Leadership Style

           As a principal, you will take on a certain style of leadership. We will discuss various leadership styles of principals. You may notice some characteristics from various styles when you think about your own style of leadership. Robert Schulze (2014) completed a research study in which he explored the various types of leadership styles.

Laissez-fair Leadership: This type of leader is not active in managing the school. The leader is non-confrontational, which often leads to lack of motivation and effort from faculty and students. Laissez-faire leadership offers little or no feedback, confrontation, or direction for the school or instruction (Webb, 2007).  There is no purposeful leadership given. The school and teachers lead themselves. This type of leader is not able to provide direction for the school or cause any type of significant progress or improvement. 

Transactional Leadership: Think of the word transaction in the banking world. When you deposit or withdraw money, it is considered a transaction. Also, when you go to the store to purchase something, you give the cashier money for whatever you are purchasing. This is also a transaction. This is the same in transactional leadership. The leader rewards or punishes based on the actions of those he/she supervises.   Everything is reactionary. There is no proactive or long-term decisions in place.  The leaders’ actions are only in response to the actions of others. This type of leadership does little to motivate, but does not stimulate any type of improvements (Leithwood, 1992). There are times when those you supervise need to understand consequences and rewards for their actions. However, there should be other components of leadership. Transactional leadership can only be effective when combined with other leadership styles (Pepper, 2010). 

Transformational Leadership: It is necessary that all school leaders possess this type of leadership style. A research study on this type of leadership found that it likely will cause teachers to change their classroom practices and that if that is the leader’s intent, then this is the best style of leadership to employ (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2006). This type of leadership is focused on inspiring others and improving the organization. The approach is people-focused where the principal’s main goal is to improve teacher quality in order to improve student learning. This type of leadership is not all about the leader but it shares the leadership throughout the organization with various leadership sources. It is very different from transactional leadership in that it takes into account sources or actions that may not directly affect the goal. For example, implementing professional learning communities may not directly target student achievement but allowing faculty collaboration can have an overall positive effect on the school environment. The transformational leader allows freedom within the organization as long as all parties are using their strengths to reach the common goal. Examples of principal functions as a transformational leader include: creating a positive school climate by protecting instructional time, promoting professional development, maintaining visibility, and providing incentives for teaching and learning; defining the school mission and communicating clear goals; managing the instructional program by supervising and evaluating instruction; and coordinating curriculum and monitoring student progress. 

Read the following article about transformational leadership.

http://www.advanc-ed.org/source/transformational-leadership-matter-perspective

Instructional Leadership: Instructional leadership requires the principal to have “knowledge of the subject matter itself; knowledge of how students best learn that subject matter; and knowledge of how teachers learn to teach that subject matter. With this understanding, principals are equipped to act as instructional leaders” (Carver, 2012, p. 3).

The principal must be knowledgeable and involved in the instructional program of the school. The leader plays an active role in this process, through constantly performing walkthrough visits, mentoring, offering quality feedback, observing, coaching, planning targeted professional and staff development, modeling. 

Distributed leadership: In this form of leadership, the principal understands the strengths and talents that exists among his or her staff and capitalizes on this. The principal is cognizant and strategic in the placement of teachers and leaders throughout the school. The principal is comfortable in distributing the leadership responsibilities among those that are shown to be competent in those areas. The leader is able to create an environment and school culture where everyone truly feels a part of the team and that their unique abilities are celebrated and valued.

Distributed leadership, then, means multiple sources of guidance and direction, following the contours of expertise in an organization, made coherent through a common culture. It is the “glue” of a common task or goal—improvement of instruction—and a common frame of values for how to approach that task—culture—that keeps distributed leadership from becoming another version of loose coupling. (Elmore, 2000)

(‘Loose coupling’ is Elmore’s term for an old style of school administration, where administrative actions were not directly connected, or ‘coupled,’ to in-­‐class instruction.)

It is imperative that the principal takes some aspects of each of the styles of leadership to be effective.

Below, share which style of leadership you exemplify most. Which style least describes you?

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