There has been a growing interest to understand how the officials of public sector agencies manage their employee performance to provide quality services to the citizens they serve. There is quite limited research that dealt with the obstacles the public sector officials identified as barriers to efficiently manage employee performance. This qualitative study focuses on the role of transformational leadership (TL) and challenges to manage employees\u27 performance at Egyptian ministry of Antiquities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten of public officials, using an 8-item, open-ended questionnaire. By using primary sources, the study found eight key obstacles that managers listed as deterrents to manage employee performance as the following: lack of financial resources, bureaucratic control mechanisms such as centralization, formalization, red tape, and routinization, low employee motivation, salaries and wages below the market level, employee self-preservation, overstaffing, unqualified staff and ineffective leadership training. The study further reveals that the role of TL was minimal, as leaders identified mostly possess the characteristics of transactional leadership. These findings would possibly help the Egyptian public officials to improve the performance of the management, and thus improve the quality of services to citizens
