Business Horizons (2013) 56, 351—360
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor
It’s how you frame it: Transformational leadership
and the meaning of work
Dean J. Cleavenger a,*, Timothy P. Munyon b
a
College of Business Administration, University of Central Florida, BA1 Office 333, Orlando,
FL 32816-1400, U.S.A.
b
College of Business Administration, University of Tennessee, 408 Stokely Management Center, Knoxville,
TN 37996-0545, U.S.A.
KEYWORDS
Transformational
leadership;
Job and work design;
Meaning of work;
Performance;
Framing;
Social information
processing;
Persuasion;
Employee motivation;
Self-determination;
Leader quality
Abstract Transformational leadership has emerged as one of the most important
approaches for understanding and influencing employee effectiveness. Inherent in
this approach is the belief that transformational leaders inspire employees to greater
levels of motivation and performance. Recent evidence has shown that this effect is
accomplished by managing the meaning of work for employees, yet it is often unclear
exactly how leaders may influence perceptions of work for their employees.
Consequently, in this article, we present behavioral and verbal cues leaders may
use to enact positive change in their employees.
# 2013 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All
rights reserved.
1. Effective leadership is necessary
Companies recognize the need for effective leadership. The 2008 IBM Global Human Capital Study cited
lack of leadership capacity among the most
significant
workforce-related
issues
facing
organizations. Indeed, 75% of the firms in their
study reported
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: dcleavenger@bus.ucf.edu
(D.J. Cleavenger), tmunyon@utk.edu (T.P. Munyon)
building leadership talent as the most significant
challenge facing organizations today. These findings
are not unique. The 2009 annual Corporate Issues
Survey of Ken Blanchard and Associates reported
that the development of potential leaders is
consistently among the top challenges organizations
face. Not surprisingly, these organizations reported
leadership development as the most likely area of
training investment in future years.
At the same time, scholars have actively pursued
research on the most effective leadership
approaches, and transformational leadership
has
0007-6813/$ — see front matter # 2013 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2013.01.002
352
emerged as perhaps the most important and
influential framework for leadership (Avolio &
Bass, 1988; Bass, 1985). Transformational
leadership occurs when leaders inspire and
motivate employees toward new ways of working
and thinking. However, the logistics of this process
are often unclear, and leaders continue to struggle
with the notion of becoming transformational.
Notably, some leadership approaches tend to
emphasize developing oneself and inspiring others
with a vision of the organization’s destiny. It is clearly
important to understand and transmit a mission
of where the organization is going. Nevertheless,
most leaders are not in the upper echelons of an
organization but rather in the trenches. They suffer
not from lack of vision but a lack of resources and an
inability to effectively motivate employees under
ever-increasing demands for productivity. Thus,
leaders need tangible advice on navigating the gritty
reality of modern work and positively influencing
worker outcomes, including performance.
Rather than focusing on leader or employee
characteristics, recent research has highlighted
the role of work itself as a critical mechanism
through which transformational leaders enact
positive change (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). The
literature points to the concept of framing, which
involves influencing and managing employee
perceptions of the work they perform. Thus, in this
article, we explore the process through which
transformational leaders frame work to enact
positive change. We begin by introducing an
approach to transformational leadership rooted in
work itself followed by a discussion on the paths
a leader may take to positively influence his/her
employees. It is our hope that readers will find this
new perspective useful as they design or enhance
their leadership development programs and strive
to become transformational in their own right.
2. How transformational leaders
manage meaning
‘‘The first responsibility of a leader is to define
reality.’’
—Max De Pree (n.d.)
The traditional view of transformational leadership
suggests a social influence process between a
leader and an employee. This premise is widely
supported by empirical research, showing
transformational leaders are able to inspire and
motivate employees to greater levels of
performance. Transformational leaders realize
heightened performance by exerting personal
power over employees to share a vision of the
organization,
D.J. Cleavenger, T.P. Munyon
encouraging them to work harder at tasks, and
persuading them to search for new and innovative
ways of doing their work. However, how do transformational leaders exert personal power,
encourage others, and persuade employees to
work harder? The evidence has shown that
transformational leaders shape the meaning of
work through framing.
