PROF ED 3- The Teacher and the Community, School Culture and Organizational Leadership

Lesson 7: ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Activity 1: Let’s Draw

In a clean short bond paper, draw an object that symbolizes a leader and explain your symbol of
leadership in one paragraph below your drawing.

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.
- Does not sacrifice the individual members for the sake of the people nor 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.
- It s 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 the 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 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 leads the school and community to formulate the vision, mission, goals, and
school improvement plan. This is a leadership function. He/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 f the school head is only a
leader. You have the vision, mission, goals and school plan but no implementation.

Managers Leaders
➢ Administer ➢ Innovative
There process is transactional; meet Their process is transformational: develop
objectives and delegate tasks. 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 results.
skilled at allocating work. They care about you and want you to
succeed,
➢ Have Subordinates ➢ Have Followers
PROF ED 3- The Teacher and the Community, School Culture and Organizational Leadership

They create circles of power 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 quo. integrity.
Source: Dubrin, Andrew E. (2006) Essentials of management, mason, OH 45040 USA

Types of Skills Demanded of Leaders

Leaders use 3 broad types of skills:

1. Technical Skills– refers to any type of process of technique like sending e-mail, preparing
power point presentation
2. Human Skills – the ability to work effectively with people and to build teamwork. This is also
referred to as people skills or soft skills.
3. Conceptual Skills – 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:

1. Autocratic – autocratic leaders do decision making by themselves.

2. Consultative - 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.
3. Democratic – 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.
4. Laissez Faire – 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 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.

The Situational Leadership Model

In situational leadership, effective leaders adapt their leadership style to the situation of the
members of the organization, 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.
PROF ED 3- The Teacher and the Community, School Culture and Organizational Leadership

Behavior Styles in Situational Leadership

S1 S2 S3 S4
Telling/Directing Telling/Coaching Participating/supporting Delegating
Individuals lack the Individuals are more Individuals are Individuals are
specific skills required able to do the task; experienced and able experienced at the
for the job in hand however, they are to do the task but lack task, and comfortable
and they are willing to demotivated for this the confidence or the with their own avility
work at the task. They job or task. Unwilling willingness to take on to do it well. They are
are novice but to do the task. responsibility. 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 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. 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)

We often hear the term “public servants” to refer to appointed and elected officials of the
government to emphasized 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.

Transformational Leadership

Robert Kennedy once said: “Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dreamed 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 quo and sees the need to transform
the way the organization thinks, relates and does things.

-The transformational school leaders sees 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.
PROF ED 3- The Teacher and the Community, School Culture and Organizational Leadership

-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.

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.

The transformational leader ought to deal with resistance to change to succeed. There will
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

2. Get people involved early and often
3. Plan a communications campaign to “sell” the innovation
4. Ensure that the innovation is understood by all
5. Consider timing and phasing

Reference: The Teacher and the Community, School Culture and Organizational Leadership.

N. Prieto, C. Arcangel, B. Corpuz (2019)