Leadership in Today's Schools

by
Michael D. King

Developing Leadership is designed to defined the roles of leadership and how these
roles affect organizational decision making. The primary focus will be to develop
definitions around the essential elements of leadership within the dynamics of the
school setting and how leadership becomes a pivotal force in effecting the learning
outcome of the school. Leadership role of the school principal is about many things.
At the top of the realm is how the school principal can portray him or herself in a
leadership role that permeates a positive culture where individuals can be
productive and function in a climate that is supportive. The leadership role of the
principal in today’s schools is unlike the authoritative legal roles of the past. This
new role of authority exist on the principals ability to influence the behaviors of
individuals to authorize actions of continuous school renewal from the ideas of what
people believe is the purpose of educating students. The new leadership role that
must be accomplished by the school principal is to focus on the culture of the school
to achieve school improvement. In this article I will explore the essential elements
of leadership and demonstrate how these elements can be adapted to influence the
school improvement process.

Leadership Strategy I: Empowerment

The process of “Empowerment,” or articulating a vision for the future, is the first
step in offsetting the lack of direction. It should be noted that Empowerment or
vision statement development is not a stand-alone entity created by one for all
others to follow. True empowerment is a shared commodity that belongs to all
stakeholders. It is important to note here that a vision, once shared, can lead to
common aspiration and a sense of connectedness among stakeholders.

A shared vision leads to common commitment. A shared vision is not an idea;

rather, it is a force of impressive power. It may be inspired by an idea, but once it
goes further—if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one
person—then it is no longer an abstraction. Few forces in human affairs are as
empowering as a shared vision.

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At its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question, “What do we
want to create?” Just as personal visions are pictures or images people carry in their
heads and hearts, so too are shared visions pictures that people throughout the
school carry because they reflect their own personal vision.
Therefore, shared visions create a sense of community that permeates the school
and gives purpose and meaning to diverse activities. Shared vision is vital for the
learning school because it provides the focus and energy for learning.

Strategy I of the Leadership model therefore means that a learning school cannot
exist without a shared vision. Without a focus and commitment to some vision or
goal that the stakeholders truly want to achieve, the forces supporting the status
quo can overwhelm the forces supporting meaningful change. With shared vision,
the stakeholders are more likely to expose their accustomed ways of thinking and
redefine them in more cooperative and constructive terms, thereby recognizing
personal and organizational shortcomings. Thus, developing a collective vision for
the future of the learning school is the first strategy to a systematic design for
successful implementation. In the next section, the reader will learn how to apply
Strategy I, Empowerment, as a tool for bringing individuals with various personal
competencies to share a clear focus and understanding of a school’s goals,
objectives, and long-range aspirations.

Leadership Strategy II: Assessing Positioning through Ownership

Successful school empowerment cannot occur in a learning school without first
assessing whether the position of the vision is acceptable. Assessing positioning is
the process of systematically evaluating the quality of the vision statement in order
to determine how the goals of the program will be developed to support issues of
school reform. Assessment of one’s position on the new vision is a process that
requires collaboration and the development of trust. Trust is the lubrication that
makes it possible for schools to work. Trust implies accountability, predictability, and
reliability. It is what keeps schools humming—the glue that maintains educational
integrity. In traditional settings of school reform, educational leaders do not take
time to assess their position on reform issues even when these issues are mandated
through state or federal laws. The typical response from educational leaders when
asked why they must make these changes is, “It is out of our control” or “This is
what the law requires of us.”

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A second type of response to the question of why we have to change is to use new
mandates as an excuse for developing policies that fit self-centered ideas on school
reform. In each case, the educational leaders did not assess their position about
why the school should change. This traditional approach to positioning limits the
ability of others to participate and sets up boundaries that restrict the development
of a learning school. The restrictive leadership approach leaves the stakeholders
with the feeling that they should stay away from making decisions on their own, and
it probably also inhibits them from acting on their own. Using the traditional
approach, assessing a position would be that the leaders decide what needs to be
done to improve the school and expect the stakeholders to be loyal to their
requests.

Unfortunately, the results of this position are low trust, negative feelings and
comments about school reform, and lack of commitment to school improvement.
This example reiterates two very important reasons for stressing trust through
positioning. The first has to do with educational integrity. A learning school can be
compared to healthy individuals; in fact, it is analogous to a healthy identity. A
school possesses a healthy structure when it has a clear sense of what it is and
what it is to do. Therefore, educational integrity involves choosing a direction and
staying with it. However, in order for a school to have integrity, it must have an
identity, that is, a sense of what it is and what it is to do. The second reason behind
the significance of positioning has to do with staying the course, that is, constancy.
Effective leadership takes risks; it innovates, challenges, and changes the school’s
culture. Innovation—any new idea—will most likely not be accepted at first, no
matter how wonderful the idea may be. If everyone embraced the innovation, it
might not be a true innovation. Innovation causes resistance to stiffen, defense to
set in, opposition to form. It takes repeated attempts and endless demonstrations
before innovation can be accepted and internalized by any school.

Assessing one’s positioning through ownership is a process in the leadership model

that allows for valuable input from all the stakeholders. Assessing the positioning of
the school’s vision can provide insightful direction toward the establishment of
future goals, can enhance the development of ownership, and can greatly improve
the overall effectiveness of the schools program. In this component of the model,
practitioners will be taken through a process for developing an assessment plan
through assessment climate profiling. The assessment position through ownership

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involves two basic acts: gathering information so that decisions will be informed and
supportable, and applying criteria to the available information in order to arrive at
justifiable decisions. The assessment process should be implemented systematically
and openly so that others can follow along and so that everyone can learn from the
process. Information gained from the process will be transferred to the school’s
strengths and weaknesses chart for final analysis and revisions. Once this has been
accomplished, the principal will be ready to develop strategies for designing a
learning school.

