Everyone knows how necessary and important leadership is. Why do some companies, teams, and schools succeed when others fail? The credit or blame most often goes to the manager, coach, or principal. After interviewing sixty corporate and thirty public-sector leaders, Bennis and Nanus concluded, "The factor that empowers the work force and ultimately determines which organizations succeed or fail is the leadership of those organizations."

What Is Leadership?

Literally hundreds of definitions of leadership have been offered. Some emphasize change or moving forward (implicit in the verb "to lead"), such as James Lipham's definition of leadership as "that behavior of an individual which initiates a new structure in interaction within a social system." Other definitions differentiate between management and leadership. Carl Welte defined management as the "mental and physical effort to coordinate diverse activities to achieve desired results" and included in this process "planning, organization, staffing, directing, and controlling." In contrast, he saw leadership as "natural and learned ability, skill, and personal characteristics to conduct interpersonal relations which influence people to take desired actions." In simpler terms, John Pejza expresses the difference as follows: "You lead people; you manage things."

This emphasis on personal relations occurs in many definitions of leadership. Fred Fiedler, Martin Chemers, and Linda Mahar have noted that leadership includes "the ability to counsel, manage conflict, inspire loyalty, and imbue subordinates with a desire to remain on the job." Speaking more plainly, former President Harry Truman said, "My definition of a leader in a free country is a man who can persuade people to do what they don't want to do, or do what they're too lazy to do, and like it."

One of the best definitions of leadership was suggested by George Terry, who called it "the activity of influencing people to strive willingly for group goals." This is the definition of leadership on which this book is based. The purpose of the book is to suggest the knowledge, values, structure, and skills necessary for a leader to inspire all members of the school community to work together toward the goal of an excellent education for all students. A simpler and yet somehow more elegant way of putting the same definition was offered by Scott Thomson when he was executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals: "Leadership is best defined as 'getting the job done through people'." This definition means that two things are necessary for effective leadership: accomplishment (getting the job done) and influencing others (through people). These two are intertwined. An ability to get things done makes leaders more influential.

Studies have shown that teachers are influenced most by principals who have "expert power," a term that simply means competence. Teachers are not influenced by the principal's power to punish, by his or her status or position, or even by the power to reward. They are influenced by their perception that the principal is an expert, is competent, can get the job done. One goal of this book is to give school administrators more "expert" power by helping them become more expert at what they do. A theme that recurs in many chapters of this book is that the leader's competence is most clearly manifest in the ability to empower and inspire others.

Competence alone, however, is not a sufficient qualification for leadership. Walter F. Ulmer, former president of the Center for Creative Leadership, advances the notion that leaders are able to gain, through ethical means, the followers' consent to be led:

Leadership is an activity-an influence process-in which an individual gains the trust and commitment of others and without recourse to formal position or authority moves the group to the accomplishment of one or more tasks. (Quoted in Kenneth E. Clark and Miriam B. Clark)

Leaders' influence over others is a product of, in addition to competency, their integrity. By their behavior, leaders earn trust and inspire loyalty. This is a vital lesson in an age when scandals and broken trust in corporations, financial institutions, and government agencies make daily headlines. Schools, certainly as much as any other institution, deserve ethical leadership.

Assumptions about the Nature of Leadership

The exercise of leadership involves people: a leader or leaders, a follower or followers, and the interaction of their personalities, knowledge, skills, and moral predispositions. It also involves place: a group or organization, with its particular structure, culture, resources, and history. Because so many variables of personality and context go into the workings of leadership, it is not surprising that people have observed and studied leadership from many different perspectives. Theories and models of leadership abound.

So that the reader might know what to expect from this book, we set forth here our own assumptions about the nature of leadership.

Leadership Is Multidimensional

Good leaders operate out of a clear understanding of their values, goals, and beliefs and also those of their followers. Leaders both influence and are constrained by the organizational context. Leaders may, with good results, use any of a variety of styles and strategies of leadership, including hierarchical, transformational, and participative, depending on their reading of themselves, their followers, and the organizational context. Schools Need To Be Both Managed and Led

Much of what passes for leadership in schools is really management. This should come as no surprise, because school administrators are trained primarily as managers, not leaders. Schools do need to comply with laws, establish consistent policies and procedures, and operate efficiently and on-budget. But schools also need, in the words of Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, "purpose, passion, and imagination"-the products of a leader. "Particularly in times of crisis or rapid change," they say, "we look to leaders, not to managers, for hope, inspiration, and a pathway to somewhere more desirable." Here is how Scott Thomson defines the essential task of leadership in today's schools: As demands grow on schools for improved quality and broader services, a new leadership emerges. No longer managers of routines, school administrators need increasingly to take initiative. They must understand change as well as manage it. They must involve and motivate staff, create a positive culture, build a group vision, develop quality educational programs, provide a positive instructional environment, encourage high performance, apply evaluation processes, analyze and interpret outcomes, be accountable for results, and maximize human resources. They also must stimulate public support and engage community leaders. Finally, they must be certain that schools are persistent in getting students to understand the challenges they face, and what is required of them to compete on an equal footing in a global environment. In short, principals and superintendents must educate and lead. Most school districts do not have the resources to hire for each school one person to manage, another to lead. So by necessity those who are trained to manage must also learn to lead, unless, of course, others in the school can be found to hold up the banner of leadership (more on this later).

Leadership Makes a Difference

Consider this statement by Kenneth E. Clark and Miriam B. Clark of the Center for Creative Leadership: "The exercise of leadership accomplishes goals more effectively than the usual management methods of trading rewards for performance." The power of leadership lies in its ability to inspire commitment, capture the imagination, earn trust.

