Effective School Leadership

The success or failure of a leader to influence and motivate subordinates to set and achieve the school’s instructional goals is contingent upon two important variables, the personal and the environmental.

James W. Guthrie and Rodney J. Reed observed that in order to provide the leadership necessary to enhance the educational achievement of students and to meet the expectations of society, a leader or school administrator must demonstrate knowledge of skills which include ability to lead and ability to influence.

In the 1980s, J. Clifton Williams studied the qualities of effective managers and came to a similar conclusion. They all concluded that personal characteristics influence managerial effectiveness in complex ways. They interact with each other at a given situation to produce varying degrees of leadership effectiveness.

In this context, a school principal must motivate teachers and staff to give their best performance and at the same time, shape them into subordinates who perform effectively in order to attain common instructional objectives.

Ability to Influence

One cannot lead in a vacuum. Leaders must have followers. In the school building, the principal must possess enough power to influence the teachers. She or he must influence the teachers to concede to her or his preferences and must cause them to exhibit expected behaviors. Ultimately, the principal must influence the teachers and other school employees to achieve the school’s goals, including the teaching of the students so that they become successful graduates at the end of the school year. Research studies identified two dimensions of leaderships, namely, the personal dimension and the school dimension. Both dimensions will be examined in view of how they interact with each other.

The Personal Dimension

An individual school’s and school system’s effectiveness is a function of competent leadership. School administrators are both empowered and liable for different operational functions of the educational system; they derive their power in part from their position. The manner in which leaders use their legitimate authority and power to attain schools’ goals is a testimony of effectiveness.