| Course | GM586 Transformational Leadership |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 2 |
| Paper type | Full range model application |
| Length | About 1,140 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MS in Management |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GM586 Unit 2
Eight Categories, Eight Dated Acts: A Unit 2 Full Range Model Application at an Overnight Maintenance Base
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
GM586: Transformational Leadership
Unit 2 Full Range Model Application
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The airline, the maintenance base, the director and every date are composite and illustrative; the model and research cited are real.
The Base and the Sources
The base performs overnight maintenance on a regional airline's turboprop fleet, usually six to eight aircraft a night, with a day crew handling heavier checks. Its director of maintenance, Carla Mendes, arrived two years ago. I am a night-shift lead mechanic, and I drew on three sources open to me: the base's shift turnover logs, four months of crew meeting notes and emails the director sent to the whole base.
Bernard Bass and Bruce Avolio's full range model arranges leader behavior from the least active and least effective, laissez-faire, through transactional behaviors to transformational ones at the top (Avolio & Bass, 2004). Bass argued that transformational leadership adds to transactional leadership rather than replacing it, an idea he called the augmentation effect (Bass & Riggio, 2006). I take the categories from the bottom up, as the model does.
Laissez-Faire: The Task Card Dispute, January to May
In January the night crew began complaining that day crews were leaving task cards half finished, with steps signed but no note of where work stopped. The complaint appeared in the turnover log eleven times between January and May. The director was copied on four of those entries. She did not respond to any of them until June, when a night mechanic repeated a step the day crew had already done and a cowling fastener was overtorqued. Over those five months, two night mechanics transferred to another base, and one told me the task cards were the reason. This was laissez-faire leadership in the model's sense: absent when a problem needed a decision.
Management by Exception, Passive: The Torque Stripe Lapse, March
In March an inspector found that torque stripes, the paint marks applied after a fastener is torqued, were missing on several engine mount fasteners across two aircraft. The base corrected the issue only after a second write-up appeared in the airline's monthly reliability report, which the director reviews. Her email that day announced a stripe audit. She acted, but only after the problem had repeated and reached a report above her.
Management by Exception, Active: The Logbook Review, from April
From April the director reviewed a sample of five logbook entries each morning and sent corrections to the mechanic before the aircraft's next departure. Mistakes in entries fell, according to the quality department's monthly count, from about 14 a month to 4 by July. This was active monitoring: looking for errors before they caused trouble.
Contingent Reward: The On-Time Release Board, from February
In February she began posting each crew's count of aircraft released on time for the first morning departure, with crews named. Crews that went a full month without a late release had lunch brought in. The board was simple, and everyone understood the deal. Release on time went from about 91 percent in January to 96 percent by June. The board also told crews something about the director: she was watching what they did and would keep her side of the bargain, which is what transactional leadership promises when it works.
Individualized Consideration: Two Mechanics Moved to Avionics, May
In May two mechanics told the director they wanted avionics work. She arranged for each to spend two nights a week with the avionics lead for three months, and both later passed the airline's avionics qualification. Her email announcing it named what each wanted and why.
Intellectual Stimulation: The Bleed-Air Valve Sequence, June
A bleed-air valve fault had recurred on four aircraft, and the troubleshooting sequence in the manual often led mechanics to replace parts that were not faulty. In June the director asked two night mechanics, not engineering, to rewrite the troubleshooting sequence from their own experience. Their version cut average troubleshooting time on the fault from about three hours to about one, and it became the base standard in August.
The two mechanics rewrote the valve sequence because the director had already shown, through the release board and the logbook review, that she would act on what they gave her.
Inspirational Motivation: The August Meeting
In August, at a base-wide meeting, the director said the base would aim to have no late releases caused by maintenance for a full quarter, and that the night crew's valve sequence would be offered to the airline's other bases. The meeting notes record applause, and the quarter that followed had one late release caused by maintenance, against eight the quarter before.
Idealized Influence: The Late Night in September
In September a crew found corrosion on a wing attach fitting at two in the morning. The director came in, stayed until the aircraft was grounded and the paperwork was complete, and wrote in the log that grounding the aircraft was the right decision even though it canceled two morning flights. Mechanics mentioned that night for weeks.
Limits of the Evidence
The sources favor what was written down. Turnover logs and emails record decisions and complaints, but not the many short conversations in which a director encourages or corrects people, and those may have mattered as much as anything here. The four months of meeting notes cover only part of the period. I am also a night-shift lead who was affected by the task card dispute, so my reading of the silence may be harsher than a day-shift mechanic's would be. Finally, some improvements, such as the fall in late releases, may owe something to newer aircraft entering the fleet during the year. The dated acts show what the director did; they cannot prove that each act caused the result that followed.
What the Pattern Shows
Read from the bottom up, the base's record shows the augmentation effect. The release board and the logbook review gave mechanics a reliable deal: do this, and the director will notice and respond. Timothy Judge and Ronald Piccolo found in their meta-analysis that contingent reward was strongly related to outcomes and closely correlated with transformational leadership (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). At this base, the mechanics who rewrote the valve sequence were the same people who had seen the board work.
