“What is the relationship between the questions we ask and our methods for answering them?” (Ladkin, 2010) this is one of the first questions asked by Donna Ladkin in her book ‘Rethinking Leadership’. ‘Transformational leadership’, this is a leadership theory introduced by James MacGregor Burns in 1978. His idea was that, in good transformational leadership there are four attributes; charisma, inspiration, individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation and that these attributes can be measured through the ‘Transformational Leadership Questionnaire’, this was an instrument developed by Beverley Alimo Metcalfe and Robert Alban Metcalfe, this approach does make sense; transforming the working style of a factory worker for instance may take many steps and different components, the manager needs to have charisma in order to be able to delegate jobs for the worker without coming off to strong and inspiring him or her at the same time. (2001, as cited in Ladkin, 2010, p. 4) The leader must work with the workers natural talents in order to utilize their best abilities. Ladkin described this as, “Having identified their strengths and weaknesses in terms of this quotient, potential leaders can create a ‘development plan’, to improve their performance on specific factors.” (Ladkin, 2010, p. 4)
‘Leadership as a phenomenon’ is a philosophical approach known as phenomenology. Ladkin uses this approach to “gain insight into the nature of leadership as a