Transformational leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality. Leadership is Pulitzer Prize-winner James M. Burns's pioneering study of leadership, first published in 1978 and still considered the seminal work in the field of leadership studies. In it Burns introduced the influential theory of "transformational leadership," which states that the best leaders are those who inspire others to come together toward the achievement of higher aims, a theory that has been the basis of more than 400 doctoral dissertations