Know your leadership style
Leadership plays a very important role in the management of an organization like the school (Leveriza, 1983). An organization cannot function effectively without a leader to direct its goals. One can enhance this effectiveness by adhering to those techniques and styles identified with effective leadership.
Aldaba (1987) emphasized the success or failure of an institution largely depends on the kind of administrator appointed to lead the institution. For Keith (1991) to make leadership more responsive and relevant to change taking place in the country, school administrators must have to examine critically the style of managing that they use in handling specific situations of the administrative responsibilities in a manner that would meet the situational demands.
No simple leadership is ideal as one can adopt a different style for different situations and occasions.
Here are some of the many leadership strategies that define every leader's personal leadership style and one may adopt some of these in achieving his organization's goals and objectives.
-
Transformational leadership creates and sustains a context that maximizes human and organizational capabilities to facilitate multiple levels of transformation and align them with core values and a unified purpose to respond to a dynamic environment.
-
Creative leadership is the ability to uniquely inspire people to generate shared innovative responses and solutions to complex and readily changing situations.
-
Corrective leadership empowers staff to facilitate collaborative and synergism and emphasizes working with and through other people instead of bowing to authoritarianism appreciative inquiry facilitates positive change in human systems, e.g. organizations, group through an appreciative approach in inspiring action for collaborative and strength-based change.
-
Change leadership is a philosophy that endorses alteration while beyond thinking about individuals and individual organization, single problems and single solutions. It entails rethinking systems to introduce change on parts of the whole and their relationship to one another.
-
Intelligence leadership focuses on the ability to navigate the future by embracing ambiguity and reframing problems as opportunities. It is a proactive stance in taking their organizations into uncharted territory.
-
Multicultural leadership fosters team and individual effectiveness and drives for innovation by leveraging multicultural differences so that teams work harder in an atmosphere of understanding and mutual respect.
-
Pedagogical leadership involves a paradigm shift from leader/teacher centered "orientation" to an interactive, connective organizational system using a democratic learning and communicative style. It proposes an alternative to instructional leadership by enabling the learning and intellectual growth of those led.
-
Servant leadership is a practical philosophy focusing on people who choose to serve first and then lead as a way of expanding service. Servant leaders are "servants first" with the object of making sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served.
-
Bridging leadership concentrates on fostering synergy and reinforcing behavior and motivation through the use of communication to create climate of trust and confidence. Through the projection of confidence on the face of a difficult challenge.
-
Purposeful leadership is established when a leader and the community share a common purpose to develop or provide the drive, authority and commitment to undertake projects.
From these given leadership strategies, one could choose and apply to make a difference in improving quality and change in various organization he serves.
(The author is Principal II of Leganes Elem. School, Leganes, Iloilo)