6 Educational Leadership Styles
- There are four major styles of leadership which apply well in the educational setting. While each of these styles has its good points, there is a wide berth of variation, and in fact, transformational leadership is truly an amalgamation of the best attributes of the other three. So let’s explore how s.
- 6 Leadership Styles Robyn Benincasa is a two-time Adventure Racing World Champion, two-time Guinness World Record distance kayaker, a full-time firefighter, and author of the new book, HOW WINNING WORKS: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth, from which the following article is excerpted.
Goleman. outlines six leadership styles arising from different components of emotional intelligence that successful leaders utilize. The Coercive Style or “Do what I tell you” approach demands immediate compliance and is used by leaders driven to achieve, who take initiative and have mastered self-control. Share six effective leadership styles based on the Emotional Intelligence research done by author and psychologist Daniel Goleman. These six styles are associated with positive emotional impacts that research shows have causal links to.
29 Sep 7 Highly Successful Leadership Styles
Years ago, as a young leader, I was asked by my superior what was my Leadership Style. I pondered and reflected before I answered.
What is your leadership style? Do you know?
Of course, there are a host of leadership styles developed over the ages. Fortunately we can learn from masters in school leadership and Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, has been researching leadership for many years.
Goleman* outlines six leadership styles arising from different components of emotional intelligence that successful leaders utilize.
- The Coercive Style or “Do what I tell you” approach demands immediate compliance and is used by leaders driven to achieve, who take initiative and have mastered self-control. This style works best in a crisis or to kick start a turnaround in challenging times.
- The Authoritative Style or “Come with me” approach mobilizes people toward a vision and is used by leaders who are change catalysts, self-confident and empathetic. This style is effective when changes require a new vision or when a clear direction is needed. A more formal leadership curriculum for middle school, high school or primary school may be needed in environment where things have gotten very far off track.
- The Affiliative Style or “People come first” approach creates harmony and builds emotional bonds and is used by leaders strong in empathy, communication and building relationships. This style works best to motivate people during stressful circumstances or to build staff morale.
- The Democratic Style or “ What do you think?” approach forges consensus through participation and is used by leaders with strong collaboration, team leadership and communication skills. It works best to build consensus or to get input from valuable employees. School leadership conferences work well under this model, but make sure they are structured and led well to ensure productivity.
- The Pacesetting Style or “Do as I do, now” sets high standards for performance and is used to get quick results from a highly motivated and competent team. It works with the school principal as leader when they bring years of experience or innovative new ideas to the role.
- The Coaching Style or “Try this” develops people for the future and builds on developing others, empathy and self-awareness. This approach helps employees improve performance and develop long-term strengths. A school building leader program or school leadership conference would be in line with this leadership style.
- Michael Fullan outlines another style that I believe all school leaders should adopt. Fullan calls it ‘The Lead Learner’ or ‘The Instructional Leader’. Focusing on core learning priorities and leading the school’s teachers in a process of learning to improve their teaching, while learning alongside them about what works and what doesn’t is key in school leadership. Being humble as a principal is also imperative for leaders of a new school, and would work well combined with the aspects of the Democratic Style.
Well, and this may surprise you, it is crucial for a successful leader to understand that if you rely on any one of these styles all of the time you will be an ineffective leader. In fact, two of the styles above can have an overall negative impact on the climate of your organization if applied in every situation.
Leaders with the best results do not rely on one leadership style alone! Highly Successful Leaders use most of the styles listed above at various times depending on the situation and create space for innovation and entrepreneurship.
So when you are asked what is your leadership style, I hope you answer that you are proficient in 7 Highly Effective Leadership Styles and use each of them regularly and effectively when your contextual situation requires it.
If you would like to learn more about 21st Century Leadership why not attend ‘Leadership for the 21st Century’ 2-day workshop on 7 & 8 November at iCAN British International School in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Click here for more information.
*This article makes reference to “Leadership that Gets Results” by Daniel Goleman, published in the Harvard Business Review
This blog comes from writer of the @AdvocateforEd, activist and former Dean of the School of Education, Psychology, & Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Union University, Dr. Matthew Lynch.
There are four major styles of leadership which apply well in the educational setting.