• Trust is the mechanism that makes it possible for learning schools to work.
• Trust implies accountability, predictability, and reliability.
• Relentless dedication engages trust.
• All innovators face the challenge of overcoming resistance to change.
• Resistance to change involves the achievement of voluntary commitment to
shared values and beliefs.
• True leaders must assess the needs of their audience.
• The assessing function requires sensitivity to the needs of many of the
stakeholders and a clear sense of the audience’s position.
• The leader is responsible for the set of ethics or norms that govern the
behavior of the people in the school setting.

Leadership Strategy III: Meaning through Communication

In many school organizations, intoxicating rhetoric about visions and noble
intentions usually abound, but without a strategy for communicating those ideas,
nothing will be realized. Achieving success will require more than rhetoric; it will
require the capacity to communicate a compelling image of a desired state of
affairs, the kind of image that induces enthusiasm and commitment in others.

How do learning schools communicate their vision and future goals? How do they
then get their stakeholders aligned behind those goals? Both of these questions
have the same answer: through the management of meaning, that is, the mastery
of communication.
True organizational communicators must be able to “concretize” their ideas. They
must articulate and define what was previously unsaid. They invent images,
metaphors, blueprints, and models that bring their subjects to life. In short, they

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organize meaning for the members of their organizations. When Meaning through
Communication is achieved in an organization, everyone is guided by a common
interpretation because, in this context, the word meaning goes far beyond what is
usually meant by communication. It has little to do with facts or knowing how to do
things. Facts and knowing have to do with technique and methodology, which are
useful but limiting.

Concepts like “thinking” are emphatically closer to “meaning” than the concept of
“knowing” is. Thinking prepares one for what is to be done or ought to be done. It
challenges old conventions by suggesting new directions, new visions. The
distinctive role of leadership is, therefore, the quest for “know-why” ahead of
“know-how.” Put another way, leaders must first be problem finders (know-why)
before they can be problem solvers (know-how).

How do leaders know if a discovered problem or a creative idea is valuable?

Reasoning and logic are not always the best way to evaluate creative solutions. So
how are they recognized? Why do people align behind one solution, direction, or
vision and not another? The answers to these questions are a part of the leadership
process for developing the learning organization. Within Strategy III lies a
communication process for the practitioner who seeks to ensure full collaboration of
all stakeholders.

• Communication is the process used to build the actionable consensus that

seems always to be needed if change is to occur.
• True, total agreement is impossible since people inevitably distort all
communication in light of their own feelings, histories, priorities, and
experiences.
• Seeking to achieve total agreement is likely to be counterproductive since it
would take away from that most unique of human traits: the ability to modify an
idea to fit with the circumstances as the individual uniquely perceives them.
• What is likely needed is agreement in broad terms on a change goal or target-
“west” or “east”- and a deliberate attempt to leave all other qualifying details to
be worked out later.
• Moreover, what really is needed to form a consensus is simply the illusion of an
agreement with an actual change target/goal so diffuse as to be acceptable to
all.
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Leadership Strategy IV: Leaders as Facilitators
Public schools have typically not viewed data driven dialogue as essential or
appropriate. Each school, however, does present an image, whether planned or not,
through its most important professional development programs – staff and students.
A good data driven dialogue plan allows individuals to learn and apply their learning
through both relevant and practical activities.

Data Driven Dialogue:

• Increases odds for achievement.
• Facilitates clear communications, good management.
• Organizes thoughts and ideas, eliminating forgetfulness.
• Provides a system for realizing long and short-range goals.
• Creates a true sense of accomplishment.
• Decreases stress caused by the unknown.

Successful data driven facilitators implement a variety of the following planning

strategies. They use both personal and professional knowledge about the school’s
stakeholders such as What are their out-of-school interests? and What are their
personal and professional goals?

1. 1.They involve the learners in planning by asking for their ideas and then
using as many of them as possible.
2. 2.They show respect for individuals who contribute unaccepted advice by
taking time to let them know why their ideas did not become part of the
professional development program.
3. 3.They use evaluation information to reassess needs by constantly
monitoring what the individual has learned, integrated, and acted upon to
determine the next most meaningful step in the learning process.
4. 4.They help the stakeholders tie their individual needs to school and district
goals. For example, an organizational context that supports individual growth
is provided when faculty members collaborate to determine goals and the
professional development activities necessary to meet the goals.
5. 5.For many, the team building involved in creating data driven dialouges will
greatly influence the perceptions and self-images of those involved in the
organization and planning for future learning.
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Since the organizing and planning for learning is the last and most complex phase
of the creation of data driven dialogue, I will attempt to resolve this complexity in
the planning process by providing specific tools that can be used by leaders as
facilitators to focus on the weaknesses of the learning school. After verifying the
existence and nature of the performance gaps, other planning tools represented in
this section of the data driven facilitators model can be used to produce solutions.
Designed to reduce ambiguity by breaking the problem into smaller easier-to-
understand components, the facilitator’s tools can be systematically and
sequentially implemented. The data driven dialogue model will help facilitators to
develop methods for transforming goals into a plan of action and for identifying the
necessary strategies, resources, and timeframes needed for implementation of the
plan.

Finally, the data driven facilitator’s model includes a method for continuous
evaluation of the plan as it is developed and as it unfolds. A continuing evaluation
process is extremely important to an effective data driven dialogue because it
provides an assurance of accountability among the stakeholders, an opportunity for
making adjustments to the original plan if necessary, and a source of information as
to the progress of the plan.