Transactional leadership is a concept introduced by sociologist Max Weber where it focused on leader’s role in
supervising and employees are very much motivated by rewards and punishment. Following this theory that relied
heavily on the concept of chain of command, James McGregor Burns further developed the concept of
transformational leadership where through the strength of their vision and personality, transformational leaders are
able to inspire followers to change expectations, perceptions, and motivations to work towards common goals.
Transformational leaders strategically communicate a collective vision among the employees and encourage them to
sacrifice their self-interests for the good of the organizations, a proactive method that embraces the concept of
Evidently, one of the most difficult tasks for any leader is to effectively communicate the changes and cascade it
down to the members in the organization. Changes in organizations, internal or external impact every level of
employees and preparing employees for these changes is a strategic activity on its own and strategic communication
is beneficial. Zerfass and Huck (2007) discussed the leadership communication on innovation by applying the wheel
of leadership communication on innovations model. Combining four dimensions namely cognitive, affective,
conative and social, leaders act as communication promoter as well as change agents. This wheel suggests that the
build up from cognitive dimension which is knowledge about the innovation, leaders continue to share their visions
with other employees on the affective dimension before proceeding to their followers to participate in the innovation
in line with the conative dimension. The last part of the wheel is the social dimension, where leaders integrate
followers to incorporate the spirit of innovation. The combinations of these dimensions encompass the idea of
leaders as promoters and agents in strategically communicating change to employees.