Burnout And Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership (TL) is the charismatic capability of a leader to inspire employees to change and alter for the better. It consisted by seven behaviours targeted at developing the employee: corresponds a vision, improves employees, enables support, leads by example, empowers employees, is innovative and charismatic. Burnout is on the other hand defined as, a long-lasting reaction to constant disturbing and personal stressors on the job. Iinfluencers of burnout: emotional exhaustion (lack of authority to do jobs), depersonalization (feeling an alien to jobs and individuals at work), and personal accomplishment (feeling unproductive in satisfying work tasks).

TL is the main leadership style studied by the scholars since its aim on developing employees’ performance and potential. The link between TL and burnout is employee self-efficacy. TLs inspire superior levels of self-efficacy in employees and a constituent of burnout is defined as a lack of self-efficacy. Accordingly, it has been found that employees who are more self‐assured perceive more meaning at job and thus burnout decreases drastically. In this context, TLs are not only less prone to burnout, but also the most successful for leading employees for improving organizational performance through fostering innovativeness and empowering and supporting the employees.

People leave their bosses do not leave jobs. TLs are charismatic and lead by example so that TLs do not leave employees feeling uncertain about the future, undervalued and thus burnout. TLs pay significant attention to development of their employees and thus decrease the level of burnout if they do not demolish it all. TLs also correspond a vision and objectives of the organisation thoroughly so that employees can go after. However, TLs also encourage adaptation to those objectives and this in turn, reduces burnout. In this context, TL is also considered as a strategy that encourages open communication with employees which ultimately reduces burnout.

As it can be seen from the explanations, all seven traits of TLs which aimed at developing the followers help in decreasing the burnout. As a result, it is not surprising that a number of studies in a diverse range of occupational fields have shown a significant relationship between TL and burnout which confirm the generalization of the link between the variables.