The Influence of Transformational Leadership on Job Performance Among Government Agency Support Staff in Southern Region of Malaysia

This study aims to investigate the relationship of transformational leadership on job performance among government agency support staff in the southern region of Malaysia. Transformational leadership was measured by Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), while job performance was assessed by Individual Work Performance Questionnaire (IWPQ). Data for this study were collected from 120 government agency support staff in the southern region of Malaysia. The findings show that the level of transformational leadership was found high while the level of job performance was found moderate. The result from Smart PLS shows that there is a significant moderate correlation between transformational leadership and job performance among the support staff. A few recommendations were suggested that are organization can maintain the high level of transformational leadership by initiating a team building program for the support staff. Suggestions were also provided for future research including collecting data from the perspective of employees and employers about the studied variables.


Introduction
There is a various number of organizations typically from the business sector that requires services from the government sector insistence on the outstanding level of services (Khalid, 2020).Employees displaying high job performance are essential for both profit and non-profit organizations to remain competitive and achieve goals in today's dynamic business environment (Soelton, Pebriani, Umar, Triwulan & Wilantara, 2018).Nevertheless, Vol 12, Issue 3, (2023) E- ISSN: 2226-3624 To Link this Article: http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/IJAREMS/v12-i3/18855DOI:10.6007/IJAREMS/v12-i3/18855 Pu Published Online: 10 October 2023 Selvanathan, Selladurai, S. Gill, Kunasekaran, and Pei (2016) identify that Malaysian public service employee performance is not in compliance with customer expectations rarely fulfilling customers' needs (Ahmad Tajuddin & Ahmad, 2013).In addition to that many empirical pieces of evidence from previous researchers said that consumers are far from satisfied with the employment provided by public sector employees from the various department (Selvanathan et al,2016).
As cited by Diamantidis and Chatzoglou (2018) employee performance depends on various factors, however, leadership behaviors among leaders are one of the principles in ensuring a high level of job performance among employees in an organization (Elgelal & Noermijati, 2014).
In addition to that Al kindy, Mad Shah, and Jusoh (2015) identified transformational leadership theories are the best way for an organization to implement managing employees for yielding high job performance among them.This is because transformational leaders tend to behave as a guide rather than a coercive force that enhances employees' perception of their objectives (Jyoti & Bhau, 2015).Transformational leadership is substantial to accomplish complex tasks such as managing a perplexing workforce and sustaining their competitiveness (Yadav & Agrawal, 2017).On the other hand, detrimental leadership behavior may cause a decrease in employee performance that affects organizational performance (Hermina & Yosepha, 2019).Statistic from research conducted by Mohd Shokory, Abdul Hamid, Awang, and Salleh Hudin (2019) shows that government servant performance from Malaysian premier education university decreased between the year 2014 and 2015.This is because the employee feels discriminated against through leaders' consideration, lacks intellectual stimulation, and is constantly excluded employee in carrying out the organization's mission (Elgelal & Noermijati, 2014).Similiarly, Marbun (2018) found an increase in absenteeism levels among employees in the drinking water production industry in Indonesia.This is due to leaders in this organization does not emphasize employee career development and lacking in motivating the employee to perform their tasks according to standardized methods.Moreover, research conducted by Hidayat and Lee (2018) found that transformative leaders in North Borneo mining organizations do not affect employee performance.They identify that the leaders do not emphasize employee cognitive excitement and neglect employee individuality which makes it difficult for the employee to address them as a role model.For that reason, it is eminent for the researcher to explore more regarding transformational leadership level behavior in this organization that affects their employee job performance.

Literature Review Brief Overview of Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is separated from transactional leadership by Bass (1985).The transformational leadership paradigm devised by Bass (1985) comprises four dimensions that are charisma, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration which leads to the development of the multifactor leadership questionnaire to measure the four elements of transformational leadership.According to Bass and Avolio (1995) series of further variations of the MLQ have been constructed since the original version (Form 1) was released.Referring to Bass and Avolio's (1990) more established version of the MLQ constructed where the term charisma was replaced with idealized influence and the fourth component which is inspirational motivation was revealed.Depending on the context, a leader's behavior can be anywhere along the spectrum from laissez-faire to transformative.