Framing is the process of selecting and
highlighting certain aspects of a situation while
minimizing or excluding the importance of others
such that one meaning is accepted over another
(Fairhurst & Starr, 1996). The effects of framing are
well established. For example, the direction of
comparison effect demonstrates that the order in
which objects are presented for comparison
influences how people perceive them. For
instance, 45% of respondents blamed traffic for
pollution when asked ‘‘Who is more to blame for
pollution: traffic or industry?’’ However, when the
direction of comparison was reversed (i.e., ‘‘Who is
more to blame for pollution: industry or traffic?’’),
only 24% of respondents blamed traffic. Similarly,
respondents reported higher satisfaction with their
current relationship after they compared their
actual partner with their ideal partner than vice
versa. Simply switching the subject and referent
in these questions was all that was needed to
make a significant impact on comparison ratings.
Scholars have described leadership as a language
game (Pondy, 1978) and a process of symbolic action
(Pfeffer, 1981). Indeed, evidence suggests that
transformational leadership does involve redefining
the nature and quality of work for employees.
Transformational leaders use words, actions, and/
or symbols when talking about work to enhance its
significance and meaning.
All jobs require at least some activities that are
routine, monotonous, and seemingly unimportant
to the mission of the organization. Employees’
perceptions regarding the nature of their jobs are
shaped by what they see, hear, and experience at
work. Through acts of framing, leaders have the
opportunity to highlight the particular aspects of
work that enhance its meaning and minimize those
that do not.
In their book The Art of Framing: Managing the
Language of Leadership, Fairhurst and Starr (1996)
discuss how leaders may use framing to shape the
meaning of work. They discuss metaphors, jargon,
contrasts, spins, and stories as potential tools for
framing as well as high impact opportunities in
which potentially talented framers might capitalize
on special framing opportunities.
When a leader is successful in reframing a
follower’s view of his/her job, the follower gains
a
It’s how you frame it: Transformational leadership and the meaning of work
better understanding of how his/her work
contributes to meaningful outcomes for the
organization. This new view (frame) is instrumental
in helping the employee understand the value of
even the smallest and seemingly trivial tasks
toward accomplishing important organizational
goals.
Consider the story of a janitor who worked for
NASA in the mid-1960s. One day, as he was sweeping
the floor late in the afternoon, someone asked him
what he was doing. Without hesitation he replied,
‘‘Putting a man on the moon.’’ Someone, somewhere
along the line, had turned his attention away from
the mop closet and toward the launch pad. He saw
the big picture and knew that he played a role in
achieving it. A frame is just one particular
perspective, and sometimes, perspective is
everything! Transformational leaders know this and
capitalize on opportunities to manage the meaning
of work.
Much of the remainder of this article is
dedicated to exploring a new perspective on how
managers can frame the nature of work to enhance
its meaningfulness. However, before we proceed,
we need to take a new look at an old but still
relevant theory of work: the Job Characteristics
Model (JCM). The JCM (Hackman & Oldham, 1976)
is widely used as a framework to categorize and
classify dimensions of work. The model proposes
that dimensions of work (known as job
characteristics) impact how employees conduct
work, including the level of effort they exert to
achieve work objectives. There are five core job
characteristics (i.e., skill variety, task identity,
task significance, autonomy, and feedback), which
impact important work outcomes (i.e., job
performance and satisfaction, absenteeism,
worker motivation, and turnover). In its most
fundamental form, the JCM is a way of
understanding how the nature of work impacts an
employee’s intrinsic motivation to perform. Table
1 highlights the five core job characteristics and
their definitions.
Several hundred empirical studies have verified
the basic tenets of the JCM (see Fried & Ferris, 1987
and Humphrey, Nahrgang, & Morgeson, 2007 for
cumulative evidence). When jobs are characterized
as high on core work characteristics, employees
353
generally respond with heightened levels of
motivation and performance. In addition,
employees generally engage in higher levels of
helping behavior when core work characteristics
are high. Examples of helping behaviors include
voluntarily
helping coworkers with tasks,
participating in organization- al programs that
benefit others, staying late to meet customer
needs, or orienting new coworkers.
It does appear that intrinsically motivated
workers engage in an ‘‘ongoing process of seeking
and conquering challenges’’ (Deci, 1976, p. 131).
