SCHOOL LEADERSHIP AND LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES:

TYPES OF LEADERSHIP
LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES AT SCHOOL

Education is an important aspect of human life. How we receive and

translate it into our daily way of life is quite largely dependent upon the way it
gets passed on. Educational leadership has been studies over years to address
long-standing concern of students, educators, and a society as a whole. As the
need to understand which style of leadership will work best, alone or in
combination, it is imperative to understand these types individually in regards to
their methods and what they offer.
With an eye for reform, many educationists have either supported or
criticized certain leadership styles, however, which style suits and works best is
subjected to a matter of opinion. Educational leadership styles are based on the
understanding that certain characteristics, such as physical energy and social
interaction play a part in the way education is imparted. Effective leadership is
about strengthening the performance of education leaders, primarily the
educators, to improve student achievement. Hence, effective leadership is crucial
for teachers and students to enhance performance at the highest level.
Leadership style consists of a leaders general personality, demeanor, and
communication patterns in guiding others toward reaching organizational or
personal growth. Categories of leadership styles have increased in the
postmodern literature. Among the more recent categories are charismatic
leadership, social justice leadership, gender and race leadership, moral
leadership, and spiritual leadership. The four rather global categories of
leadership

chosen

for

school

leaderships,

however,

are

authoritarian,

participative, transactional, or transformational.

Authoritarian leader is given the power to make decisions alone, having
total authority. They stand in master of the people and impose their wills and no
one is allowed to challenge them. Control is the primary management strategy

employed by authoritarian leaders. This form of leadership emphasizes objectivity

in the workplace, tends to be impervious to human problems, is insensitive to
race and gender, and displays little emotion or affection toward employees.
Douglas McGregors Theory X becomes the authoritarians motif, believing that
people must be forced to work, closely supervised, and rewarded or punished
based on individual productivity. Fred Fiedler found that authoritarian leaders can
be viewed as successful in certain task situation while allowing for the extremes
of consideration and ruthlessness, depending on the situation.
Autocratic leader tends not to negotiate or consult with students, staff or the
community, but expect their orders to be obeyed without question. Reflecting their
low responsiveness, authoritarian leaders focus on procedures rather than
people. Because of their use of rules, punishments and sanctions, they may be
feared, rather than respected or liked. Recognition and positive feedback from
the authoritative leader are lacking, although people may occasionally receive a
blast from the leader as he or she reinforces control and authority through pulling
people back into line and reminding them who is the boss. Standards and
expectations of the authoritarian leader may be high and reinforced by extrinsic
mechanisms. Control, consistency and order are emphasized at the expense of
flexibility and compassion.
Schools of authoritarian leaders may be orderly and well run with
delegation, reporting and accountability systems utilized to facilitate this. There
tends to be a high degree of dependency on the authoritarian leader who has the
final say on everything. Schools led by authoritarian leaders can be characterized
by low risk taking and innovation. There may be considerable untapped potential
in organizations led by authoritarian leaders. Staff and students can be
infantilized

under

the

authoritarian

leader.

Some

will

appreciate

the

uncompromising stance and strength of the authoritarian leader, while others will
feel stifled and frustrated by their lack of input to the organization and lack of
opportunities to exercise leadership.
The second type of leadership is democratic leadership, also known as
participative leadership. Lewins study found that participative leadership, also