. Figure 1.Full range of leadership model by Bass and Avolio (1994) (Source: Vilhauer, 2018: 5) Figure 1 depicts a leader's effectiveness or ineffectiveness, as well as whether a leader is passive or aggressive.According to Bass and Avolio (1994) leaders that utilized a laissez-faire approach is the most inactive and ineffective which avoidance or lack of leadership that is seen as a sort of non-leadership.Management-by-exception is widely seen as an inefficient leadership approach in general.When utilizing management-by-exception (passive), leaders rely upon followers to make mistakes or errors before collaborating with them to remedy the issues.When utilizing management-by-exception (active), leaders are proactive in constantly checking followers for faults and errors, and then collaborate with the followers to fix the mistakes (Bass & Avolio, 1994).Contingent compensation is one of the two successful strategies of leadership.In this paradigm, leaders and followers concur on both a task and compensation for accomplishing the task (Bass & Avolio, 1994).As cited by Bass (1985) transformational leadership consists of four dimensions that are individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, idealized influence, and inspirational motivation.Idealized influence and inspirational motivation give followers more energizing, interesting, and intrinsically motivating objectives (Qalati, Zafar, Fan, Limon, & Khaskheli, 2022).Therefore, transformational leaders excel in assigning significant and difficult tasks to their followers, properly presenting work objectives, and propagating team spirit with their good attitude (Qalati et al., 2022).This effect emerges as a result of transformative leaders communicating compelling goals and visions for their followers (Kovjanic, Schuh, & Jonas, 2013).Furthermore, intellectual stimulation and treating followers as individuals both encourage the adoption of individual and diverse perspectives.This means that transformational leaders are capable of inspiring followers to acknowledge their distinctiveness, arousing fresh perspectives from unconventional perspectives, and recognizing the value of individual training, direction, and suggestions (Bass 1995).This is because transformational leaders serve as a link between leaders and followers, allowing them to get a deep grasp of their followers' interests, beliefs, and motivations (Tajeddini, Altinay,& Ratten, 2017).Bass (1985) identified that when a leader demonstrates transformative traits this will yield more highly motivated performance among their followers than expected.Having these four traits can extend followers' views and leverage the power of their knowledge and experience for generating well-informed means of achieving the big expectations established by transformational leaders (Qalati et al., 2022).
As cited by Antonakis and House (2015) idealized influence from two classifications are attributes and behaviors.They wrote that attributes of idealized influence refers to a charismatic characteristic which can be defined as a subordinate perspective regarding their leader's authority, diligence, and extraordinary value.While idealized influence -behavior refers to distinguishing leader action that shows their integrity, principles, and responsibility.Align with that Chebon, Aruasa, and Chirchir (2019) identified that idealized influence is a behavior that triggered subordinate confidence, recognition, and reverence to imitate their leader's behavior.For Bakker, Hetland, Olsen and Espevik (2022), inspirational motivation is the intensity of the leader in modeling their long-term goals that are enticing and stimulating employee desire.It means the leader emphasizes the importance of desired goals in simple terms, communicates a high degree of expectations, and provides meaningful and challenging work to followers (Karimi, Ahmadi Malek, Yaghoubi Farani, & Liobikiene, 2023).As cited by Cavazotte, Moreno, and Bernardo (2013) inspirational motivation enhances employee performance and organizational success can be achieved by heightened employee motivation (Farid, Tasawar, Shahid and Abdul, 2014).As cited by Hartati, Masyitoh, Wahidin and Sutarmadi (2022) intellectual stimulation can be defined as stimulation towards employee cognitive capability to yield inventive notions and identify resolution to challenging tasks.As a result, the leader turns the followers into creative thinkers inside the, and the employees become more interested in the organization (Kehr, Graff, & Bakac, 2022).Moreover, leaders that are intellectually stimulated allow their followers' errors and do not condemn them when their thoughts differ from theirs which encourages employees to be innovative in problem-solving and the application of a diverse range of ideas, even if these views disagree with those of the