Can managers really be trained as

leaders?
Evaluating development through transformational leadership and
communication

Review
There is a curious phrase that is becoming more popular both in corporate and sporting
contexts to describe enthusing people to work or perform a difficult task for you: “run
through brick walls”. It is an effective idiom as it has a great visual quality, and also contains
a nod to other phrases such as “hitting a brick wall” where there is a seemingly
insurmountable barrier. If you are the leader of a department or firm, or the captain of a
football team, it would be a great advantage to have such an influence on your team that
they would got to virtually any length to overcome obstacles for the benefit of you and the
rest of the team.
Of course, it is also technically impossible – no one could run through a brick wall, no matter
how flimsy it was constructed. This adds to the herculean nature of the phrase,
exaggerating both the will of the team members but also the fantastical power that the
leader seems to have over their cohorts. It is understandable, then, that being able to
inspire your team to this degree is pretty much the Holy Grail for many leaders, and those
people have been able to generate such a following have rightly been revered, whether it
has been on the sports field or in the boardroom. Imagine if Tom Brady walked into your
office and told you how your company was going to beat all expectations in the next quarter
with Superbowl-honed strategy. You would listen, right?

Leadership development
However, as many a failed quarterback would attest, not everyone can be Tom Brady. And
in the same way, many managers believe they simply don’t possess the “special stuff” that
would develop a devotion among their employees that would see them run through the
proverbial brick wall for them. But there are plenty of leadership development trainers out
there that would be quick to disagree, and cite evidence that shows that significant strides
can be made through short programs that can enable managers to become inspirational
leaders. So which group is right?
This is the question that a team based in Germany sought to answer in their research article
“Transformational leadership and communication: Evaluation of a two-day leadership
development program”. The authors – Cohrs et al. (2020)– took as their starting point the
work that had been done on the effectiveness of short, two-day leadership programs and
assessed the development of 38 leaders entered into such programs no only through
analysis of the leaders themselves, but also their employees before and after the leadership
course. The specific questions the research team wanted to pose were:

j
DOI 10.1108/DLO-07-2020-0146 VOL. 35 NO. 3 2021, pp. 31-33, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1477-7282 DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL j PAGE 31
 䊏 Employees will score leaders’ transformational leadership higher three months after
training.
䊏 Employees will score leaders’ communication styles higher three months after training.
䊏 Leaders with lower levels of transformational leadership skills will benefit more from
training than those with higher skills.

Testing times
For the experiment, employees were asked a number of questions before and after a two-
day training event, and at the event leaders were split into an experimental and control
group. The experimental group received intensive training on six dimensions of
transformational leadership and communicator styles, including feedback sessions and
finishing off with tasks to create an action plan for themselves. Trainers checked that
feedback and tasks were appropriate throughout, and all of the data collated before
statistical analysis was undertaken.
What the analysis showed was that the first assumption was proved to be correct, and
employees did think their leaders’ transformational skills improved following the training
session. In fact, this improvement was seen to be slightly higher for male than female
leaders as well. For communication styles, however, there were mixed results. While the
assumption that leaders’ attentiveness skills was supported, the side of communication
skills where an impression is made with employees saw no change. Finally, the third
assumption that leaders with lower levels of transformational skills would benefit the most
was also validated, although interestingly those that benefited the most already had middle
levels of skill in this area, but those with high levels of skill going into the training did not
benefit as much as those with middle or lower levels.

Communication problems
So, overall it can be said that the investigators did prove the worth of an intensive two-day
training course on transformational leadership, and such a course should be particularly
effective where a leader struggles with an attentive communication style and has low or
medium levels of transformational skills already. If, however, a leader has high level skills
and requires improvement in their communication style for leaving positive impressions,
then perhaps such a course may not be productive for them.
On a practical level, the findings should be of interest to HR and training departments who
can start to determine which leadership courses will have the most impact for different
leaders. The temptation for many HR officers will be to recommend the same course for all
leaders, perhaps even sending them away together. However, the findings from this study
show that one size does certainly not fit all, and a careful appraisal of where leaders’
transformational skills lie initially should be the first action taken. Additionally, the authors
suggest that if firms discover some of their leadership team already have high levels of
transformational leadership skills, they can become involved in training but less as a trainee,

Imagine if Tom Brady walked into your office and told you
how your company was going to beat all expectations in the
next quarter with Superbowl-honed strategy.

PAGE 32 j DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL j VOL. 35 NO. 3 2021
 Many managers believe they simply don’t possess the
‘special stuff’ that would develop a devotion among their
employees.

but in more of a mutual training role, helping their colleagues through actions and role play
to exemplify how leadership and communication skills can be employed to the best effect.

Comment
The article “Transformational leadership and communication: Evaluation of a two-day Keywords:
Transformational
leadership development program” by Cohrs et al. (2020) offers HR managers real insight
leadership,
and practical guidance on how to best utilize transformational leadership training programs. Training,
Such programs tend to be incredibly expensive and are a significant investment for any Leadership development,
organization, and as such the advice offered in the article is particularly valuable. Communication

Reference
Cohrs, C., Bormann, K.C., Diebig, M., Millhoff, C., Pachocki, K. and Rowold, J. (2020), “Transformational
leadership and communication: evaluation of a two-day leadership development program”, Leadership &
Organization Development Journal, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 101-117.

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