This intrinsic motivation has been described as a
‘‘self- perpetuating cycle of positive work
motivation driven by self-generated (rather than
external) rewards for good work’’ (Hackman &
Oldham, 1980, p. 72). Clearly, intrinsically
motivated workers are a highly valued asset for the
organization.
However, like many things, there can be too much
of a good thing with regard to core work
characteristics. At least some empirical evidence
(e.g., Xie & Johns, 1995) supports the notion that
high core work characteristics result in employee
stress and strain when the employee is a poor fit for
the job. Despite these potential negative effects,
recent evidence suggests that transformational
leaders may play an influential role in shaping the
meaning of work for their employees. For example,
in two field studies (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006;
Piccolo, Greenbaum, Den Hartog, & Folger, 2010),
researchers found that trans- formational and
ethical leaders changed the way employees viewed
core work characteristics, which resulted in higher
motivation and performance. The authors noted
the integral role of leadership as an important
influence on employee perceptions of work with
resultant effects on motivation and performance.
Figure 1 highlights this process.
Transformational leaders know that employee
perceptions of work do not depend exclusively on
the objective characteristics of one’s work but also
on the social construction of the work experience.
Indeed, interpersonal exchanges between a leader
and an employee become transformational when
the leader is able to frame the employee’s work
experience to create a new point of reference for
understanding the meaning of his/her work. More
Job Characteristic
Definition
Autonomy
The freedom an individual has in carrying out work
Skill Variety
The extent to which an individual must use different skills to perform his/her job
Task Identity
The extent to which an individual can complete a whole piece of work
Task Significance
The extent to which a job impacts others’ lives
Feedback from the Job
The extent to which a job imparts information about the individual’s performance
354
Figure 1.
D.J. Cleavenger, T.P. Munyon
Leadership and the meaning of work
Transformational
Leader Influence
performance. It also seems likely that high
satisfaction with work will be more consistent with
perceptions of transformational leadership.
2.1. Examples of transformational
leadership and framing
Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, is
known for her deep passion for eliciting the best
from her female sales force by providing
opportunities to excel in a workplace that had little
room for women at the time. She was often heard
making statements like the following:
Employee Work
Perceptions
Heightened
Motivation and
Understanding
Improved
Performance
Positive
Perceptions
of Leader
Quality
specifically, transformational leaders promote (i.e.,
shape) subordinates’ perceptions of work by
influencing their perceptions of key job
characteristics. The ultimate result of the process
is that workers feel more intrinsically motivated by
their work, and as described earlier, this intrinsic
motivation creates a somewhat self-fulfilling cycle
in which success in achieving a meaningful task
creates intrinsic rewards of its own.
For example, in a series of field experiments,
Grant (2008) found strong evidence concerning the
positive effects of managing the meaning of
employee work. In the first of three experiments,
university fundraisers who read accounts
concerning the importance of the job to others
raised significantly more money than fundraisers in
the control condition. In a second experiment, lifeguards who read stories about heroic lifesaving
encounters were significantly more likely to help
others and exhibited more positive perceptions of
the social impact and worth of their jobs. Finally,
fundraisers who received task significance cues
from supervisors performed significantly better
during their first week on the job than those who
did not receive such cues.
Two inferences may be drawn from this series of
experimental studies. First, the meaning of work is
malleable, which suggests that leaders can shape
the meaning and significance of work for their
employees. Second, employees respond more
positively to work that benefits others. Hence,
there is reason to believe that leaders can
influence follower perceptions of the meaning of
work, and such perceptions may positively
impact
God didn’t have time to make a nobody, only a
somebody. I believe that each of us has God
given talents within us waiting to be brought to
fruition. (Fowler, 2009, p. 42)
An average person with average talents and
average ambition can outstrip the most brilliant
genius in our society; if that person has clear
focused goals. (Nippard, 2011, p. 194)
Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn’t be
able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that
so it goes on flying anyway. (Stone, 2001, p. 3)
In her unique way, Mary Kay changed the way her
sales force viewed the meaning and significance of
their work. She often spoke about the potential in
each person, highlighting the value of their work to
the organization but even more so to other sales
agents who were searching for their own inspiration
though the success of others. More than anything
else, her mantra was ‘‘You matter and your work
matters.’’ The structure of her sales organization
also allowed for a great deal of autonomy for her
consultants, something that she often emphasized as
a key component of the company’s success.
