Leadership development programming in higher education: an exploration of perceptions of transformational leadership across gender and role types

Transformational leadership, a type of leadership commonly promoted within higher education, has been shown to positively affect performance, collaborative behavior, and goal accomplishment. Such skills may correlate with the level of job responsibility one has been given and the technical, human, and conceptual skills needed for one to be successful. This study sought to bridge a research gap by exploring correlations between transformational leadership and skills-approach leadership with an exploration of the role of gender within perceptions. An unexpected result based on gender was found: As females achieve higher roles within the Land-Grant University System, the perception of their transformational leadership decreases while that of males increases. Transformational leadership and skills-approach leadership is discussed within the context of gender.