Technological advancements have driven the development of dynamic work environments leading to a need for dynamic and visionary leaders who possess leadership skills and are capable of meeting the challenges and opportunities that exist in the modern workplace that is intent on promoting the change necessary for developing and maintaining the competitive edge (Burke, Stagl, Klein, Goodwin, Salas, Halpin & Winer, 2006). Again, it is even more critical that leaders of the highest calibre are identified, developed, and sharpened within educational institutions. Avolio and Bass (1991) who in their research identified three leadership styles, namely: transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire. They state that these three leadership styles can be used to identify the predictive roles of this range of leader attributes as well as the three outcomes of leadership, namely: extra effort, effectiveness and satisfaction. The FRL is regarded as a contemporary model that has the potential to explain leadership and its multidimensional nature and to measure behaviours empirically that can be used to predict leadership outcomes (Antonakis, Avolio & Sivasubramaniam, 2003; Avolio, 2010). According to Dew (1995) and Northouse (2012), leaders make an attempt to lift up motivation and morale when a transformational leadership style is put into effect. Similarly, Curtin (2004) and Conger and Kanungo (1990) propose that organisations require leadership that stimulates leaders and followers as a result of which observable change can come to the fore. For Avolio (2010), college deans should use the transformational leadership style to be the most successful. The findings of Morgenson, DeRue and Karam (2009), and Ross and Offerman (1991) have suggested that it is advantageous for organisations if they are led by lenient, more nurturing leaders. In his work, Nahavandi (2003) has tried to describe the characteristics of transformational leaders as follows: they work hard to promote self-reliance and optimism about goals and followers' ability, provide a vivid vision, initiate innovation through empowerment and rewards for followers, inspire high expectations by creating a conducive environment and, finally, form and strengthen personal relationships with followers. For Nahavandi (2003), these five characteristics of a transformational leader are of vital importance and the absence of one of these characteristics would make such a leader either ineffective or less effective in terms of his/her leadership. The present study assumes importance in finding out to what extent do the leadership styles adopted by deans have an effect on the government TVET Colleges’ perceived effectiveness as evaluated by deans, teachers, and students. Article visualizations
