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Abstract
Transformational leadership is arguably one of the most popular forms of leadership. However, despite the abundance of conducted studies on it, knowledge of specific transformational leadership behaviors is hindered by the conflation of follower perceptions and leader behaviors. Traditionally, these two elements are measured simultaneously, impeding causal inferences regarding the antecedents and consequences of such leader behavior. Thus, I first present a review of transformational leadership and propose the integration of signaling theory to ameliorate a number of issues in the transformational leadership literature. Second, I conducted two studies. In Study 1, I utilized a topic modeling approach to analyze open-ended responses (n = 109), and identified six transformational leader behaviors. In Study 2, I conducted a randomized, pre-registered, experiment and found that the presence of these signaling behaviors causes follower to evaluate the leader as more transformational (n = 416; Cohen’s d = .50). Finally, I discuss the theoretical and practical implications as well as the opportunities for future research.