known as participative leadership. In the democratic style, managers rely on

group input and consensus when making a decision. Democratic managers
prefer an open discourse between the workforces, but usually reserve the final
say on important matters. Participatory or democratic leadership is a style of
management where decisions are made with the most feasible amount of
participation from those who are affected by the decisions. It strives to move
away from the authoritarian boss-led mode of leadership to the human side of the
enterprise expound in the 1930s by Mary Parker Follet, Elton Mayo, Frederick
Roethlisberger, and others. They found that productivity and human relationship
were closely linked. Follet believed managers should treat workers with dignity
and change the workplace from strict authoritarian control over workers to a more
collegial team concept. In school, teachers as leaders should have put
themselves in pupils shoes to have better understanding on their students
situation and needs.
Participative leadership, however, leads to delegation and communication
about goals, processes of goal accomplishment, respect for diversity in team
members, and a collective effort to seek quality in each task and final product.
Besides that, one of the major flaws in participative leadership theories is the
level of time it takes from problem to solution. When a group of people are
supposed to deliberate on a problem and possible strategies, they must have
structure and guidance to help them be more time effective when arriving to a
decision. Though later amendments, such as the decision tree and the timedriven decision tree, tried to give the participative style more structure, time
efficiency is still a problem.
During my practicum, I found that the headmaster applied democratic
leadership to all the staff in the school. I can observe this during the meeting lead
by the headmaster. The headmaster always asks other teachers to share and
contribute their ideas. Besides that, the headmaster also openly accepts ideas
given by teachers and he put it into consideration before making the final
decision.

The third type of leadership style in school is transactional leaders.

Transactional leaders attempt to balance the initiating structure in order to get
things done with meeting the need of the people while things are getting done.
This type of leadership requires the integration of organizational goals and
expectations with the needs of the people doing the work. James MacGregor
Burns, 1978 explains that transactional leaders motivate workers by offering
rewards for what the leaders need done or in other words, power is given to the
leader to evaluate and correct the group up to the desired level and the group
agrees to follow his lead to accomplish a predetermined goal in exchange for
something else.
The transactional model of leadership assumes a very simplistic view of
motivation, which fails to account for individual differences. Transactional
leadership is based on the premise that students will perform an action for a
simple reward or to avoid punishment. Besides that, a transactional leader does
not typically recognize or praise his pupils who meet expectations. This is
because the leader or the teacher views this as a simple exchange, work for
tokens or rewards, for example. Furthermore, this type of leadership can bring
disastrous to the pupils themselves. When pupils are always given with tokens for
their works most of them will only do the task for the sake of getting the prizes
and not the knowledge itself.
Transformational leaders demonstrate the elixir of human understanding. If
applied with integrity, transformational leadership can reform organizations in
magic ways. Leaders using this style create an environment where every person
is empowered to fulfill his or her highest needs and becomes a member of a
productive learning community. Transformational leaders are servants to others
and guide them in creating and embracing a vision for the organization that
inspires and brings forth top performance and creates a belief system of integrity,
a cause beyond oneself, diversity of thought, and inclusiveness for all races and
gender. Subsumed in this style are moral leadership, leading with love, and
spiritual leadership. Moral leadership is based on dignity and respect for the
rights of others to self-determination within moral bounds of the organization.
Rather than an arbitrary set of rules to follow, moral leadership is a covenant to

do the right things for others. Schools living moral leadership focus on the generic
child and ensure that all staff members share in the belief that the school family
must constantly work to inspire new and higher levels of trust and commitment to
every child and each other in the school community.
During my practicum at school, I also found that the headmaster in the
school is using type of transformational leadership. The headmaster can be seen
motivate and inspire his subordinates by describing how changes benefit the
organization before any transitions start. The headmaster creates a sense of
urgency and overcome objectives to help the school achieve its strategic goals.
During periods of disruptive change, such as new educational transformation, but
with effective transformational leader in that school, can slowly assuage fears and
pave the way for a successful school great achievement.
A gradual shift from top-down authoritarian to transformational leadership is
occurring in Malaysias schools, but the need remains to conduct research that
centers on research about leadership styles, staff morale, and student
performance. Until definitive research can provide evidence that transformational
leadership promoting equity, empowerment, morality, and love is the superior
style for all schools and school districts, schools will continue to be a patchwork
of authoritarian, participative, transactional, and transformational leadership
styles.
From all these 4 types of leaderships I learnt during my practicum at
school, I also learnt about the leadership challenges. Even though there are so
many challenges face by educators in handling and becoming a leader in school
but still as a teacher, they need to be ready and prepare themselves with all the
transformation and issues in education.