Leadership Style Proposal

Views of school leadership are changing largely because of current restructuring initiatives and the demands of the present time. Advocates for school reform also usually advocate altering power relationships.

Leadership is a process in which a leader attempts to influence his or her followers to establish and accomplish a goal or goals. In order to accomplish the goal, the leader exercises his or her power to influence people. That power is exercised in earlier stages by motivating followers to get the job done and in later stages by rewarding or punishing those who do or do not perform to the level of expectation.

Leadership is a continuous process, with the accomplishment of one goal becoming the beginning of a new goal. The proper reward by the leader is of utmost importance in order to continually motivate followers in the process.

What does leadership do for an organization? If leadership is defined as a process involving interactions between a leader and followers usually subordinate employees of a company, leadership profoundly affects the organization. It defines or approves the mission or goal of the organization. This goal setting is a dynamic process for which the leader is ultimately responsible. A strong visionary leader presents and convinces followers that a new course of action is needed for the survival and prosperity of the group in the future. Once a goal is set, the leader assumes the role of ensuring successful accomplishment of the goal. Another vital role of leadership is to represent the group/organization and link it to the external world in order to obtain vital resources to carry out its mission. When necessary, leadership has to defend the organization's integrity.

Being a leader in a hypothetical academic institution the main question that I would ask so as to determine the leadership style most effective for it will be, “What does it take to make leadership successful or effective?”

Caution should be exercised when considering what style of leadership is best. Research suggests that no single leadership style can be generalized as being most effective. Organizational situations are so complex that one particular leadership style may be successful in one situation but totally ineffective in another. However, if I were to choose I would go for transformational leadership.

Transformational leadership inspires organizational success by dramatically affecting workers' attitudes about what an organization should be as well as their basic values, such as trust, fairness, and reliability. Transformational leadership, which is similar to charismatic or inspirational leadership, creates in workers a sense of ownership of the organization, encourages new ways of solving problems, and promotes lifelong learning for all members of the organization.

Regardless of culture and time, however, a great leader is remembered for his or her charisma, which means "divinely inspired gift" in Greek. Charismatic leaders have profound effects on followers. Through their exceptional inspirational and verbal ability, they articulate ideological goals and missions, communicate to followers with passion and inspiration, set an example in their own behaviors, and demand hard work and commitment from followers, above and beyond normal expectation.

A transformational leader places a higher level of trust in his or her followers and demands a much higher level of loyalty and performance beyond normal expectations. With unusual charismatic qualities and inspirational person-to-person interactions, a transformational leader transforms and motivates followers to make extra efforts to turn around ailing organizational situations into success stories.
Here are some distinctions of transformational leadership as compared to other leadership styles:

• Instructional leadership

Instructional leadership encompasses hierarchies and top-down leadership, where the leader is supposed to know the best form of instruction and closely monitors teachers' and students' work. One of the problems with this is that great administrators aren't always great classroom leaders and vice versa. Another difficulty is that this form of leadership concentrates on the growth of students but rarely looks at the growth of teachers. Since she believes that education now calls on administrators to be "the servants of collective vision," as well as "editors, cheerleaders, problem solvers, and resource finders," instructional leadership, she declares, has outlived its usefulness.

• Transactional leadership

Transactional leadership is sometimes called bartering. It is based on an exchange of services (from a teacher, for instance) for various kinds of rewards (such as a salary) that the leader controls, at least in part. Transactional leadership is often viewed as being complementary with transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is considered as a first stage and central to getting day-to-day routines carried out. However, it doesn't stimulate improvement. Transactional leadership works only when both leaders and followers understand and are in agreement about which tasks are important.

I choose transformational leadership as the style I wish to use in my hypothetical school because of the following goals in mind:

1.To help staff develop and maintain a collaborative, professional school culture

This means staff members often talk, observe, critique, and plan together. Norms of collective responsibility and continuous improvement encourage them to teach each other how to teach better. Transformational leaders involve staff in collaborative goal setting, reduce teacher isolation, use bureaucratic mechanisms to support cultural changes, share leadership with others by delegating power, and actively communicate the school's norms and beliefs. Recognizing the great intellectual potentials a science high school would have, it is very healthy that these people will be asked from time to time of their thoughts and insights and even expertise.