Consequently, she redefined what it meant to sell
cosmetics. No longer was this a second-rate hobby
for the stay-at-home mother. Rather, the job was a
viable, respectable, valuable, and profitable
opportunity to join the ranks of professional women
in the work- force. She enabled this change by not
only creating an organization uniquely designed to
fulfill her consultants’ needs but also by talking about
and celebrating the unique skills that each
employee possessed.
Similarly, Jack Welch, the past chairman and
chief executive officer of General Electric, is often
cited as one of the great American corporate leaders
of the last century. Though many have criticized
his cut-throat practice of firing the bottom 10% of his
management ranks each year through a process
sometimes referred to as ‘‘rank and yank,’’ he
remains an iconic figure in corporate leadership.
Welch’s leadership philosophy seemed to imbibe a
It’s how you frame it: Transformational leadership and the meaning of work
value for all workers’ autonomy. As these
noteworthy quotes point out, one consistent and
overarching message he expressed to the members
of his organization was that every individual could
make a significant impact on the corporation’s
performance and that a good corporate culture
should capitalize on this reality:
If you pick the right people and give them the
opportunity to spread their wings and put
compensation as a carrier behind it you almost
don’t have to manage them. (Maxwell, 2007, p.
267)
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most
important thing that I can do. Because then they
will act. (Levy, Parco, & Blass, 2010, p. 103)
A manager should make them (employees) feel
good about whatever they are doing, give them
the confidence and make them feel that they
are contributing in a big way to the company.
(Slater, 2001, p. 4)
Listen to the people who actually do the work
and nurture the employees who share the
company’s values. Managing less is managing
better; create a vision and get out of the way.
(Slater, 2001, p. 4)
Inherent is these statement about the
responsibilities of a leader is an emphasis on
autonomy and rich feedback for every worker,
which are seldom present in the corporate
governance of a large, mechanistic, multinational
corporation. Welch also insisted that his managers
express the significance of contributions of all
employees to the company, in effect linking the
individual contributions of every member of the
organization to a larger purpose–— namely,
achieving organizational goals.
2.2. Want to be transformational? Start
with work!
The process of social influence, which we call transformation, is generally defined by the subsequent
outcome–—employees’ perceptions. However,
followers’ attributions are based on perceivable
behaviors, and such behaviors are seldom the focus
of transformational leadership studies. Dimensions
of transformational leadership (i.e., intellectual
stimulation, inspiration, idealized influence, and
individual needs) emphasize the end state of
employees’ perceptions of a leader but do not
prescribe the specific leader behaviors that shape
the meaning of work (and the subsequent
attributions that employees make for the
transformational nature of a leader). Accordingly,
a primary way through which leaders earn the
status of being
355
transformational is by talking about the nature and
meaning of work. Hence, the value of this
prescriptive approach is that it is possible to identify
actual behaviors (i.e., words and actions) shaping an
employee’s attribution that a leader is
transformational rather than describe the
perceptual outcomes that follow. Since behaviors
are controllable (and trainable), this approach is a
more direct and useful focus for leadership training.
2.3. Five ways leaders transform the
meaning of work
According to the JCM already discussed, skill variety,
task identity, and task significance contribute to the
meaningfulness individuals experience from work.
To experience meaningfulness, the employee must
perceive that his/her work is worthwhile or
important by some accepted system of values.
Since leaders are responsible for establishing and
supporting the values of the organization, they are
in an ideal position to influence employees’
perceptions of their work through this mechanism.
2.3.1. Skill variety
Skill variety requires employees to use more than
one skill in their work. Leaders often choose to
assign more challenging tasks to an employee when
this will enhance the organization’s performance. In
other cases, an employee is most valuable to the
organization doing work that is relatively routine
and well within his/her skill set. However, when
even a single skill is involved, there is at least a seed
of potential meaningfulness in the work. This seed is
what the leader should focus on. When changing the
job scope is not prudent, the leader can use his/her
influence to shape the employee’s perceptions of
skill variety by focusing on the complexities of a task
that the employee may take for granted. For
example, a bricklayer might perceive that his/her
job requires relatively few skills, is repetitive in
nature, and demands little more than rudimentary
motions. However, a leader can redefine this job
by noting that there are actually many skills
required for this work (i.e., mixing mortar,
troweling, laying brick, edging, leveling, and
pointing) and that the complexity of this work is
much greater than it might appear. All jobs require
a set of skills that must be utilized effectively.
