Purpose: To compare two transformational leadership instruments, Bass’s Full Range Leadership Model and its instrument Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire with the Transformational Leadership Scale proposed by Rafferty and Griffin (2004), using empirical evidence from a single sample.

Methodology: The sample includes participants from different levels of the Estonian Defence Forces’ military hierarchy (N = 2570). The structures of the Transformational Leadership Scale and Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire were examined with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, while other methods were used to compare the two instruments.

Findings: The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire is statistically significantly better at predicting outcome variables like satisfaction with leader, effectiveness, and extra effort; however, the Transformational Leadership Scale did predict outcome variables at a sufficient level.

Research & Practical Limitations/Implications: The current research contributes to the validation of the Transformational Leadership Scale proposed by Rafferty and Griffin (2004). The results indicated that the Transformational Leadership Scale is a valuable research tool to study transformational leadership; however, some subscales require further development. Moreover, we may conclude that there is a difference between subsamples – e.g. between commanders and conscripts – that describe outcome variables using the Transformational Leadership Scale as a transformational leadership instrument.

Originality/value: There is very limited research that compares different transformational leadership instruments.