2.To foster teacher development

A teachers' motivation for development is enhanced when they internalize goals for professional growth. This process is facilitated when they are strongly committed to a school mission. When leaders give staff a role in solving non-routine school improvement problems, they should make sure goals are explicit and ambitious but not unrealistic.

3. To help teachers solve problems more effectively

Transformational leadership is valued because it stimulates teachers to engage in new activities and put forth that "extra effort". Transformational leaders use practices primarily to help staff members work smarter, not harder. These leaders shared a genuine belief that their staff members as a group could develop better solutions than the principal could alone.

In applying the transformational leadership style, the following strategies will be implemented:

•Visit each classroom every day; assist in classrooms; encourage teachers to visit one another's classes.

•Involve the whole staff in deliberating on school goals, beliefs, and visions at the beginning of the year.

•Help teachers work smarter by actively seeking different interpretations and checking out assumptions; place individual problems in the larger perspective of the whole school; avoid commitment to preconceived solutions; clarify and summarize at key points during meetings; and keep the group on task but do not impose your own perspective.

•Use action research teams or school improvement teams as a way of sharing power. Give everyone responsibilities and involve staff in governance functions. For those not participating, ask them to be in charge of a committee.

•Find the good things that are happening and publicly recognize the work of staff and students who have contributed to school improvement. Write private notes to teachers expressing appreciation for special efforts.

•Survey the staff often about their wants and needs. Be receptive to teachers' attitudes and philosophies. Use active listening and show people you truly care about them.

•Let teachers experiment with new ideas. Share and discuss research with them. Propose questions for people to think about.

•Bring workshops to your school where it's comfortable for staff to participate. Get teachers to share their talents with one another. Give a workshop yourself and share information with staff on conferences that you attend.

•When hiring new staff, let them know you want them actively involved in school decision-making; hire teachers with a commitment to collaboration. Give teachers the option to transfer if they can't wholly commit themselves to the school's purposes.

•Have high expectations for teachers and students, but don't expect 100 percent if you aren't also willing to give the same. Tell teachers you want them to be the best teachers they possibly can be.

•Use bureaucratic mechanisms to support teachers, such as finding money for a project or providing time for collaborative planning during the workday. Protect teachers from the problems of limited time, excessive paperwork, and demands from other agencies.

•Let teachers know they are responsible for all students, not just their own classes.
It is hoped that the effects of transformational leadership is "uniformly positive."

The leadership theory behind such leadership style is majority from the contingency theory. Contingency theory is a possible means of leading a school because this theory suggests that how a manager operates and makes decisions depends upon, or is contingent upon, a set of circumstances. It is centered on situational analysis. Using contingency theory, managers read situations with an "if-then" mentality: If this situational attribute is present, then there is an appropriate response that a manager should make. This theory takes into consideration human resources and their interaction with business operations. Managers may take different courses of action to get the same result based on differences in situational characteristics. This is very applicable if the organization that I will be handling will just be a small group as lesser intricacies can be generated. Moreover, the method of making them understand the basis for every decision made can be made on the personal level.

In general, contingency theory suggests that an educational leader needs to outline the conditions or situations in which various management methods have the best chance of success. Some of the challenges to successfully using contingency theory are the need to accurately analyze an actual situation, then to choose the appropriate strategies and tactics, and finally to implement these strategies and tactics.

Educational leaders encounter a variety of leadership situations during the course of their daily activities, each of which may require them to use leadership styles that vary considerably, depending on the situation. In using the contingency model, factors of major concern are leader-member relations, task structure, and the position power of the leader. The leader has to analyze these factors to determine the most appropriate style of response for meeting overall work-unit and organizational goals.

Leader-member relations refer to the ongoing degree to which subordinates accept an individual leader or group of leaders. Task structure refers to the degree to which tasks are clearly or poorly defined. Position power is the extent to which a leader or group of leaders has control over the work process, rewards, and punishment. Taking these factors into consideration, leaders can adjust their style to best match the context of their decision making and leadership. For those leaders who have a breadth of leadership styles, knowing when to change styles gives them the tools to successfully deal with the varying nature of business decision making. For those leaders who have a limited repertoire of leadership styles, they and their superiors can use this information to better match work situations with the styles that a specific leader possesses.