part of that definitely a different team phase, which are probably known however, many people only connect sustainability to aspects like the environment or recycling and that is not the only aspect we need to talk about.

It's about employee retention. It is about focusing on your employees. But most importantly, we need people who know their craft, do a podcast as you do here without doing the research, how to do the tech how to do the audio, the video, the lighting, however, we often have people who became leaders basically either because someone else quit and they were promoted, or someone else thought they are a good leader and they will just pick or unfortunately quite often based on their network.

I don't want to pull out cronyism and nepotism here however in many cases people became leader because other people said I like you I know you and here you are with your leadership job if you do not know the scientific background if you do not know the tools, and I do not mean opinions.

I mean proper scientifically proven tools if you do not know them, there's no chance you can be a good leader some people have a bit more talent maybe a bit more empathy, a bit more approach to it naturally but that will not work in the long run.

You still need the proper tools and scientific evidence tells you if something works or not. No motivational or inspirational one line ever paid the rent or made a team go the extra mile for longer than probably 24 hours.

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The leader has to figure out because sometimes people don't know about these concepts, transactional transformation, and they don't have to know it's the leaders job to know that they have to figure out who in my team is transactional, who in my team is transformational.

Because we have a certain effect, which unfortunately, effect recruiting, people like to recruit people who are exactly like themselves. It's called isomorphism, ISO Greek for equal more for parents.

So when someone is exactly like you, you prefer to work together with them. However, when you are a transformational leader, you have a transactional job to give away, you hire a person who prefers to work transformation, because they are just like you.

They probably quit within the first couple of months, because they will say, look, I was looking for something where I have time on my own, and I can decide and steer people and lead people, you basically gave me a repetitive task to do every single day that's complete.

So it's very important, the leader has to figure out who is transaction