Welcome back to Adit’s series of blogs! Somehow I’m past the halfway point. I’m honestly scared to think that less than a month remains of my time in Madrid. There’s still so much I have to do!

This week is mostly pictures of the Temple of Debod, an Egyptian temple taken down and reconstructed in Madrid, and the main Madrid park, El Parque Retiro. There’s also a light sprinkling of text about something like the development of my leadership style. Enjoy!

To start off, here’s a picture off me in front of the lake in Retiro Park! Still working on getting a group together to split the cost of renting a paddleboat.

In organizational behavior, transformational leadership is leading by example while emphasizing the development of team members. This style requires a more hands-off, positive leader and often succeeds in individualistic cultures with low power barriers. Transactional leadership is the opposite, focusing on punishment and reward and micromanaging team members on set guidelines to maximize short-term productivity. This style is more authoritarian and often succeeds in collectivist cultures with high power distances.

I have always strove to be a transformational leader, even before I knew what that meant. I generally avoid leading as a dictator. In an unfamiliar group I find this leads to resentment causing the group to naturally gravitate towards someone else for direction. Instead, I feel fulfilled by involving all teammates equally and encouraging innovation. In practice, this looks like soliciting the opinions of quieter peers and giving creative freedom to a colleague’s section of a project.

I do utilize transactional leadership where applicable. Usually, I make a unilateral decision to give a divided friend group direction and emphasize punishment and reward to kickstart a lazy project team. I’ve found people are often content to have someone to rally around and choosing something leads to a happier outcome than standing around unsure. Similarly, cracking the whip might make me unpopular in the moment, but having a quality product by the deadline usually makes all forgivable.

Here’s me with the boys at a viewpoint near the Temple of Debod!

The most accurate description of my style is I utilize transactional and transformational when most applicable as per my organizational behavior studies.

In my previous blog I contemplated how my leadership skills have developed since coming to Madrid. While I’m hopeful for the remaining month of my internship, I haven’t had the chance to do much leading thus far. As I wrote before, I’ve naturally fallen into the position of an enthusiastic subordinate as a new intern. It doesn’t help I mostly work alone with occasional team meetings. Therefore, instead of speaking about how my leadership style has changed, I will write about my findings of leadership in Madrid.

I feel my office is a bit of an anomaly and isn’t representative of most Madrid businesses. It’s very casual, very young, and very modern. My colleagues are mostly in their 20s and 30s, dress casually, and we work in a converted apartment floor with a democratic work culture. Even so, I’m going to base my view of leadership in Madrid off of what I’ve seen in my workplace.

I have a couple reasons to believe a transformational leadership style succeeds in Madrid.

Here’s a picture not featuring me in a green shirt! I had the privilege of being invited to a Spanish birthday party. It was very fun.

Firstly, the program directors told me that Madrid has high barriers of power. However, I’ve found the Madrid workplace to be egalitarian. There is certainly deference from an employee to a superior in a conversation, but everyone seems to speak freely and joke casually. This gives the workplace a feeling of a shared mission where the emphasis is everyone doing the best they can, a feeling a transformative leader creates.

Secondly, my supervisors have also given me much room for creativity. I was unsure about speaking casually and making tongue-in-cheek jokes when writing blogs, but my supervisor praised me for doing so. My colleagues have continually encouraged me to invent my own style both in writing and in designing. Creative freedom is integral to transformational leadership.

And for the last picture, a classic Adit looking away from the camera pose. In the background is the Egyptian temple, el Templo de Debod!

I haven’t seen many examples of transactional leadership. I attribute this to transactional leadership relying upon performance-based punishments and rewards, of which I have neither. For my companions on the program, the experience seems to be either transformational leadership or no leadership. If they don’t have an inspiring supervisor who encourages personal development, they have an absentee supervisor and are left to the same repetitive task day after day.

I’m quite pleased by my internship since I prefer transformational leadership and the workplace a transformational leader fosters. I’m happy to learn by example and employ a charismatic, encouraging management style when given the chance, but for now I’m content to observe my coworkers until I’m able to work in a team.