Impact of Transformational Leadership Approach of Operational Managers on the Work Performance of Operational Staff of Road Development Authority, Sri Lanka

This study aims to examine how the factors of transformational leadership approach of operational managers influence the performance of operational staff in the Road Development Authority (RDA) and to identify the level of impact of such factors to overcome the situation of underperformance of Human Resource (HR) and Administrative operational staff. The objective of this study is to analyse the influence of Inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, Individualized Consideration, Idealized Influence of operational managers on the performance of operational staff. The philosophy discriped in the onion research approach is adopted to carry out this research. The case study research strategy and deductive approach are used in this study. The 105 operational managers were selected from the target population of 143 operational managers by using Stratified random sampling technique.A self-administered questionnaire designed based on the past research studies relevant to this topic is used to collect data from the operational managers selected proportionally in the RDA. The correlation analysis to establish the relationship between the factors of transformational leadership and performance, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and multiple linear regression models were used to test the hypotheses. The study found that Operational Managers’ transformational approaches of Inspirational motivation, Intellectual Stimulation and Individualized Consideration have significantly impact on employees’ performance at 1% level except Idealized influence which is impact at the level of 5%. The study concluded that all factors of transformational leadership were positively and significantly increased performance of RDA staff. This result of this study was established and in line with the result of the studies done by Murage et al (2017), Mary et al (2011), Jacqueline W. Ndirangu, 2018.The study recommended that top management of the RDA should work towards implementing the elements of transformational leadership factors such as Inspirational motivation, Intellectual Stimulation and Individualized Consideration and Idealized influence through their operational managers in meaningful ways to improve the performance of operational staff attached to HR and Administrative divisions