Organizational Leadership

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 manager. You are a teacher and a class or
classroom manager.
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 teacher 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 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 ab 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 does not necessarily come from the top of the organization is teacher leadership.

Leaders 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.

A school head leads the school and community to formulate the vision, mission, goals, and
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 this job are qualified and
available. This is a management function. Imagine if the school head is only a leader. You have the
vision, mission, goal and school plan but no implementation without the big meaning. This means that
it is best that a school leader is both a leader and a manager

Managers Vs Leaders

Managers Leaders
 Administer Innovative
Their process is transactional; meet Their process is transformational; develop
objectives and delegate task. a vision and find a way forward.

Work Focused People Focused

The goal is to get things done. The goals include both people and results.
They are skilled at allocating work. They care about you and want you to
succeed.

Have Subordinates Have Followers

They create circles of powers and lead by They create circles of influence and lead
authority. by inspiring.

Do Things Right Do The Right Thing

Managers enact the existing culture and Leaders shape the culture and drive
maintain status qou. integrity.

Dubrin,Andrew E. (2006) Essentials of management, Mason, OH 45040

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 like sending email, preparing a power point presentation. 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 skills 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 skill 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
stake holders and 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 styles, 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 the democratic leadership style
are the only ones that allow for the participation of the members of the organization. Between the
consultative and democratic styles of leadership, the democratic style is 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,.3., to the readiness and willingness of group members. Paul Hersey and
Benneth 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/supporting Delegating

Individuals lack the Individuals are Individuals are Individuals are

specific skills more able to do the experienced and able to experienced at the
required for the job task; however, they do the task but lack the task, and
in hand, and they are demotivated for confidence or the comfortable with
are willing to work at this job or task. willingness to take on their own ability to
the task. They are Unwilling to the the responsibility. do it well. They are
novice but task. able and willing to
enthusiastic. not only do the task,
but to take
responsibility for the
task.

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 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 adopt 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 leader 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?
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 be 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 up to become
more conscious of their importance felt over their conscious of their power over their constituents and
tend to impose 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 indeed, 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 you 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 feed 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
organization 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 contented with status qou 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 as 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 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 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 side wards 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.

Reference:
Prieto, N.G., Arcangel, C.N., Corpuz, B. (2019) The Teacher and the Community, School Culture and
Organizational Leadership. Lorimar Publishing Inc., Quezon City, Metro Manila