leader (Lee, Cheng, Yeung, and Lai, 2011).Bass (1985) pointed out that individualized consideration provides extra concentration towards overlooked employees, respects their subordinates distinctively, assisting them in achieving their desire.The leader serves as a mentor or coach, guiding followers to higher levels of potential in a supportive environment (Bass, 1998).As cited by Schaufeli (2015) these leaders appreciate their followers and give ongoing feedback and follow-up.In addition to that particular consideration is given to the demands of followers for success and progress.As cited by Gao, Murphy, and Anderson (2020) transformational leadership among leaders is an utmost aspect as leverage for high job performance among employees.This is because transformational leadership has a favorable influence on employee behaviors in the workplace (Al-Swidi, Mohd Nawawi, and Al-Hosam, 2012).Job performance will be discussed comprehensively in the next section.Hermina and Yosepha (2019) refer to the term job performance as the level of excellence and volume of tasks carry out by an employee.The previous definition is more general compared to the one provided by Motowidlo and Kell (2012) which refers to job performance as a proposed valuation by the organization executed by their employees in a certain duration of time.Borman and Motowidlo (1993) indicate that behavioral performance comprises task performance and contextual performance (refer Figure 2).As cited by Borman & Motowidlo (1993), task performance refers to activities that are typically listed in formal job descriptions for example the direct conversion of raw materials into products, persevering the core technology, providing imperative services, or managing employees.Moreover, contextual performance refers to behavior that is not related to the employee's core task (Organ, 1988).Borman and Motowidlo (1993) made the differentiation between task and contextual performance because they were concerned that research and practice in the area of employee selection tended to focus solely on one aspect of the performance domain, ignoring or downplaying another that is equally important for organizational effectiveness.2013) notice numerous developments of scale to evaluate employee performance however incomprehensive and contained overlapping items between dimensions.This limitation leads to the development of the Individual Work Performance Questionnaire by Koopman (2015) which contained three main dimensions of evaluating job performance that is task performance, contextual performance, and counterproductive work behaviors.Aguinis (2013) justify that measuring task performance assesses behavior that is commonly constituted in the employee job description.Job performance should be evaluated in terms of specialized knowledge about the task and volume and excellence of employee output (Salgado & Cabal, 2011).Furthermore, more extensive examples are provided by Koopman, Bernaards, Hildebrandt, Schaufeli, de Vet Henrica, and van der Beek (2011) such as accomplishing given tasks, constantly renewing knowledge, performing tasks meticulously, and ability to solve the problem independently.According to Daryoush, Silong, Omar, and Othman (2013) contextual performance is related to employee pursuit in providing organizational success although it is not related to their job description.On the other hand, Singh and Arumugam (2020) segregate task performance and contextual performance as it is more common in many occupations, unrestricted and voluntarily.While task performance depends on employee abilities and skills but contextual performance is subject to employee personal character (Borman & Motowildo, 1997).Although both task performance and contextual performance have distinctive definitions nevertheless this dimension brings immediate factors for employee accomplishment (Rosales, Diaz-Cabrera & Hernandez-Fernaud, 2021).According to Ali Nemr and Liu (2021), counterproductive work behavior refers to a detrimental issue that affects organizational performance.Ones (2013) found that counterproductive work behavior is an employee's willingness in doing what is damaging to other members and the organization as a whole.Whilst a specific definition regarding this dimension can be defined as voluntary contradictory employee actions that are detrimental to organization performance and their collaborator (Ones, 2013).Some examples of counterproductive work behavior are theft, anger, aggression, punctuality, harassment, absenteeism, abuse, withdrawal, and selfserving act (Zahid & Fariha, 2019).Thus, counterproductive work behavior can be concluded as an employee encounter that impaired their achievement that directly sabotaged organizational performance.The next section will represent the relation of both discussed variables from previous studies.

Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Job Performance
Numerous studies have been conducted in a diversified setting to identify the relationship between transformational leadership and job performance such as education (Jyoti & Bhau, 2015), jewelry artisan (Lor & Hassan, 2017), and the pharmaceutical field (Nguyen, Mai & Huynh, 2019).Transformational leadership provides significant assistance in changing a person so that they can achieve more in their career which eventually provides a competitive advantage for the organization (Abazeed, 2018;Al Kindy, Mad Shah & Jusoh, 2016;Elgelal & Noermijati, 2014;Nugroho's, 2018).According to Elgelal and Noermijati (2014) although there are two types of leader behavior; task-centered or people-centered nevertheless successful leaders are competent in managing both contexts.This evidence is also supported by Uddin, Rahman, and Howlader (2014) and Sultana, Darun, and Yao (2015) who found that transformational leaders have attributes such as a strong sense of charm, compassion, positivity, and revolutionary ideas that allow them to effortlessly motivate their subordinate in achieving their goals.As cited by Jyoti and Bhau (2015) transformational leaders are cooperative and affectionate naturally therefore a harmonious relationship is easily established that makes subordinates bolder in achieving their objectives.Transformational leadership provides significant assistance in changing a person so that they can achieve more in their career which eventually provides a competitive advantage for the organization (Nugroho, 2018).There were studies conducted to investigate the impact of transformational leadership practices on employee performance in the education setting in Malaysia (Abd Hamid, 2013), and the Malaysian public sector (Manesh, Singh, and Hussain, 2018).These studies concluded that transformational leadership indeed has a positive and significant impact on employee performance in the respective organizations.Implications regarding this research were also being discussed such as appointing leaders among academics with transformative leadership behavior is crucial for increasing performances (Bakar and Mahmood, 2014).Therefore, it can be seen that there is a clear relationship between transformational leadership and employee job performance which contribute to the hypotheses developed in this research which is: H1: There is a relationship between transformational leadership and job performance among government agency support staff in southern region of Malaysia.

Methodology
Since this research attempts to identify the relationship between two variables, therefore the research design adopted is a correlational study by using a questionnaire as an instrument in this research.In this study, a cross-sectional method in gathering the data was implemented which means the data will be collected only once throughout the research process.The population was 120 support staff from one government agency in the southern region of Malaysia.The independent variable for this research is transformational leadership while the dependent variable is job performance.Data of this variable were gathered by adapting the Multilevel Leadership Questionnaire by Bass (1985).This instrument consists of four dimensions that are idealized influence (16 items), inspirational motivation (29 items), intellectual stimulation (3 items), and individualized consideration (7 items).Meanwhile, the dependent variable in this research is job performance.To obtain the data for this variable, the Individual Work Performance Questionnaire by Koopman (2015) was used and distributed among the respondents.This instrument encompasses three dimensions which include task performance (5 items), contextual performance (8 items), and counterproductive work behaviors (5 items).Therefore, there are 18 items all together to measure job performance among the employees in this organization.Multilevel Leadership Questionnaire by Bass (1985) and Individual Work Performance Questionnaire uses a 5-point Likert scale that measures all dimensions.Pilot study had been conducted to measure the reliability of the instrument in this research.Multilevel Leadership Questionnaire has 0.970 (α=0.970) for alpha Cronbach value that shows good reliability and for Individual Work Performance Questionnaire is 0.719 (α=0.719)categorized as reliable to be executed in this research.Furthermore, data obtained were analyzed using SPSS version 26.0 for descriptive statistics.The level of both variables was identified through the mean score obtained from descriptive statistical analysis.According to Hadiyanto, Failasofah Makmur, Hidayat, and Mukminin (2013) mean score is suitable to determine the level of agreement among the respondent that consists of 5 levels Likert scale, the lowest level can be represented by the mean score that ranges from 1.00 to 2.33, the moderate level is somewhere from 2.34 to 3.67 and the highest level can be identified by the mean score that ranges 3.68 to 5.00.On the other hand, Smart PLS 4.0.9.5 was used to analyze the relationship between transformational leadership and job performance.

