Unit 5: School Leadership, School-Based Management,

School Culture Policies and Functions

Introduction:
Expected of professional teachers who
care for and embark on continuing professional
development is a promotion along the way.
With this in mind, this course won’t be complete
without a discussion of an effective leader and
manager for which you will be in the future. But
should you refuse offer for a managerial or
leadership position in school or in the bigger
educational organization because of the love for
teaching and learners, this lesson on organizational leadership won’t be laid to waste
because even as teacher you are ready a leader and a manager. You are a teacher
and a class or classroom manager.

Lesson 1: Organizational Leadership

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this lesson, the students must have:

 explained what organizational leadership is;

 distinguished between leadership and management;
 described different organizational leadership styles;
 explained what situational leadership, servant leadership are; and
 discussed how to sustain change in an organization.

Activity – Let’s Draw

 Present or draw an object that symbolizes a leader of an organization. Explain

your symbol of leadership.

Analysis – Let’s Analyze

Based on the symbols and drawings presented:

1. Who is an organizational leader?

2. What do organizational leaders do?
3. What qualities do they possess?

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 ABSTRACTION: Let’s Conceptualize

Organizational Leadership

In organizational leadership, leaders help set strategic goals for the

organization while motivating individuals within the organization to successfully carry
out assignments in order to realize those goals. In the school setting, the school
leader helps set the goals/targets for the school and motivates teachers, parents,
learners, non-teaching personnel and other members of the community to do their
task to realize the school goals.

Organizational leadership works towards what is best for individual

members and what is best for the organization as a group at the same time.
Organizational leadership does not sacrifice the individual members for the sake of
individual members. Both individual and group are necessary.

Organizational leadership is also an attitude and a work ethic that empowers

an individual in any role to lead from the top, middle, or bottom of an organization.
Applied to the school setting, the school leader helps anyone from the organization
not necessarily from the top to lead others. An example of this leadership which does
not necessarily come from the top of the organization is teacher leadership.

Leadership Versus Management

Are leadership and management synonymous? Is a leader a manager or is a

manager a leader? If I am a good leader, does it follow that I am also a good
manager? Or if I am a good manager, am I at the same time a good leader? Not
Necessarily.

School Head Must be Both a Leader and a Manager

A school head must be both a leader and a manager.

Study the figure below.

A school head leads the school and

community to formulate the vision, mission,
goals, and school improvement plan. This is
a leadership function. She sees to it that this
plan gets well implemented on time and so
ensures that the resources needed are
there, the persons to do the job are
qualified and available. This is a management function. Imagine if the school head is
only a leader. You have the vision, mission, goals and school plant but no
implementation. The plan is good only in paper. If you do the task of a manager
only, you will be focusing on the details of the day-to-day implementation without
the big picture, the vision and mission. So it big picture for connect and meaning.
This means that it is best that a school leader is both a leader and a manager.

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Table 3. Comparison of Manager and Leader

MANAGERS
versus
LEADERS
Managers Leaders

Administer Innovate
Their process is transactional; meet Their process is transformational:
objectives and delegate tasks. develop a vision and find a way forward.
Work Focused People Focused
The goal is to get things done. They are The goals include both people and
skilled at allocating work. results. They care about you and want
you to succeed.
Have Subordinates Have Followers
They create circles of power and lead They create circles of influence and lead
by authority by inspiring.
Do Things Right Do the Right Thing
Managers enact the existing culture and Leaders shape the culture and rive
maintain status quo. integrity.
Source: Dubrin, Andrew E. (2006) Essentials of management, 7 th ed., Mason, OH 45040 USA.

Types of Skills Demanded of Leaders

Leaders use 3 broad type of skills. 1.) technical, 2.) human and 3.)
conceptual. Technical skills refers to any type of process or technique like sending
e-mail, preparing a power point presentation. Human skill is the ability to work
effectively with people and to build teamwork. This is also referred to as people skills
or soft skills. Conceptual skill is the ability to think in terms of models,
frameworks and broad relationships such as long range plans. In short, conceptual
skills deal with ideas while human skill concerns relationship with people and
technical skills involves psychomotor skills and things. The ideal school leader
possesses all three.

