Transformational and transactional leadership skills for mental health teams

Many treatments for persons with severe mental illness are provided by ment al health teams. Team members work better when led by effective leaders. Re search conducted by organizational psychologists, and validated on mental h ealth teams, have identified a variety of skills that are useful far these leaders. Bass (1990, 1997) identified two sets of especially important skil ls related to transformational and transactional leadership. Leaders using transformational skills help team members to view their work from more elev ated perspectives and develop innovative ways to deal with work-related pro blems. Skills related to transformational leadership promote inspiration, i ntellectual stimulation, individual consideration, participative decision m aking, and elective delegation. Mental health and rehabilitation teams must not only develop creative and innovative programs, they must maintain them over time as a series of leader-team member transactions. Transactional le adership skills include goal-setting, feedback, and reinforcement strategie s which help team members maintain effective programs.