In the past, the emphasis was more on the leader as “boss.” Today, leaders must be partners with their people; they can no longer lead with positional power alone. The objective of the study was to assess the practices of transformational leadership in Ethiopian private Higher Education Institutions. Descriptive survey was used as research design. A total of 281 respondents were considered by using stratified sampling techniques for this study. To collect relevant and reliable data from the selected sample respondents, both open and closed ended questionnaires were prepared and administered. Descriptive statistics specifically mean and standard deviation was for the purpose of data analysis. The finding of the study shows that most of the leaders at private higher education Institutions were not influential leaders as they are not trusted by staffs, unable to show high ethical standard and they were not strong role model as indicated by lowest mean value of (1.71). Moreover, of private higher education institutions lacks qualities like articulating clear vision, motivating team spirit and making effective communications as indicated by lowest mean value of (1.94).The individual consideration part of transformational leadership style (listening carefully to others and not being intolerant of opposing viewpoints) was also low with the lowest a mean score of (1.54) implying that the leaders’ engagements in this leadership practice were relatively low and they were not good at using potentials everywhere in their organization . The result also shows that those leaders in the private higher institutions in the study had not able to provide tasks that are stretching and achievable but focus on routines as they fear risk to try new things

Transformational leadership, leadership, organization