Leadership Styles

Here are leadership styles:

Autocratic Consultative Democratic Laissez Faire

Autocratic leaders do decision making by themselves. Consultative

leaders allow participation of the members of the organization by consulting them
but make decision themselves. That is what happens in consultation meetings called
by schools when they increase tuition fees. Sometimes education stakeholders get

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disappointed that their suggestions are not carried after school leaders have
consulted them. They do not understand that consultation does not necessarily mean
approval of stakeholders’ suggestions.

Democratic leaders allow the members of the organization to fully

participate in decision making. Decisions are arrived at by way of consensus. This is
genuine participation of the members of the organization which is in keeping with
school empowerment.

In laissez faire or free-rein leadership style, leaders avoid responsibility and

leave the members of the organization to establish their own work. This leadership
style leads to the kanya-kanya mentality, one weaknesses of the Filipino character.
There will be no problem if the situations is deal, i.e. each member of the
organization has reached a level of maturity and so if members are left to
themselves they will do only what is good for the organization. On the other hand, it
will be chaos if each member will do as he/she please even if it is against the
common good.

Which leadership styles are participative? The consultative and democratic

leadership style is the only ones that allow for participation of the members of the
organization. Between the consultative and democratic styles of leadership, the
democratic style in genuinely participative because it abides by the rule of the
majority.

The Situational Leadership Model

In situational leadership, effective

leaders adapt their leadership style to the
situation of the members of the
organization, i.e. to the readiness and
willingness of group members. Paul Hersey
and Kenneth H. Blanchard (1996)
characterized leadership style in terms of
the amount of task behavior and
relationship behavior that the leader
provides to their followers. They categorized
all leadership styles into four behavior
styles, which they named S1 to S4.
Table 4. Behavior Styles in Situational Leadership

S1 S2 S3 S4
Selling/Directing Telling/Coaching Participating/ Delegating
Supporting
Individuals lack the Individuals are more Individuals are Individuals are
specific skills required able to do the task; experienced and able to experienced at the
for the job in hand however, they are do the task but lack the task, and
and they are willing to demotivated for this confidence of the comfortable with
work at the task. They job or task. Unwilling willingness to take on their own ability to
are novice but to do the task. responsibility. do it well. They are
enthusiastic. able and willing to
not only do the task,
but to take
responsibility for the
task.

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 If the group member is able, willing and confident (high readiness), the
leader uses a delegating leadership style.. The leader turns over the responsibility
for decisions and implementation to the members. On the other hand, if the group
members have low readiness, i.e. unable and unwilling, the leader resort to telling
the group members what to do.

In short, competent members of the organization require less specific

direction than less competent members. Less competent people need more specific
direction then more competent people.

For a graphic presentation of the Situational Leadership Model, visit:

https//:teachthem.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/situational-leadership-model.jpg.

Among these leadership styles, no one style is considered best for all leaders
to use all the time. Effective leaders need to be flexible, and must adapt themselves
according to the situation, the readiness and willingness of the members of the
organization.

Servant Leadership

Robert K. Greenleaf (1977) coined the

paradoxical term servant-leadership.
How can one be a leader when he/she
is a servant? That’s the common
thinking. But the paradox is Greenleaf’s
deliberate and meaningful way of
emphasizing the qualities of a servant
leader. He describes the servant

…servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve.
Then conscious choice brings one to
aspire to lead. The best test is: do those served grow as persons: do they, while
being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely
themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in
society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived? (Greenleaf,
1977/20002, p.27)

The first desire of the servant leader is to serve. How? By leading. The
greatest teacher of humankind, Jesus Christ, was a servant – leader. He taught his
disciples: he who wants to great must be the servant of all”. The life of the Greatest
Teacher was a life of total service to all.

We often hear the term “public servants” to refer to appointed and elected
officials of the government to emphasize the fact that they indeed are servants of
the people. Their first duty is to serve and in serving, they lead. They don’t think of
their power as leaders first. If they do, they tend to become more conscious of their
importance felt over their conscious power over their constituents and forget that if
ever they are given power it is to serve their people. Someone said “power corrupts”.
And I need it does, when leaders think first of their power and forget the very reason
why such power was given, i.e. to serve. The greatest teacher said:

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 “…and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave.” (Matthew
20:27)

“The greatest among you shall be your servant.” (Matthew 23:11)

“If anyone wants to be first, he must be the last of all and the servant of all”
(Mark 9:35)

“You know how the pagan rulers make their powers felt. But it shall not be
this way among you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be
your servant.” (Mark 10:43)

His whole life was a life of service. In fact, he wanted to impress this idea of
servant leadership by doing something dramatic in his last days on earth. He washed
the feet of his apostles. Washing the feet was the work of a servant in his time.

