I interviewed the chief executive officer (CEO) of a local housing authority last week to gain an in-depth understanding of his leadership style and the organization's health. Leadership is a core element that promotes firm success significantly in the contemporary competitive business environment. Organizational leaders can adopt the transactional or transformational leadership styles to propel the quick achievement of the business goals, mission, and vision. Based on the transactional leadership theory, leaders can punish or reward their followers for acting as they desire or not executing assigned roles ( Hussain et al., 2017) . The transactional leader achieves their objectives in the end, but the leadership style is highly ineffective.
Similarly, the leader can be transformational when they embody idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration. The transformational leader contrasts the actions of the transactional one through using their influence to enhance work engagement in employees instead of rewards and punishments ( Northouse, 2019) . The extensive analysis of my interview report shows factors that propel the success of the local housing authority and changes that should be made within the organization based on its health analysis.
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Evaluation of Leadership Style
The CEO adopts the transformational and transactional leadership styles, using the situational leadership theory. According to the mentioned theory, a leader decides when to portray their preferred leading style based on their situation (Vroom & Jago, 2007). For instance, if the leader wants instant results for an urgent task, they may use the transactional leadership style to motivate desired employee outcomes. On the other hand, the local housing authority's leader said he adopts the transactional leadership style when he wants to inspire workers who produce quality output but are lazy ( Xenikou, 2017) . For instance, the leader said the local housing authority's accountant is an excellent employee and habitual latecomer. The accountant reports to work late four days out of five and rarely has a plausible reason for their lateness. The leader also pinpointed several other employees who desire promotion but take excessive timeframes to complete assigned projects.
Furthermore, the leader said that one of their best salespeople had started receiving job offers from competing firms, which would be detrimental to the firm. Therefore, in the above scenarios, the leader used a transactional leadership style to retain their well-performing workers. For instance, every time the accountant reported to work early, they received a positive review on their performance evaluation sheet. In addition, the accountant was informed they would be awarded an end-year bonus of 15% above their regular salary if they arrived early to work as expected ( Aga, 2016) . In the end, the leader said the accountant had been reporting to work punctually for the past three months and improved their job engagement. Further, the leader said they promoted the salesperson above to be a team leader with a salary rise of 20%, which made them reconsider leaving the organization. Therefore, the CEO emphasized that transactional leadership was essential, primarily to motivate staff members.
However, the leader said they preferred to embody transformational leadership in general and only applied transactional style when necessary. As a transformational leader, the CEO said they always practiced mutual respect, honesty, reliability, empathy, and teamwork. The CEO also reported the earliest to work, rewarded innovative and creative ideas, and listened to employee grievances without judging them (McCleskey, 2014). Furthermore, the CEO said they encouraged using new ideas to solve complex issues, professionalism, and consideration for others. Finally, the CEO mentored their firm's directors to an excessively high standard and frequently worked with them to fine-tune it or achieve it. For the CEO, the company's directors should have values and characters that junior employees would want to emulate. Overall, the local housing authority CEO used the transactional and transformational leadership styles according to situations in the company, as explained.
Assessment of the Organization's Health
I work at the local housing authority whose CEO I interviewed and believe I am best suited to assess the company's health. In my work, I have interacted with employees from the firm's 17 branches aside from its headquarters, which gives me an excellent platform to analyze the overall organizational health. From my frequent interactions with diverse employees, I would generalize the organization's health as improving. The company is debt-free, which is a positive indicator of a healthy firm in the non-profit business environment. The firm's performance is also improving gradually because of the leadership styles used, where workers are becoming increasingly motivated to perform beyond expectation for assigned roles ( Steinmann, Klug, & Maier, 2018) . However, the organization could perform better if some employees were given more demanding duties as they reported feeling underused. In addition, other workers have become increasingly complacent over the years and would perform better if they were in new work environments aside from the company.
Furthermore, the CEO applauds knowledge seeking and is always significantly impressed by employees who advance their degrees and certifications while within the company. Therefore, workers who want to impress the CEO always seek opportunities to attend virtual or evening classes to increase their knowledge base ( Northouse, 2019) . Furthermore, the organization has begun embracing innovation at a large scale. Currently, I am upgrading the company's technology to ensure it remains competitive in the long run. I have also been assigned to train employees on installed features that will improve their productivity, such as automated equipment. Moreover, I am helping the CEO create a paperless organization, which I have witnessed the leader work on rigorously and aggressively. According to the CEO, creating a paperless firm is a positive step to ensuring that files can be retrieved easily. The automation of processes within the organization to create a paperless trail will also help staff receive timely alerts on when files expire or warnings for the same. If the organization adopts the recommendations above and continues to improve its technology, I feel it will perform even better than its current status.
Media Information on the Organizations Health
In 2019, the local housing authority's board voted to release the then CEO from his position. According to a newspaper report, the former CEO did not practice transformational leadership and had tainted the firm's image severely. For instance, the news reporter said the former CEO wrongfully used his position to influence the selection and retention of two employees, with whom he sexually abused regularly ( Bauerlein, 2019) . Further, the report mentioned the CEO accepted bribes in golfing memberships from companies the local housing authority had contracted. Furthermore, the former CEO is said to have misused internal employees by authorizing unpaid repairs for his house to be performed by company workers. The news report above creates a picture of an unhealthy organization that has an authoritarian leader. Therefore, based on media reports, the firm's internal health is as explained above.
References
Aga, D. A. (2016). Transactional leadership and project success: The moderating role of goal clarity. Procedia Computer Science , 100 , 517-525. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2016.09.190
Bauerlein, D. (2019). Jacksonville housing authority board fires CEO Fred McKinnies . The Florida Times-Union. https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20191030/jacksonville-housing-authority-board-fires-ceo-fred-mckinnies
Hussain, S. T., Abbas, J., Lei, S., Jamal Haider, M., & Akram, T. (2017). Transactional leadership and organizational creativity: Examining the mediating role of knowledge sharing behavior. Cogent Business & Management , 4 (1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2017.1361663
Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (8th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Chapter 8, “Transformational Leadership” (pp. 163-196)
McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5 (4), 117–130.
Steinmann, B., Klug, H. J., & Maier, G. W. (2018). The path is the goal: How transformational leaders enhance followers’ job attitudes and proactive behavior. Frontiers in Psychology , 9 (2338), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02338
Vroom, V. H., & Jago, A. G. (2007). The role of the situation in leadership. American Psychologist, 62 (1), 17–24. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.62.1.17
Xenikou, A. (2017). Transformational leadership, transactional contingent reward, and organizational identification: The mediating effect of perceived innovation and goal culture orientations. Frontiers in Psychology , 8 (1754), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01754