While each of these styles has its good points, there is a wide berth of variation, and in fact, transformational leadership is truly an amalgamation of the best attributes of the other three. So let’s explore how servant leadership, transactional leadership, and emotional leadership compare to transformational leadership…
1. Servant Leadership
Servant Leadership takes the focus from the end goal to the people who are being led. There is no sense of self-interest on the part of the leader, who steps back and supports only the interests of the followers. Guidance, empowerment and a culture of trust are hallmarks of this style of leadership. A servant leader puts complete trust in the process and in his or her followers, assuming that those within the organisation will align with its goal.
The primary issue with servant leadership is that it’s not viable on an organisational level, in large part because it does not keep its eye on the prize. With the focus being so entirely upon the needs of the people within the organisation, the goal of the organisation is nearly completely lost and therefore not attained.
Education happens in the real world, where unfortunately people have shortcomings and quite often need guidance in order to get things going in the right direction. Transformational Leadership offers that same focus on the individual, while building an investment in the end goal of the organisation and thereby creating a momentum to achieve it. Transformational Leadership takes Service Leadership to the next level.
2. Transactional Leadership
Give and take is the hallmark of transactional leadership – it is indeed modelled just like a business transaction. Of course the employer/employee relationship is largely transactional as is.
Employers need work done and employees do that work in exchange for money. That “quid pro quo” (“something for something”) is the heart of the workplace, and everyone is generally happy with this arrangement, but it only works if everyone involved sees it that way.
In education, there is often more at stake for employees who quite often understand their jobs to be more than just a simple exchange of services for money, but rather see their higher purpose. Money is therefore not the motivating factor.
This is where transformational leadership can step in to compliment transactional leadership, taking the whole process as step further by building upon other forms of motivation outside of simply the exchange of goods and services for money.
However transformational leadership only really works of the leader is able to keep up the charisma and interpersonal relationships which are required for it to work. When transformational leadership fails, the last resort is quite often transactional leadership, which is easy and straightforward, if less than effective in the long term.
Perhaps the biggest contrast between transformational and transactional leadership is that the latter is laissez faire, in which the leader allows employees to do as they like, whereas the former is completely hands on and intrusive in its nature.
3. Emotional Leadership
Where transactional leadership was concerned primarily with the exchange of goods and services, emotional leadership is concerned with the feelings and motivations of followers. It takes the focus completely to the other side of the spectrum – demanding that leaders be emotionally intelligent themselves and then to motivate through the use of that emotional intelligence.
Emotional leadership and transformational leadership have a great deal in common with each other. With emotional leadership, the leader taps into their emotional centre in order to find the path to guiding their followers. People sometimes argue that transformational leadership requires that same level of influence over emotions, however there is a fundamental difference in the two in that transformational leadership is by necessity a rational process rather than an emotional one.
4. Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership takes from each of the other kinds of leadership its best qualities and then uses those, along with a deep sense of shared purpose, to motivate subordinates.
While the other forms of leadership focus on one singular aspect or another, transformational leadership takes a broad view of the issues surrounding leadership and then uses those as a driving force for meeting the overall goals of the organisation. For education in particular, transformational leadership offers the best of everything – from tapping into the emotions of workers to offering the compensatory core that is the case for all forms of business, to guiding from a place of support.
However since transformational leadership is informed by all of these various types of leadership, it’s always a good idea for leaders to learn more about these other styles so as to offer a deeper understanding of these forms so as to offer those in whose service they are the best support and guidance possible.
To read blogs and other insights from Dr Matthew Lynch (@lynch39083), please visit the Edadvocate website.
6 Types Of Leadership
The Coaching Leadership Style – the Pros and Cons
As a school leader you will no doubt, have a vast array of knowledge about leadership styles and how and when to deploy them.
We all know context is everything and there is no point adopting a democratic leadership style, when the school fire alarm has gone off and the building needs to be evacuated immediately!
However, I never cease to be amazed when working with school leaders, that out of the various leadership styles, the coaching leadership is the one that most leaders appear to find the hardest to develop.
Six Educational Leadership Styles
Having reflected on this, I believe there are a number of reasons as to why this is so…