Transformational leaders talk about and redefine
work by emphasizing the broader scope and
complexity of skills for employees.
2.3.2. Task identity
Task identity is the degree to which an employee
perceives that his/her tasks represents a whole and
identifiable piece of work. For example, a master
356
carpenter would have a high level of task identity
because he/she is involved throughout the process
of crafting lumber to creating a saleable good. In
today’s complex and highly competitive business
climate, specialization of work is common. As a
consequence, it is challenging for employees to
identify how their work contributes to broader
organizational goals. This means that many
workers struggle to find the meaningfulness of
their work because they cannot see the scope of
their contributions. This is the classic paradox of not
seeing the forest through the trees.
Like skill variety, a leader could choose to
broaden the scope of employees’ work by enlarging
their jobs. However, expanding a job can lead to
performance deficits as the number of tasks
involved in work increases beyond that which can
be mastered by one employee. Therefore, a leader
may instead redefine the meaningfulness of work by
emphasizing the relationships between the work
that an employee does and the important
organizational outcomes that depend on this work.
There are many ways of doing this, but perhaps the
most fundamental means of enhancing task identity
(except changing the actual scope of work) is to
simply show employees the consummation of their
work efforts and how they have contributed to the
completion of a whole and identifiable product or
service. For the man producing microprocessors at
an electronics firm, this might be as simple as
showing him how the components he produces are
a necessary part of the consumer products they are
created for.
2.3.3. Task significance
While task identity concerns the ability to relate
tasks to a meaningful whole, task significance
concerns an employee’s perception that a job has
a substantial and perceivable impact on the lives
of other people whether this is in the immediate
organization or the world at large. All too often,
employees fail to see the full implications of their
work. Of all the job characteristics dimensions, a
leader’s influence over employee perceptions of
task significance is arguably the simplest, most
direct, and most powerful way to influence the
meaningfulness of work. Employees rely on leaders
to provide direction and assign meaning to their
work. The antithesis of being told by a leader ‘‘Because I told you to’’ is ‘‘Because it is critical
that....’’ Enhancing the task significance of
employees’ work should be a central focus of
redefining the meaning of work because it
addresses the most critical question: ‘‘Does my
work matter?’’
Fortunately, redefining work by enhancing
employees’ perceptions of task significance is
quite simple. Leaders only need to identify how a
worker’s
D.J. Cleavenger, T.P. Munyon
tasks add value to the important outcomes of the
organization or some larger context. Most
organizational tasks have a relatively immediate
and conspicuous value that the employee can
easily identify. However, a leader can enhance the
meaning of work by stressing how these task
outcomes contribute to other farther reaching, less
discernible outcomes. Leaders are often privy to
contextual information about the nature of tasks of
which employees are not aware. For instance, a
sales manager may see greater value in his/her
staffing efficiency if he/she knows that payroll
expenses are the strongest predictor of store
profitability and the primary means of sustaining a
competitive advantage over rival firms. Likewise, a
teacher or a police officer can easily identify the
value of their work in educating youth and enforcing
laws. While our society does recognize and
celebrate the work of these individuals, the deeper,
more far-reaching social value of this work is less
apparent to employees when their leaders do not
use social influence to continually shape the
greater meaning of these jobs. Many who choose
careers of public service are motivated by a sense
of benevolence toward society and the greater
good. However, even the noblest of motives to
serve others can be thwarted by the daily routine
of grading papers or writing traffic citations.
Transformational leaders recognize this and know
that their employees need ongoing reinforcement
about the significance of their work. Such leaders
respond with frequent and sincere entreaties
regarding the deep and meaningful impact
employees have on other people and important
societal or organizational outcomes.
