Diana Lam (1990), superintendent of Chelsea, Mass schools wrote:
"leadership is an attitude which informs behavior rather than a
set of discrete skills or qualities." Understanding how kids &
adults learn to build a community of learners. What kind of
leaders do we need?
Can't change someone's heart.
Talk of attitudes, values, building learning communities is a
new kind of leadership talk.
Probably more has been written and less is known about
leadership than any other topic in the behavior sciences.
study of leadership
has dwelt on issues of style and levels of decision
making.
assessing the consequences of their variations for
followers' satisfaction
individual compliance and performance
organizational effectivenss
Which style is better: warm or cold; autocratic or
democratic; task or relational; directive or participatory;
initiating structure or consideration; production empahasis or
personal emphasis?
2 reasons for the failure of leadership:
1. view leadership as behavior rather than action;
psychological rather than spiritual; persons rather than ideas.
2. trying to understand what is driving leadership, have
overemphasized bureaucratic, psychological, and technical-
rational authority, seriously neglecting professional and moral
authority.
The Managerial Mystique
Abraham Zeleznik (1989) sees failure of leadership as
"managerial mystique." which was to be embroiled in the process
and less with people, ideas, emotions, and direct talk. It
deflected from the schools for those who believed in mystique.
doing things right at the expense of doing the right things.
improvement plans become subs for improvment outcomes
teacher-appraisal systems become subs for good teaching
inservice becomes sub for changes in practice
congeniality becomes a sub for collegiality
cooperation becomes a sub for commitment.
compliance becomes a sub for results.
trained incapacity: doing only your job in isolation as
opposed to as a team.
goal displacement: is loss of goal.
These last 2 represent a conspiracy of mediocrity.
The Head, Heart, and Hand of Leadership
person's interior world
reflection, combined with personal vision and an internal
system of values
mindscapes
A Questionof Values
use self as model
six models by which we arrive at knowledge
1. authority: faith in
2. deductive logic: testing oneself
3. sense experience: gaining thru 5 senses
4. emotion: feeling right
5. Intuition: unconscious rational thinking.
6. Science: synthesis of above 1-5.
Official and Unoficial Management Values
secualr or sacred?
without discretion, there is no leadership.
developing a nose for things
what constitutes a result
understanding materials and how they affect everything else.
knowing when to do what or what to do when.
a sense of process.
Moral Authority as a basis of Leadership
giving more credence to experience and intuition
accepting sacred authority
emotion is fully legitimate way of knowing.
this kind of leadership can transform schools into
communities, and make our schools unqualed among society's
institutions.