Barely five months before the presidential elections, Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno on Friday warned against “transactional” leaders, who buy off voters and treat leadership more like a business, and instead urged the electorate to go for “transformational” leadership.

Speaking at a symposium, Chief Justice Puno described transactional leaders as those who put self-interest ahead of public interest.

“Transactional leaders approach followers on a quid pro quo basis (something for something), with an eye to exchanging one thing for another, such as jobs for votes or subsidies for campaign contributions,” Puno told the crowd, which include Australian Ambassador Rod Smith.

The symposium, sponsored by the Philippine-Australian Alumni Association Inc., was held at the SC Training Center in Ermita, Manila.

The Chief Justice said leadership to transactional leaders “is more of a transaction, more of business where you get your goal through the bargaining of interests.”

“The transactional leadership is based on a give-and-take relationship, with the leader giving orders and getting them done by promising rewards and by keeping tab on errors of followers in order to take corrective action as needed,” Puno said.

He also said that “a transactional leader is obsessed with the completion of an objective with little regard to its moral and ethical hazards on his followers,” he said.

Puno said Filipinos should instead vote for “transformational” leaders who are willing and able to lift the country out of poverty and other social ills.

He said transformational leadership is the kind of leadership that creates positive change in the followers.

“A transformational leader focuses in ‘transforming’ self to become selfless, to look out for each other, to promote unity, and to give more importance to the interest of the whole more than its parts,” Puno said.

He said that as individuals, transformational leaders “stimulate people to action, to inspire them, to be engaged and engaged in regardless of their comfort, even as they inculcate in them a genuine sense of humanitarianism and compassion for their community.”

“These leaders spur a beneficial kind of change in individuals, in institutions, in countries, a change from good to bad, from good to better, and from better to best,” he pointed out.