The task card silence shows the cost of the bottom category. Anders Skogstad and colleagues found that laissez-faire leadership was associated with stress among subordinates and conflict between coworkers (Skogstad et al., 2007). Five months without a decision produced exactly that: a dispute between crews, two transfers and a damaged fastener. Her later transformational acts did not undo those months, and the two mechanics who left did not come back.
References
Avolio, B. J., & Bass, B. M. (2004). Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire: Manual and sampler set (3rd ed.). Mind Garden.
Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(5), 755-768. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.5.755
Skogstad, A., Einarsen, S., Torsheim, T., Aasland, M. S., & Hetland, H. (2007). The destructiveness of laissez-faire leadership behavior. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(1), 80-92. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.12.1.80
The Purdue Global GM586 Unit 2 instructions
In GM586 Unit 2 you apply the full range leadership model to one leader, category by category. Choose a leader whose conduct you can document, and say what sources you used, such as logs, minutes or emails. Work up the model from the bottom: laissez-faire, passive and active management by exception, contingent reward, then the transformational behaviors. For each category give a dated act, its source and a short reading of what it shows. Where a category has no example, say so with evidence rather than inventing one. Then explain the pattern, using the augmentation idea that transformational behavior adds to a reliable transactional base. Address the limits of your sources and your own position. Expect about six pages built around one row per category, citing the model and research on its categories in APA 7.
Inside the GM586 Unit 2 example
The paper introduces a turboprop maintenance base, the director, Carla Mendes, and the writer's three sources, then explains the model and augmentation. Laissez-faire is the task card dispute logged eleven times from January to May, ending in an overtorqued fastener and two transfers. Passive management by exception is a torque stripe audit ordered only after a repeat write-up reached the reliability report. Active monitoring is a daily logbook sample that cut entry errors from about 14 to 4 a month. Contingent reward is an on-time release board, with release rates rising from 91 to 96 percent. Individualized consideration places two mechanics with avionics. Intellectual stimulation is the rewritten valve sequence, with the highlighted sentence tying that rewrite to the release board. Inspirational motivation and idealized influence follow, then limits, Judge and Piccolo and Skogstad and colleagues on laissez-faire.
Where the points sit in the GM586 Unit 2 rubric
GM586 rubric credit for this application rests on a dated, sourced act for every category and an argument that connects them. Instructors check that each category is applied accurately, especially the difference between passive and active management by exception. Evidence from records earns more than recollection. Working up from the bottom of the model, and showing how lower categories set up higher ones, demonstrates understanding of the augmentation effect. A frank treatment of the laissez-faire category, with its consequences, carries weight because many papers skip it. A section on the limits of the sources shows care. Avolio and Bass's questionnaire manual, Bass and Riggio's Transformational Leadership, Judge and Piccolo's meta-analysis and Skogstad and colleagues on laissez-faire leadership provide the references in APA 7.
Common GM586 Unit 2 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Many GM586 Unit 2 papers apply only the transformational categories and leave the lower half of the model empty. Others fill every category with invented examples, which rarely read like recorded acts. A common gap is the argument: listing eight examples without explaining how they relate leaves the reader with a catalog. Some writers confuse active monitoring with contingent reward. Choose a leader you can document, name your sources, work up from laissez-faire with a dated act for each category, explain what the lower categories made possible, show what the worst category cost and admit what your records cannot show.
Get a GM586 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
A leader whose conduct can be dated is what this application needs: list what the person did, roughly when, and where any record of it sits, then add the Unit 2 prompt, its rubric and the model edition your course assigns. Within 24-48h a first application comes back free, with a bracket wherever a date or source is missing. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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GM586 Unit 2 questions, answered
Does every category need an example?
Most prompts expect the full range to be applied, so each category should at least be addressed. Where a leader shows no laissez-faire or passive behavior, saying so with evidence is a finding in itself. What weakens a paper is an invented example written to fill a row, since a reconstructed act rarely reads like a recorded one.
What is the augmentation effect, and why does it matter here?
It is the model's claim that transformational behavior adds to what a reliable transactional exchange already achieves, rather than standing in for it. Bass developed the argument and later studies tested it. In an application, it turns a list of categories into an argument: the higher behaviors are read against whether the lower ones were in place first.
Can the leader be my current manager?
Usually, provided the paper stays with conduct rather than judgment of character. A current manager offers the best records, including emails, meeting notes and logs, but also the greatest need for discretion. Describe the organization by type, keep colleagues to their roles, and leave out anything the manager would reasonably consider confidential. The model works just as well on a past leader.
Where can I find a free GM586 Unit 2 sample paper?
This page carries a full GM586 Unit 2 full range model application to an airline maintenance director, with a dated act for every category, the augmentation argument and APA 7 references.
What did the five-month silence cost the base?
The task card dispute between day and night crews went unanswered from January to May. It ended with a mechanic repeating a step and overtorquing a fastener, and two night mechanics transferred away, one citing the task cards as the reason.