Translating Transactional Leadership

A transactional leader is someone who values order and structure. One such Example of a transactional leader is Norman Schwarzkopf. Norman Schwarzkopf was a four star US Army General, who headed United States Army operations in Operation Desert Storm. When asked how he defines leadership, he replied, “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” It is clear that he valued character. He knew that strategies fail and plans don’t always work.

In another one of his excerpts he mentions, “You learn more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because, you learn how not to do it. And, therefore, you learn how you do it.”

Here he intends to say that to learn it is not always to establish positives or truths, but by eliminating false information you learn better. In the battlefield it translated to the form of leadership he commanded over his peers. He valued compliance and performance. Results were heavily weighted. He would closely monitor the activities of US forces in his command and would organize the efforts of every individual unit in such a manner that maximum results would be achieved. While deployed to defeat Saddam Hussain, he employed this form of leadership that led him achieving very significant results in a relatively shorter span of time.