364 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 4 / 2014 of the future will have to gain the trust, loyalty and esteem of their subordinates, attending to their needs and conveying challenges, a sense of unity and work, as well as communicating objectives as shared objectives that are attractive when looking to the future. Military leadership must thus be understood as “the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization” (Army Department, 2006). In this emerging form of military leadership, the provision of information and participation in the decision-making process become crucial elements when preventing or reducing stress amongst subordinates.31 A leader cannot content him or herself with merely giving orders to subordinates, he or she needs to try to engage them with their work and bolster the pursuit of common goals; they need to be close to subordinates and go beyond typical relationships, in such a way as to allow for better confrontation of stressful situations. Transformational leadership seems to provide a positive response to these requirements, although there has always been doubt as to whether in combat situations, with stress levels at their highest, a leader must act in a transformational, or supporting, manner instead of an approach that is better adapted to the situation at hand. This is the reason why it has been considered that, although it seems to have been proven that a transformational leadership style allows individuals to better tackle stressful situations, it is possible that, on occasions, combining this type of leadership with transactional leadership, based on a conceivable exchange of rewards and punishments, can result in a more effective form of leadership, as proposed recently by Alarcon, Lyons, Schlessman and Barelka. Another aspect which seems to be gaining increasing relevance, above all in the pursuit of an effective type of military leadership, are the motivation, ethics and values of the leader, which, by means of influence that this leader has on the group, can set an example that helps or serves as a blueprint for subordinates. This is primarily because the transmission of these values plays a fundamental role in the transformation of the individual interests of each subordinate into collective interests. For Shamir, House and Arthur, the exemplary conduct of a leader, underpinned by ethical and moral values, inspires followers to engage more in missions, to make personal sacrifices when carrying out missions and to go beyond the call of duty. Therefore, we cannot dismiss the effectiveness of styles of leadership such as the ethical or the authentic, as alternatives to conventional leadership models, since, in addition to sharing the same theoretical basis as that of transformational and supportive leadership when it comes to transcending traditional relationships with 31 FALLESEN, Jon J., KELLER-GLAZE, Heidi and CURNOW, Christina K.: “A selective review of leadership studies in the U.S. Army”, Military Psychology, Vol. 23, 2011. DOI: 10.1080/08995605.2011.600181.
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