An example highlights this point well. A
manufacturing company was struggling with
unacceptable attrition (hovering around 28%
annually) and a workplace incident rate double the
industry average. The firm brought in consultants to
discuss the problems. One of the key issues was a
disconnect between the company’s mission and
employee perceptions of work. The company is a
supplier for one of the most successful equipment
manufacturers in the United States and directly
contributes to American industry competitiveness
and exports. When questioned about how work is
framed, the organization’s managers noted that
most work is focused on extrinsic outcomes (i.e.,
getting paid, doing a good job, staying safe) not
related to the company’s role and significance in
society. The consultants provided ways of framing
this importance and are now helping employees
realize the significance of the work they perform.
Although skill variety, task identity, and task
significance enhance the meaningfulness of work,
both autonomy and feedback play a role in
motivating
It’s how you frame it: Transformational leadership and the meaning of work
employees and should result in greater employee
satisfaction with leadership. Autonomy encourages
personal responsibly for successes and failures. Tothe
extent that autonomy is high, employees are more
likely to feel that work outcomes depend more on
their individual efforts than on leaders’ direction or
on following a set of standard procedures. For
employees with a high need for growth, autonomy
is intrinsically satisfying and likely to result in
higher motivation.
2.3.4. Autonomy
In organizations, autonomy is usually the result of
delegating responsibility for tasks to employees. To
the extent that employees are ready for these
responsibilities, successful delegation is a positive
organizational outcome and the result of mutual
trust between a leader and an employee. However,
a leader may not feel that an employee is willing
and/or able to take on actual decision-making
autonomy. In such cases, though the leader may
not choose to delegate the responsibility of a task
to his/her employee, the leader can still shape the
meaning of work by enhancing perceptions of what
is referred to as self-determination.
Self-determination refers to the attitudes and
abilities required to act as the primary causal agent
in one’s life. It encompasses concepts like free will,
freedom of choice, independence, personal agency,
self-direction, and individual responsibility. A selfdetermined person is one who sets goals, makes
decisions, sees options, solves problems, and
speaks up for him/herself. Individuals’ actions are
self-determined if they regulate their own
behavior, initiate and respond to events in a
manner indicating psychological empowerment,
and behave in a manner that is self-realizing.
Self-determination theory is based on the
assumption that people have inborn tendencies to
grow and develop psychologically, to strive to
master challenges in the environment, and to
integrate experiences into their self-concept.
These human tendencies are fully expressed only
within a supportive social context. Selfdetermination is not achieved simply because an
individual has certain requisite knowledge and
skills; it is also important that key people and
institutions in the person’s life provide a context
conducive to self-determination. Therefore, even
when the act of delegating tasks (i.e., creating
true decision-making autonomy) is not deemed
advantageous, a leader can talk about an
employee’s work in terms that draw attention to the
self-monitored and self-regulated processes for
which the employee is responsible.
Although delegating responsibilities to employees
is not always prudent, employees do desire some
357
degree of autonomy at work. Recognizing this, a
leader can stress the self-regulated aspects of work.
Leaders can do this by focusing on aspects of selfdetermination, such as personal growth (i.e.,
highlighting the extent to which an employee has
grown professionally and personally over time), selfmonitoring and self-regulating behaviors (i.e.,
highlighting the extent to which an employee
effectively identifies and responds to changes in the
work environment), and the quality of voice (i.e.,
the extent to which an employee constructively
speaks about issues relating to work). Although
greater decision-making autonomy may not be
appropriate at the moment, fully delegating
responsibilities is most often a leader’s goal.
Hence, leaders can enhance the meaningfulness
and reward value of work by accentuating a sense
of self-determination
and highlighting the
elements of the workplace that are under
employees’ control. Although employees’ enhanced
sense of self-determination is not equivalent to
decision-making autonomy, it will enhance the
richness of their jobs, enhance their sense of selfdestiny, and produce greater intrinsic rewards. To the
extent that a leader is seen as the catalyst for
enhancing work, followers are likely to attribute
the transformational qualities of leadership to
him/her.
2.3.5. Feedback
Finally, Hackman and Oldham’s JCM predicts that
feedback will enhance employees’ knowledge of the
actual results of their work activities and will
consequently lead to greater work performance.
Feed- back is most powerful when it comes directly
from
the
work
itself.
