Transformational leadership is a theory of leadership where a leader works with teams to identify needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and executing the change in tandem with committed members of a group. While other types of leadership operates within existing boundaries of processes, structures, and goals, transformational leadership challenges the current state and is change-oriented. Transformational leader sets high and reasonable goals for their followers and their organization. They inspire commitment and they create a shared vision for their organization. However, despite the benefits attributed to transformational leadership, there are also numerous flaws seen by critics. It can result to wrong decisions. With the authority and confidence given to these leaders, there can be instances where leaders can make harsh and abrupt decisions out of emotions which can be detrimental to the people. But there are strategies where organizations use their senior leaders as leadership development tools. The end result is increased engagement, productivity, and supply of organizational leaders.
ely to occur in nations over energy resources as foreign powers interfere in domestic politics. This is especially likely to occur in petrostates, where the economic significance of oil is much larger than most places in the world. For instance, with the current Venezuelan political crisis of leadership, and the increasing discourse from the USA, Russia and China, each foreign nation has a vested interest in Venezuelan oil which will play out politically and result in conflict. Each nation seeks energy security, which shall be defined as the relationship between national security and the availability of natural resources for energy consumption. However, there is an issue of complexity regarding energy security that suggests conflict can occur as increased interdependency can lead to greater consequences if it something goes wrong. As Yergin mentions, “it must be recognised that energy security does not stand by itself but is lodged in the larger relations among nations and how they interact with one another,” (Yergin, 69) suggesting that matters of energy security are intertwined in a complex web, and he goes on to mention that, “different countries interpret what the concept means for them differently” (Yergin, 71). Thus, with many different interpretations of an already complex issue, layered with large interdependency, a situation can arise where if energy security is threatened, there is a greater chance of conflict as for some, energy security can lead to war if it is threatened. As Le Billon mentions, “The resource dimension of foreign military intervention can also be associated with dilemmas between economic interests and strategic objectives,” (Le Billon 2004), and thus for some states, conflict is the best course of action if determined. Therefore, if the economic interests of foreign powers in petrostates are at risk from civil unrest, there is likely to be a conflict on a domestic level as these states promote the interests of opposing groups within domestic politics to protect their own interests, namely the energy resource of oil and the lucrative profits that could be lost. This is the case as Realism determines that as states are power-maximisers, the risk to energy security could become a threat to national security, so actions must be taken to ensure that it does not.
In Venezuela, conflict is inevitable as energy resources become the most significant factor of discourse. Venezuela is the holds the largest reserves of oil in the world, with an estimated amount of 300,878 million barrels of oil untapped (Dillinger 2019) however, it is only the world’s fifteenth largest producer of crude oil (Trading Economics 2019). This is not because Venezuela does not have the capacity to produce its crude oil, but that the current political situation has made it unaffordable to do so. One out of four refineries work, and the state-owned Petróleos de Venezeula (PDVSA) has had to abandon the Isla refinery on the Dutch-owned island of Curacao (Jaffe 2019). Venezuela’s economy looks bleak and that has been one of the defining topics around the political unrest. Currently there is a leadership crisis that has made Venezuela into a pseudo-dictatorship. President Maduro won elections in 2018 that have been deemed unfair as they banned many opposition parties and fraudulent votes were added, however, leader of the opposition, Juan Gauido, has sworn himself in as interim President, whilst gaining much international support and recognition from many nations. However, whilst many nations recognise Gauido’s claim, Russia and China refuse to do so as they deem it to be illegal, however, according to the Washington Post, they both have deep economic investments that would be risked by supporting Gauido. According to the article, the C
