LESSON 8: Organizational Leadership

🧐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, nonteaching 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 the people nor sacrifice the welfare of the group 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 & 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 l at the same time a good leader? Not necessarily. Head Must
be both a Leader and a Manager
A school head must be both a leader and a manager.
A school head leads the school and community to formulate the vision, mission, goals, and school improvement plan. This is a leadership function.
S/he 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
plan 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-of-day
implementation without the big picture, the vision and mission. So, its big picture for connect and meaning. This means that it is best that a school
leader is both a leader and a manager.
Types of Skills Demanded of Leaders
Leaders use 3 broad types of skills: 1) technical, 2) human and 3) conceptual. Technical skills refer 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 ta build teamwork. This is also referred to
aa 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 the decision themselves. This is what happens in consultation meetings called by schools when they increase tuition fees. Sometimes
education stakeholders get 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 situation 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 are the only ones that allow for participation of the
members of the organization. Between the consultative and democratic styles of leadership, the democratic style Je 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 Leadershi
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 than more competent people.
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 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, 1977/2002, 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 of their power over their constituents and tend to impose that power or make their importance felt 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:
“... 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 “footwashers”. 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 are not transformational leaders. The transformational leader is not content with status quo and sees the need to transform
the way the
organization thinks, relates and does things. The transformational school leaders see 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 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 of 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 or 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 sidewards 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.
Morato described the successful innovations in several schools innovations in the Philippines.