Human Capital MBA

Transformational, Transactional and Servant Leadership: Three Models of Influence, and Why the Most Popular One Is the Hardest to Measure

Burns's 1978 distinction between transactional exchange and transforming leadership became, in Bass's hands, a scored four-factor model used across three decades of leadership research. This lesson sets out what that model actually claims, why its own measurement instrument has drawn serious methodological criticism, and what Greenleaf's considerably older idea of servant leadership adds, and still has not resolved, as a different answer to a different question.

2 Nov 2026 · 26 min read