What are H&S pros doing to achieve an engaged workforce? If they don’t know the difference between transactional and transformational leadership my answer is “not much.” The traditional/transactional work system focuses more on the task and very little on the person doing the task. A high performance/transformational work system focuses on BOTH the task and the person doing the task.
The norm for senior leadership is heavily weighted on the transactional side – a strong focus on key performance indicators like sales, quality, cost, production, etc. Functional excellence can come from becoming more transformational – with leaders’ heads and hearts in the game.