He wanted to etch in the memories of his apostles the idea that leaders are
supposed to be “foot washers”. Leaders are supposed to be servants of all.

Servant leadership seeks to involve others in decision making, is strongly

based in ethical and caring behavior, and enhances the growth of workers while
improving the caring and quality of organizational life.

The school head who acts as a servant leader forever remembers that he/she
is there to serve his/her teachers, the students, the parents etc. and NOT the
teachers, learners, parents to serve him/her.

Transformational Leadership

Robert Kennedy once said: “Some

men see things as they are, and ask why. I
dream of things that never were, and ask
why not.” Those who dream of things that
never were and ask “why not” are not
transformational leaders. The
transformational leader is not content with
status qou and sees the need to transform
the way the organization thinks, relates and does things. The transformational school
leaders sees school culture as it could be and should be, not as it is and so plays
his/her role as visionary, engager, learner, collaborator, and instructional leader. As a
transformational leader he/she makes positive changes in the organization by
collaboratively developing new vision for the organization and mobilizing members to
work towards that vision.

To do this, the transformational leader combines charisma, inspirational

leadership and intellectual stimulation to introduce innovation for the transformation
of the organization.

Sustaining Change

For reforms to transform, the innovations introduced by the transformational

leader must be institutional and sustained. Or else that innovation is simply a passing
fad that loses its flavor after a time. A proof that an innovation introduced has

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transformed the organization is that the result or effect of that change persists or
ripples even when the transformative leader is gone or is transferred to another
school or gets promoted in the organization.

We feel most comfortable with our old pair or shoes. We like to live in our
comfort zones and so sometimes we don’t welcome change. And yet if we want
improvement in the way we do things in our organization, in our school of if we want
to improve in life we must be willing to change. The transformational leader ought to
deal with resistance to change to succeed. There will always be resisters to change.
To ensure that the innovation he/she introduces leads to the transformation of the
organization, Morato of Bayan ABS-CBN, (2011) gives the following advice:

1. Seek the support of the stakeholders – The leaders must build a “strong
coalition of allies in order to push for any meaningful change that would
yield results. Innovations cannot be forced upon the teachers, the
students, the parents, the community…without serious consequences.”
2. Get people involved early and often – Resistance drops off in proportion
to the involvement of participants. You may not to expect 100-percent
support from any individual who was not personally involved in a change
that affected his/her work. It is best to set up networks to reach out to as
many people as possible.
3. Plan a communications campaign to “sell” the innovation –Morata (2011)
asserts. “The change envisioned must cascade downwards to the last
lesson plan and ripple sideward to win the support of major
stakeholders”.
4. Ensure that the innovation is understood by all – The benefits and costs
must be appreciated and weighed carefully.
5. Consider timing and phasing – These are highly critical; missteps might
backfire and lack of sensitivity to stakeholders might lead to resistance.

Application: Let’s Apply

Direction: Answer this in your activity/reflection notebook.

1. Based on this lesson and by means of an acrostic, give qualities or specific

behaviors of good leaders. See example.
L-
E-
A-
D-
E-
R-
S-Servant. He is servant first before a leader

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 2. Two of your teachers are doing very well. Four strongly resist Continuing
Professional Development. Two are about to retire and are simply waiting to
retire. To make your school perform, as a school head, what moves will you
take? Explain.

Assessment – Let’s Check for Understanding

Direction: Do this task in your activity/reflection notebook. Write T if the statement

is true and F if it is false, underline the word or words that make the sentence false
and supply the correct word/s to make the statement true.

_________1. Leadership is interchangeable with management because they mean

the same.

_________2. A leader cannot be a manager and manager cannot be a leader at the

same time.

_________3. In the laissez faire leadership style, the leader fully interferes in the
decision-making of his/her followers.

_________4. In the consultative style of leadership, members of the organization

arrive at a decision by way of consensus.

_________5. In the democratic style of leadership, the members of the organization

are consulted in decision making.

_________6. The autocratic leader consults his/her followers.

_________7. A transformational leader is content with status quo.

_________8. In situational leadership, if followers are “unwilling and unable” to do

the job, leader must resort to delegating.

_________9. In situational leadership, if followers are “willing and able” to do the

job, leader must resort to telling.

_________10. Transformational leadership is focused on innovations.

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