(A critique of Ifeoma Chigbogwu’s Transformational Leadership: A Guide for Empowering Executives published by Ifeoma Speaks TV, Lagos, Nigeria, 2024)
Ever since Jim MacGregor Burns, the American presidential historian, used the term, transformational leadership, in 1978, and Bernard M. Bass, the academic, wrote well-received scholarly papers on it a few years later, the concept has seized the imagination of not just social science and business researchers, but also practitioners, politicians, and the general public. Whereas scholars and other experts view transformational leadership -- which is differentiated from transactional, charismatic, authoritarian, authentic, situational, and servant leadership styles, among others -- as technically the ability to inspire and motivate followers to attain unexpected levels because the followers see them as caring and working for the common good and as role models ethically and professionally, the public sees transformational leadership as the ability to bring about positive radical changes within a short period. Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan pledged, on coming to office in 2010, to provide transformative leadership given the enormity of the development challenges paralyzing a nation that the revered former Vice Alex Ekwueme, a polyvalent intellectual, described as “a miracle waiting to happen”.