Transactional leadership (or transactional management) is a type of leadership style that focuses on the exchange of skills, knowledge, resources, or effort between leaders and their subordinates. This leadership style prioritizes individual interests and extrinsic motivation as means to obtain a desired outcome. It relies on a system of penalties and rewards to achieve short-term goals.
Although James Downton is generally credited with coining the term "transactional leadership",[1] James MacGregor Burns expanded upon the concept in his influential 1978 book Leadership.
[Transactional] leadership occurs when one person takes the intitiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of valued things. ... Their purposes are related, at least to the extent that the purposes stand within the bargaining process and can be advanced by maintaining that process. But beyond this the relationship does not go. The bargainers have no enduring purpose that holds them together.
— James MacGregor Burns, Leadership, (1978)
Transactional leadership is characterized by two primary factors: contingent rewards and management-by-exception. Contingent reward concerns the rewards that are granted in recognition of effort and good performance. Management-by-exception maintains the status quo, intervening only when subordinates do not meet acceptable performance levels or when corrective action is required to improve performance.