However, direct
communications from a leader to an employee can
be a rich form of feedback as well. Since the scope
of this article is limited to leader influence
(notwithstanding actions taken to change the
actual nature of work), our focus here is limited to
the ways a leader can talk to employees about their
work that will enhance the richness of feedback.
However, before we prescribe these feedback
behaviors, we will discuss one study to help clarify
these recommendations.
During the 1964—1965 academic year, Harvard
scholar Robert Rosenthal and his colleague conducted an experiment involving teachers’
expectations of grade school student performance
(Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). In the experiment,
teachers were told that the students in their class
had been tested using an instrument called the
Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition, which
purported
to
predict
future
academic
performance. The teachers were given a list of a
handful of students who would supposedly become
smarter in the up- coming year. In reality, these
students had been
358
randomly selected from the teachers’ rosters. The
students were not told by the researchers or their
teachers how they scored on the test. In the forthcoming year, those students who had been identified
as early bloomers and whose teachers expected to
become smarter outperformed students who were
not included in the list. Rosenthal’s research
findings indicated that there were four factors that
led to the superior performance of those students
whose teachers expected to do well:
1. The climate factor–—Teachers were warmer toward those students for whom they had higher
expectations both in terms of what they said to
them and in terms of non-verbal communications.
2. The input factor–—Teachers taught more
materials to and had higher expectations for
those students for whom they had more
favorable expectations.
3. The response opportunity factor–—Teachers gave
these students greater opportunities to respond.
They called on these students more often and gave
them more time to provide detailed answers to
questions.
4. The feedback factor–—Teachers offered more
positive reinforcements to these children for
correct answers but also provided more
differentiated information for wrong answers
and led them to the correct reasoning for
solving problems.
The lessons from this research shed light on the type
of feedback transformational leaders should strive
to provide to their employees. Such feedback ought
to be characterized by (1) a warmer and safer
environment for communicating, (2) more material
information about their work performance, (3) more
time to fully respond to questions about work, (4)
more positive reinforcement for positive work outcomes, and (5) more highly differentiated
information from the leader that allows the
employee to come up with his/her own solutions to
problems. Leaders who provide this type of rich
feedback will increase employee satisfaction,
enhance the intrinsic value of work, and result in
greater satisfaction with leader behavior.
3. Putting it all together
The goal of this article was to describe how transformational leaders shape the meaning of work
through the behaviors and language they use when
D.J. Cleavenger, T.P. Munyon
interacting with employees and when talking more
broadly about work. We have tried to simply and
clearly describe both how and when a leader
should use his/ her social influence to shape the
meaning of work. More specifically, we extended
the findings of current research indicating that the
dimensions of Hackman and Oldham’s JCM serve as
a good foundation for understanding how this
influence process works (Table 2).
To be sure, the process of transforming
employees from obedient workers to vested
partners is not simple. The social influence process
will take place over a relatively long period of time
and will be the result of many direct and indirect
interactions with the employee. However, if the
process we have described here seems at all
overwhelming, consider the synergy that will
likely occur when a leader engages in any one of
the many influence behaviors we have mentioned
in this article. For instance, when a leader
enhances the meaningfulness of work by talking
with employees about how their work contributes
to a valuable organizational outcome (i.e.,
enhancing perceptions of task significance),
he/she is likely to do so in a way that also
emphasizes the skill that was required to make this
contribution (i.e., enhancing perceptions of skill
variety). In this same encounter, the leader is also
likely to provide rich feedback concerning these
important work outcomes.
Given the dynamic and multifaceted nature of
the leader-member relationship, leaders need to be
diligent in managing employees’ perceptions. In
some cases, leaders’ efforts to socially reconstruct
employees’ work experience will be immense. By
reframing their work experiences and creating a
new point of reference for understanding the
meaning of their work, transformational leaders
stimulate the intrinsic satisfaction that work can
provide. They do this by influencing employees’
perceptions of the meaningfulness of work (through
skill variety, task identity, and task significance),
control over the outcomes of their work (through
autonomy or self- determination), and the quality
of feedback. This intrinsic motivation creates a
self-fulfilling cycle through which success at
achieving a meaningful task creates intrinsic
rewards of its own. Moreover, the resulting
transformational relationship between leader and
employee will be characterized by perceptions that
the leader is an intellectually stimulating,
inspirational, idealized influencer who is
considerate of each individual employee’s needs.
