TYPES OF LEADERSHIP ROLES

OF A SAMPLE OF ASSISTANCE SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS

Greenfield (1991) has noted that effective school leadership requires an administrator to function as a leader in several roles simultaneously. These role include managerial, instruction, political, social, and even moral roles.

Greenfield states that while there are several variables, (e.g. personality traits, situational aspects, organizational policy and practices, and so forth), which influence the degree of effectiveness with which school administrators such as principals and assistant principals function in these roles, one of the most important of these contributing factors is the leader's degree of prior experience with school leadership roles.

One reason why prior leadership experience is so crucial to effective administrative function is its skill-building function. As noted by Hutchison (1988), the degree of one's background in the leadership role is directly related to the acquisition and development of skills critical to effective school leadership. These critical skills are said to include information managing skills, problem-solving and decision making skills, goal setting skills, project management skills, interpersonal communication skills, conflict and motivation management skills, and mentoring skills.

While the cited studies confirm the importance of prior leadership exper

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. In his study of this leadership model (Fiedler & Chemers, 1974) across a wide variety of work groups (service station crews, basketball teams, laboratory groups, bomber crews, and others), Fielder found that data suggested high-LPC manager/administrators (relationship oriented leaders) were more effective than low-LPC manager/administrators (task oriented leaders) only for some octant situations. Specifically, low-LPC leaders did best in either extremely favorable or extremely unfavorable situations while high-LPC leaders were more effective in situations of moderate favorability. Fielder (1974) explained his findings by contending that leaders who are task-oriented are successful in favorable situations because they will emphasize task accomplishment in a situation that requires little more than persistence at a task. Similarly, in extremely difficult situations what is needed is firm, task-oriented leadership if anything at all is going to be accomplished. Interpersonally oriented leaders, on the other hand, have the advantage in moderately favorable situations (settings that emit "mixed signals") because they can use their social skills to overcome workers obstacles to performance. Other authors (e.g. Blake & Mouton, 19
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Approximate Word count = 9232
Approximate Pages = 37 (250 words per page)

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