From Accelerate,
Transformational leadership means leaders inspiring and motivating followers to achieve higher performance by appealing to their values and sense of purpose, facilitating wide-scale organizational change. Such leaders encourage their teams to work toward a common goal through their vision, values, communication, example-setting, and their evident caring about their followers’ personal needs.
In the context of the devops movement, it means:
- Establishing and supporting generative, high-trust cultural norms
- Create technologies that enable developer productivity, reducing lead time and supporting reliability
- Supporting team experimentation and innovation
- Working across organizational silos to achieve strategic alignment
This is accomplished through
Vision : Understanding where the org should be in 5 years
Inspirational communication : inspires and motivates folks, even in an uncertain/changing environment
Intellectual stimulation : challenges to think about problems in new ways
Supportive leadership : demonstrates care and consideration of followers’ personal needs and feelings
Personal recognition : praises and acknowledges achievement of goals and improvements; personally compliments outstanding work.
For line-managers, a critical aspect is connecting the work the team is doing to the larger strategic initiatives of the company.