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Leadership style is the key determinant for the growth or breakdown of an organization. A leader is someone who inspires, influences and guides an individual or team for efficient performance towards achievement of specified objectives of the organization. Leadership style is an approach of guiding, executing plans and motivating people and this approach influences people in such a way that the members of the teams contribute voluntarily to achievement of the goals. As team performance is an imperative building block of an organization, the aspects which make teams work towards achievement of goal must be analyzed by the organization. Subsequently every organization progresses with the effort of team and not by one or two individuals’ effort. The multidimensional paradigm is performance which aims to achieve the desired results and has a strong connection with the important goals of the organization (Mwita, 2000) and for achievement of these goals team leader’s leadership style is one of the most important factors. Further, it has been widely accepted that the performance of any team is largely dependent on the leadership style of its leader (Jones and Rudd, 2008). Leadership is the most comprehensively researched organizational variable that has a potential effect on employee performance, and the decision which the leader makes can lead to the success or failure of the business. So to survive in this competitive environment and for effective team performance, organization plays an important role. The demand for effective leader increases with the growth of the organization. In the last two decades, considerable research has been conducted on transactional and transformational leadership styles (Bass, 1985). There exists a relationship between transformational leadership style and various results measured at individual or team level. According to Burns (1978), transformational leadership represents a leadership style that is exemplified by magnetism and shared vision amongst leaders and followers. The energy of transformational leaders originates from their capacity to stimulate and motivate others to create remarkable work. According to Bass (1990), transformational leadership “occurs when leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees, when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group, and when they stir their employees to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group”. Whereas, according to Bromley and Kirschner-Bromley (2007), in transactional leadership, leaders “specify explicit requirements and conditions of the task, and provide rewards for fulfilling those requirements,” and that “fulfilling the requirement is completing the transaction”. So we can say that there is a strong association between leadership style and team performance in an organization.
This study makes an attempt to answer the question as to how transformational leadership style improves team performance in IT sector and to what extent the transformational leadership style followed in the organization helps team members in performing their jobs or helps in execution of the duties assigned to them. The major objective of this study is to identify the best leadership style which leaders can adopt in order to improve team performance, i.e., to identify the effect of leadership style on team performance. The implication of this study would be to help leaders in IT organization to know the style of leadership preferred by their subordinates to enhance their team performance.
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