3.1. Leader effects
Thus far, we have devoted our discussion primarily
to understanding how transformational leaders may
It’s how you frame it: Transformational leadership and the meaning of work
359
Job Characteristic
To Enhance the Meaning of Work
To Avoid Diminishing the Meaning of Work
Autonomy
Accentuate responsibility and the
ownership of ideas by employees.
Talk in terms of ‘‘we.’’ Listen more.
Give credit to employees for
contributions, and celebrate
team ‘‘wins.’’
Avoid ‘‘my’’ and ‘‘I’’ statements regarding
work. Talk less and listen more. Be open to new
ideas even from unexpected sources. Try to
make decisions only after hearing from others,
and justify the decisions you make. Make your
presence about support rather than command
and control.
Task Significance
Highlight how the organization
contributes to others and society.
Link the contribution of functional
units to bottom-line metrics. Note
the importance of each individual
and the contribution each makes.
Do not minimize the importance of work tasks
that are ‘‘small’’ or ‘‘routine.’’ Try not to focus
excessively on details but rather big picture
implications. Reframe negative discussions to
emphasize the implications of work to others,
including employees.
Skill Variety
Highlight complexities of a task
that employees may take for
granted. Routinely solicit feedback
from employees on ways to improve
processes in other departments.
Do not minimize the complexity or intricacy of
work. Note when others are able to work
effectively because of the employee’s
contribution. Note interdependent processes
even if jobs are simple.
Feedback
Provide feedback characterized
by a warm and safe environment,
material information about
performance, time to respond,
positive reinforcement for
outcomes, and differentiated
information that enables creative
problem solving.
Avoid feedback that is punitive and remedial.
Do not assume that failure is a result of the
employee–—it may be caused by legitimate
reasons outside his/her control. Seek input
from employees on processes and outcomes
that work and those that do not. Try not to
answer your own questions.
Task Identity
Emphasize the contribution of an
employee’s work to the
organization’s products and services.
Discuss how each functional unit
helps the organization achieve its
objectives. Broker relationships
across functional areas. Develop
experts, not employees.
Avoid discussions of work and jobs but rather
emphasize each employee’s domain expertise.
Enable employees to see how they connect with
other employees’ work.
manage the meaning of employee work. However,
we would be remiss if we failed to address the likely
effects that will accrue for the leader as a result of
this process. Indeed, there are several benefits
leaders will experience as a result of this process.
First, in addition to increasing followers’
productivity, enhancing the meaningfulness of work
should highlight the significance of leadership.
Hence, these leader behaviors, primarily for those
motivated by a desire to highlight the value of
subordinate work, will also serve to strengthen the
credibility of leadership, contributing more toward
attributions of transformational leadership.
Second, in order to shape the nature of work,
leaders must understand what their employees
actually do. Thus, the process of managing the
meaning of work exposes the leader to the day-today activities of his/her employees, which enables
the leader’s heightened responsiveness to
potential problems. Thus, the leader gains
knowledge through this process and is better able to
manage and under- stand employee concerns and
problems.
This natural process also reduces the perceived
distance between a leader and his/her employees
by providing them with greater access to one
another. Work is no longer an us-versus-them game
between employees and leaders but rather a
collaborative process in which leaders and
employees collectively discuss and take ownership
over the work they perform.
360
Work relationships play an integral role in shaping
how employees adapt to work, procure and use
resources, and coordinate activities (Ferris et al.,
2009). Overall, we anticipate that leaders who
actively help frame employee work will experience
heightened relationship quality with employees.
Therefore, it is in the interests of leaders to develop
and maintain high-quality connections with
employees, and framing the nature of work has the
potential to precipitate quality connections.
4. Conclusion
Leadership is critical for organizations. In a time of
scarce resources and increasing demands for
productivity, it is equally important to consider
ways leaders can transform and enhance the
nature of work for their employees. This article has
presented some tangible ways leaders can transform
the meaning of work to better motivate and
educate their employees. Our hope is that leaders
will use this advice to improve the quality of work
in their own organizations.
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