The Relationship of Gender and Organizational Setting to Transformational and Transactional Leadership Skills of Selected College Student Leaders

The purpose was to examine the development of transformational and transactional leadership skills among Generation X collegiate student organizational officers and members. This study looked at the organizational structure of each group and member’s gender to determine if these variables were related to leadership style. In this correlational study 190 college students between the ages of 18-22 from two different leadership organizations were given the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass & Avolio, 1995). Significant relationships were found between the transformational leadership scores and gender. It was found that female student leaders tended to be more transformational than male student leaders. Males had a tendency to portray transactional leadership skills. The type of organization did not influence what type of leader emerged. Although Generation X attributes suggest all members are more transformational, it was concluded that gender continues to have a significant impact on the development of student leader transformational leadership skills.