Findings Demographic Profile
Based on the analysis it can be inferred that a large number of them are Malays (%=95).Furthermore, the majority of them are female employees between the ages of 20 and 40 years old (%=76).They had completed their schooling up to the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) level (%=45).In terms of employment longevity, they have mostly worked for the firm for more than ten years (%=68) 1 Level of Transformational Leadership among Support Staff Table 1 demonstrated the level of transformational leadership among support staff at the studied government agency is at a high level (M=3.85,SD=0.71).This situation shows that their leaders have a sense of mission which was transmitted to the employee.It also illustrates that the leaders in this organization emphasized employee intelligence in solving daily challenges and appreciate their employees as individuals.In addition, findings also identified that leaders in this government agency provide a vision for the employee and trust in their actions for executing the task in the workplace.1, The overall mean score for idealized influence is 3.98 (SD=0.82)which indicates a high level.This is because the employee observes that their leaders inspire loyalty to them and increases employee optimism for the future.Thus, it drives the large number of the employees to feel good to be around their leaders and making them trust their leader's capacity to overcome any obstacles.On top of that, intellectual stimulation dimension recorded a mean value of 3.85 and the standard deviation is 0.79.This value indicates a high level of intellectual stimulation dimension among leaders in the studied government agency.
The ground idea for this situation is that the leaders in this organization acknowledge employees to determine a new solution to old problems and also facilitate their subordinates in analyzing challenges from another perspective that used to be a puzzle for them.However, there are a small number of employees that claim their leaders hardly provided them with new ways of looking at things that were perplexing to them nonetheless a majority of them claimed their leaders' ideas forced them to reevaluate several of their notion which had never questioned before.
Besides that, a mean score of is 3.86 (SD=0.70)for individualized consideration dimension explains the leaders in this studied government agency constantly identify employee needs also facilitate them in achieving goals and provide personal attention to an overlooked employee.In addition, most of the respondents claimed that their leaders show satisfaction when they meet the agreed-upon standard for an assignment well done.Meanwhile, inspirational motivation dimension obtained a high level with a mean score of 3.71 (SD=0.66).
It demonstrates that their leader leadership induces their subordinates to exclusive effort in accomplishing a task and constantly providing feedback on their work.This is due to their leader communicating clearly regarding the expectation if their performance meets the designated standard and at the same time, the established standard is easy for them to maintain.This situation shows that their leaders are a good team player.

Level of Job Performance among Support Staff
Table 2 shows the findings of job performance among government agency support staff in the southern region of Malaysia.In overall, the mean for job performance is 2.74 (SD=0.47)which indicates a moderate level.It explains that when the employee was committed to achieving their main task objectives but still lacking in time management and being completely efficient (task performance).At the same time, the employees in this organization were dedicated to maintaining their knowledge and skills of their core task but behaved quite indifferently about anything that is not related to their main objectives (contextual performance).In addition, it also shows that the respondent protects their organization's reputation even though there are times they encounter challenging situations (counterproductive work behavior).(M=3.49,SD=0.49).This level indicated that the employee kept in mind the work result that they needed to achieve in their task however they are completely competent in managing their time.It was identified that the majority of the respondents claimed that despite all the workloads being given to them they were able to set priorities and carry out given tasks efficiently.On the other hand, it is reported that there is a moderate level of contextual performance dimensions among the support staff (M=3.33,SD=0.53).This level demonstrated that when it comes to their main core task the respondent put extra effort into keeping their work skills up to date while lacking participation activity such as meetings and consultations.Many of the respondents said that they took on extra responsibilities in the organization some of the respondents admitted that they do not prefer new challenges in the workplace.For the third dimension, it is highlighted that the respondents have a low level of counterproductive work behavior (M= 1.41, SD=1.10).This level indicates that although they encounter an unfavorable situation at the workplace, employee in this organization does not reveal a negative aspect of their work to people outside the organization and focused on the positive aspect of the circumstances.In addition to that, although the employee experiences the same inconvenient event at the workplace however it is rare for them to talk about it.

Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Employee Performance
The data obtained were analyzed through IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23.0 and Smart PLS version 4.0.9.5.This is because Partial Least Square (PLS) is able to analyse all the constructs involved at the same time (Farooq and Markovic, 2016;Thaker et al., 2020).Thus, in this study, researchers use SmartPLS software based on structural equation modelling (SEM) using the PLS method.SEM is the second-generation multivariate data analysis method most commonly used for research in the social sciences because it can test theoretically supported linear and additional causal models (Haenlin & Kaplan, 2004).Thus, the findings of this study are presented in Table 3 and the analysis of a model to measure the relationship between transformational leadership and job performance is shown in Figure 3. Based on Ramayah, Cheah, Chuah, Ting, and Memon (2018), the effect of the relationship between two relationships can be known through the analysis of R 2 .The findings show that the value of R 2 obtained is 0.207.This means that the effect of transformational leadership on job performance is 20.7% in this study.The t-value obtained is 8.019.According to Ramayah et al. (2018), this t-value explains that the relationship between these two variables is significant.As a result, the hypothesis of the study is supported.

Discussion and Conclusion 1 The Level of Transformational Leadership among Government Agency Support Staff in the Southern Region of Malaysia
Based on the descriptive analysis the result shows that the level of transformational leadership in this organization is at a high level.This level signifies that the employee shows absolute faith in their leader's capacity to overcome challenging situations in the workplace (idealized influence).This situation encourages the employee to follow their leaders as role models and induce a favorable feeling to being around their leaders.As a consequence, the employee acknowledges that their leaders are a symbol of success and accomplishment.This is aligned with findings from Chebon, Aruasa, and Chirchir (2019) that idealized influence is a behavior that triggered subordinate confidence, recognition, and reverence to imitate their leader behavior.It also found that leaders in this organization constantly empower their subordinates to be innovative in confronting everyday challenges (Intellectual stimulation).Moreover, it also signifies that the leaders are ready to facilitate their subordinates in viewing challenging tasks from another perspective in the workplace.These occurrences stimulate employees to reevaluate their notions that have never been questioned before.These findings are parallel with Avolio, Waldman, and Einstein (1988) that intellectual stimulation is concerned with criticizing the employee's approach to executing a task and providing another possible choice of answer to a complicated situation.Moreover, the result shows a high level of individual consideration.It shows that leaders in this organization devote their attention to an employee who seems left behind.In addition to that, they also identify the needs of their subordinates and attempt to assist them in achieving their needs.These findings are parallel with Jyoti and Bhau (2015) that individual consideration provides extra concentration towards overlooked employees, respective their subordinates distinctively and assisting them in achieving their objectives.From this situation, it signifies that these leaders treat their employees as an individual.Besides, the inspirational motivation dimension was also identified as high level.This demonstrates that leaders in this organization excite and inspire followers by setting clear expectations and demonstrating acceptable behavior.This tells the researcher that the leader's leadership style provides an impact on employee effort in executing tasks successfully in the workplace.Moreover, the objective standards that are set up are straightforward for them to maintain.It shows that this finding is alienated from Yukl (2012) that inspirational motivation can be defined as establishing between responsibility and employee value.

Region of Malaysia
Meanwhile, job performance as the dependent variable in this research was identified at a moderate level.Task performance dimension only acquired moderate level which signifies employees in this organization kept in mind the work result that they needed to achieve in their task however they are incompletely competent in managing their time.Despite large numbers of the respondent being proficient in executing their task, however, they are respondents who are inefficient in performing their tasks per the standard given such as managing their time well and managing their work to complete it on time.Although this is a small figure however it impacts the level of task performance.The higher-level management could enhance this situation by providing awareness of and importance of task efficiency in the workplace.Moreover, the level of contextual performance is at a moderate level as well.This is when it comes to their main core task the respondent put extra effort into keeping their work skills up to date while lacking participation in activities such as meetings and consultations.It can be seen from the findings that there are respondents who are not interested in participating in meetings or consultations, rarely sought new challenges in the workplace, and are uncommon among the employee to correspond with challenging tasks.This situation is also supported by Uddinet al., (2014) that contextual performance is important for an organization's overall efficiency although it is not directly related to an employee's main task.The dimension of counterproductive work behavior achieves a low level in the studied organization.From this level, it explains that the employee in this organization appropriately behaves in the workplace.Nevertheless, some respondents complained about the minor workrelated issues at the workplace, exaggerating challenging situations than they were, and constantly talking to a colleague about the negative aspect of their task.The source of complaints signifies that subjective employee personality and also their workplace surroundings.The indicated aforementioned finding is aligned with previous research from Anjum and Anjum (2013) that stated that counterproductive work behavior is caused by personality and employee working environment.Overall, the moderate job performance shows the value and volume achieved by an individual in carrying out their work in tandem with the responsibility allocated to them which eventually impacts organizational productivity and performance.This finding aligned with Yang, Lee, and Cheng (2016) that prove that employee performance impacts the accomplishment of productivity and attaining organizational goals, which has an impact on organizational performance.Thus, the moderate level of job performance in this organization shows that the respondent performed adequately in executing their task and thought highly of their organization.

The Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Job Performance among Government Agency Support Staff in the Southern Region of Malaysia
Based on SmartPLS, the result demonstrates that there is a significant relationship between transformational leadership and job performance in this organization.This indicates that the transformational leadership style among the leaders provides an impact on their employees' job performance.A transformative leader is an effective way to ensure high job performance among the supporting employees.It also helps their subordinate to achieve their objectives.Hence, this finding is corresponding with Sultana et al., (2015) who found that transformative leaders have attributes such as a strong sense of charm, compassion, positivity, and revolutionary ideas that allow them to effortlessly motivate their subordinates in achieving their goals.In addition, the positive significant correlation signifies that robust transformational leadership will enhance employee job performance among the employees.It shows that employee job performance will simultaneously increase if spearheaded by transformative leaders.This is because transformative leaders gravitate to be inspiring cause the employees become more innovative to face challenging tasks and they appreciate employees' outstanding efforts per the objective The result of this study also parallels with Manesh et al., (2018) who found a significant relationship between transformational leadership and job performance among Nursing staff in Kuala Lumpur.Moreover, even though this study shows a significant positive correlation between the variables but it is very weakly correlated compared to research from Manesh et al., (2018) research that possesses a strong relationship between both of the studied variables.Nevertheless, this very weak positive correlation illustrates that transformative leaders play a significant role in ensuring high-level performance among their subordinates.The weak correlation shows that other factors may increase their job performance in the workplace.This is aligned with previous research from Elgelal and Noermijati (2014) stated that job performance is affected by many factors such as human issues however transformational leadership is an imperative component of ensuring job performance is at a high level.Overall, it demonstrates that leaders in this organization mobilized their leadership transformatively which influence job performance among the supporting employees.Notwithstanding the relatively limited sample, this study offers valuable insights that a new approach to leadership is required to enhance employees' attitudes towards their job.On the other words, this current study contributes to existing knowledge about how well employees perform by emphasizing the value of charisma, the ability to motivate others, the capacity to recognize each follower's needs and the skills to inspire followers to think creatively among leaders.Additionally, these empirical results will contribute to a better understanding of how transformational leadership affects employee job performance in Malaysian government agency setting.As suggested by many researchers, the Malaysian government agency may take into consideration include a compulsory module on transformational leadership in the career planning process for its potential leaders.Following that, the potential leaders will gain sufficient knowledge and practices from this compulsory module and be ready to apply it in the future.

