Transformational and Transactional Leadership in Mental Health and Substance Abuse Organizations

by Dr. B.G. Nash Sr. Ph.D. Th.D.

Overview

In mental health and substance abuse organizations, mental health counselors and managers serve as essential personal for ensuring staff are supported. Mental health managers hold a critical role in providing guidance to counselors, which ultimately impact the quality of the care provided to patients in mental health and substance abuse organizations. Transformational and transactional leadership is noted to be effective for a variety of organizations. However, the role that transformational and transactional leadership plays in mental health and substance abuse organizations is absent in previous literature. For this study, a qualitative exploration of transactional and transformational leadership influence on the relationship between counselor and manager relationship was explored.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663237484
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/08/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	158
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

I started out in 1984 as a blue collar-worker in the railroad industry. I always felt that life has much more to offer than just working an eight-hour day to a forty-hour week. In 1990 I found a magazine that offered a course in Metaphysical science, so I enrolled. After about four years not only did, I learn more about who I am, but the potential that has been suppressed so many years. I was in my early thirties when I made up my mind to pursue a career in the field of counseling people who may have traveled the same road. However, as time when on, people began to change along with the situations they were experiencing. I then realized that I must get more education to provide a better more effective way of helping. I enrolled in a psychology bachelor’s course, then on to the master’s and ultimately earning a Ph.D. in psychology research, mental health policy and practice. All this was accomplished from 2014 through 2020. During my education years, I have worked with in various employment such as the psych-ward, mental health and substance use facilities and I have the pleasure of learning how to work and help individuals in the Autism spectrum. I am presently retired but still very active in the volunteering area of helping others learn. I have devoted most of my adult life to the betterment of the under privileged and those who society have forgotten. I hope through my writings I can reach more people with the message of hope and inspiration. Dr. Bruce Nash Sr. Ph. D.

Editorial Reviews

2023-02-09
Nash’s scholarly study of how transactional and transformational leadership impacts the relationship between mental health counselors and their managers.

To his credit, the author identifies a gaping hole in academic research on leadership—while the literature on leadership in business contexts is copious, few studies address the relationship between mental health counselors and their managers. In response, Nash has devised an empirical study that specifically focused on the difference between two kinds of leadership, transformational and transactional. Transformational leadership is defined by its four principal aims: inspiration, positive motivation, the promotion of self-confidence, and “allowing the follower to visualize the purpose of his or her work progress.” By contrast, transactional leadership expresses itself as a narrower “give-and-take type of interaction” that focuses on a system of rewards and punishments for employee performance. In order to understand what works best between mental health counselors and their managers, Nash interviewed 10 counselors and four managers at two different mental health facilities. But this is quite a narrow pool of participants to draw definite conclusions from. The author surmises that while transactional leadership can be effective at increasing productivity, transformational leadership is ultimately “more effective in producing long-term improvements in performance and counselor-manager relationships.” Given the extraordinary stress mental health counselors face—they are uniquely vulnerable to problems related to morale and burnout—the author’s attempt to understand that environment is timely and important. However, Nash’s study as a whole, like the field of leadership literature at large, is frustratingly vague—the categories investigated are too broadly defined to be a consistently helpful guide. Moreover, the author could have presented his findings more succinctly in a brief article. (For example, he constantly defines and redefines the two types of leadership in question without any increased specificity.) One hopes Nash's call for a greater scrutiny of the way in which mental health centers are run is answered by more ambitious empirical explorations than the ones carried out here.

A much-needed study but lacking in sufficient scientific rigor.

Kirkus Reviews