Conclusion
Employee performance is a significant factor for organizational success in developing countries such as Malaysia.Nevertheless, previous literature indicates that services given by the public sector remained tardy.Research shows that employee job performance depends on multiple circumstances one of which is transformational leadership among the leaders in the respective organization.This is because transformational leaders tend to behave as a guide rather than a coercive force that enhances employee perception of their objectives.Result obtained shows that the exercise of transformational leadership among the superior simultaneously increases employee performance.The result also indicated that transformational leadership is one of the key factors that plays a substantial factor in ensuring a high level of job performance among the employees.The findings show that transformational leadership in this organization is relatively high.However, there are several recommendations for the organization so that they can maintain this high level and practice transformational leadership more robustly in the future.Surprisingly, some of the respondents disagree that their leader does not make them feel and act like a leader.This situation shows that the leaders are prone to be micromanaging their subordinates which inhibits employee personal accountability.For this reason, the leaders in this organization should be more flexible in authorizing their subordinates to lead some of the activities such as administering formal events in the organization so that they can practice their leadership skills.In addition, the top management should act proactively in enhancing employee job performance which can be done by improving employee contextual performance.A team-building program seems to be the most appropriate intervention for the organization to improve contextual performance among the employees.It shows that there are employees who lack innovation encounter new problems, were not interested in accepting new challenges in the workplace and remained inactive in participating in meetings or consultations.The top management may aspire their employee to improve this weakness however it is challenging for the employee to enhance this deficiency by themselves.Nevertheless, by working as a group employees may brainstorm ideas in tackling tasks innovatively and have a support group to be more participative in the organizational activity.Therefore, a team-building program may induce collaboration among the employee that acts as social support for the employee so that they may achieve the objective as a group that increases contextual performance compared to taking action individually.Nevertheless, the study only managed to unearth responses from the employee's point of view.Ensuring organizational success requires cooperation from both sides leaders and subordinates.Moreover, leaders have the capabilities to oversee strategies and suitable incentives to enhance employee performance.As a result, it was advised that future research may focus not just on employees but on the management team as well.Therefore, it will give extensive feedback and will undoubtedly provide more valuable findings because it incorporates feedback from both sides.A qualitative technique is also proposed for future study since it might produce a more authentic result in comparison to quantitative research.Regarding quantitative research, the questionnaire was distributed to assemble data.However, data will be gathered by the researcher in the qualitative approach.The researcher will engage the respondent through interviewing sessions for data collection.It will address greater findings in contrast to quantitative research.However, it will take significantly more time than using a questionnaire, which is more cost-effective and suitable for collecting data from a big number of responders.The questionnaire will give further objectivity to the information and the result may be rapidly converted into meaningful information by using the software.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. A Theory of Individual Differences in Task and Contextual Performance (Source: Motowidlo, Borman, and Schmit, 1997) Koopmans, Bernaards, Hilderbrandt, Buuren, van de Beek, and de Vet (2013) notice numerous developments of scale to evaluate employee performance however incomprehensive and contained overlapping items between dimensions.This limitation leads to the development of the Individual Work Performance Questionnaire byKoopman (2015)  which contained three main dimensions of evaluating job performance that is task performance, contextual performance, and counterproductive work behaviors.Aguinis (2013) justify that measuring task performance assesses behavior that is commonly constituted in the employee job description.Job performance should be evaluated in terms of specialized knowledge about the task and volume and excellence of employee output(Salgado & Cabal, 2011).Furthermore, more extensive examples are provided by Koopman, Bernaards, Hildebrandt, Schaufeli, de Vet Henrica, and van der Beek (2011) such as accomplishing given tasks, constantly renewing knowledge, performing tasks meticulously, and ability to solve the problem independently.According to Daryoush, Silong, Omar, and Othman (2013) contextual performance is related to employee pursuit in providing organizational success although it is not related to their job description.On the other hand, Singh and Arumugam (2020) segregate task performance and contextual performance as it is more common in many occupations, unrestricted and voluntarily.While task performance depends on employee abilities and skills but contextual performance is subject to employee personal character(Borman & Motowildo, 1997).Although both task performance and contextual performance have distinctive definitions nevertheless this dimension brings immediate factors for employee accomplishment(Rosales,  Diaz-Cabrera & Hernandez-Fernaud, 2021).According to Ali Nemr and Liu (2021), counterproductive work behavior refers to a detrimental issue that affects organizational performance.Ones (2013) found that counterproductive work behavior is an employee's willingness in doing what is damaging to other members and the organization as a whole.Whilst a specific definition regarding this dimension can be defined as voluntary contradictory employee actions that are detrimental to organization performance Consideration, TLII=Idealized Influence, TLIS=Intellectual Stimulation, CP=contextual performance, TP=Task performance, CWB=Counterproductive Behaviour Figure 3. Analysis of the model to measure the relationship between Transformational Leadership and Job Performance

Table 2
Level of Job PerformanceBased on Table2, it is identified that task performance dimension is at moderate level