The Clarks, summarizing propositions that have been derived from research on leadership in corporate, military, governmental, and educational settings, say "quality of leadership has been shown to have strong effects on (a) profitability of cost centers, (b) performance of work units, (c) quality of work output, (d) reduction of stress in the workplace, (e) worker satisfaction and morale, (f) reduced absenteeism, and (g) reduced accidents.... No wonder CEOs are paying attention to leadership issues."

The positive impact of principals' leadership gained validation in the 1970s when researchers found that instructionally effective schools were led by principals who set clear goals, participated in the instructional program, and made it clear to teachers and students that they were expected to excel.

One reviewer of the early studies done on effective schools, Ronald Edmonds, found leadership to be a key factor. In his summary of the "indispensable characteristics" of effective schools, Edmonds gave highest priority to "strong administrative leadership without which the disparate elements of good schooling can be neither brought together nor kept together."

"Principal leadership can make a difference in student learning," say Philip Hallinger and Ronald H. Heck, summarizing a decade and a half of empirical research. By influencing their schools' policies and norms, teachers' practices, and other school processes, principals indirectly affect student learning. Studies consistently point to one leadership behavior in particular that is tied to student achievement: "sustaining a schoolwide purpose focusing on student learning."

There Are No Substitutes for Leadership

Devolution of authority and responsibility remains a vibrant trend in the nation's school systems as well as in corporations and governments. We expect this trend to continue, as more schools establish site councils and more teachers, parents, and members of the community participate in school decision-making. As in past editions, several chapters of this book set forth recommended procedures for school-based management, shared decision-making, and teachers' coleadership of the instructional program.

None of these more inclusive governance processes, however, replaces the need for leadership. Granted, the leader's role might change, from a directive style to an enabling or facilitating style. But several essential tasks still must be performed by someone in a leadership position, presumably the principal. A leader or leaders must be able to create networks, build teams, resolve and creatively use conflicts, foster consensus on the school's vision, secure resources, and, especially important, focus attention on the goal: student learning.

But what about schools where teachers attain a high level of professionalism and form "self-renewing" learning communities? These teachers initiate their own improvement strategies, reflect upon their work, share their insights with one another, and collectively enforce high standards of performance. Such schools, it may be assumed, can operate on autopilot. They don't need a leader, only someone to manage the buses and bells. In our view, rather than having outgrown the need for leadership, strong professional communities require a commensurately higher caliber of leadership.

Self-renewing schools would appear to prosper with leaders who can "enhance the collective ability of a school to adapt, solve problems, and improve performance," which is the definition David T. Conley and Paul Goldman give for facilitative leadership. In addition to performing the tasks noted above, facilitative leaders possess the abilities to channel teachers' energy toward common goals and stimulate teachers' readiness for change.

Schools going through the process of restructuring seem to require this same kind of facilitative leadership. Paul V. Bredeson interviewed principals of twenty schools where teachers were taking on more responsibility in curriculum decisions, professional development programs, community outreach, and other school-improvement activities. Many of the principals experienced a transition in their roles from traditional manager-oriented leadership behaviors to group-centered leadership behaviors. These adjustments included increasing attention to group needs, relinquishing control and responsibility for task completion to others, becoming consultants and facilitators, providing a climate of support, modeling leadership behaviors, and entrusting group maintenance and process problems to members of the group. (Bredeson)

Worth noting is that this facilitative style fits precisely our definition of a leader as one who influences people to strive willingly for group goals. With shared governance and professional community, the group, not the individual, becomes the primary work unit. Group work places a premium on leadership; it is easier to manage the work of a collection of autonomous individuals than to lead a group.

Leadership Can Be Shared

Once it is understood that shared governance and professional community do not reduce the need for leadership but actually require a purer expression of it than a hierarchically run school does, the question becomes Who leads?

We find it hard to believe that a school could give birth to a vibrant professional community, self-initiating and self-renewing, without the active participation and encouragement of the principal. If teachers do take the initiative to form such a community, a principal who hasn't bought into the notion of faculty-as-change-agent is more likely than not to use his positional authority to sabotage the movement. The principal must actively support the process, either by taking a leadership role or by recruiting and supporting others who take that role.

The past decade's school-reform movement has given increased legitimacy to teacher leadership. Teachers engage in action research, perform staff development, serve as lead teachers, chair site councils, and so forth. Their craft knowledge is indispensable in the process of school renewal. When leadership is shared in this way, however, more might be involved than teachers' simply taking on leadership roles.

Marlene M. Johnson suggests that those who study and observe leadership have too readily assumed it is always the function of an individual. "The possibility of leadership as being a synergistic, interactive process created by numerous individuals within an ever-changing context has remained a 'blind spot'." Studies of facilitative leaders lend support to the idea that leadership can become an organizational function.

Facilitative leaders beget other facilitative leaders, say Conley and Goldman. Facilitative leadership by the principals they observed induced teacher leaders likewise to behave in a facilitative manner.

Teachers who took advantage of new leadership opportunities tended to involve others rather than hoard personal power. There was less fear of being excluded from important decisions, or of needing to guard one's resources. The collegiality that occurred when many teachers interacted regularly and took leadership roles both reduced fears and presented many more forums for concerns to be raised. New leadership roles and structures were tools to solve problems, not merely maintain the status quo. Facilitative leadership in these schools was contagious. Begun as an individual activity, it became collective practice and eventually characterized the manner in which the organization itself functioned. The synergy that occurs when leaders interact with and inspire other leaders is a topic meriting more attention than it has received.

Motive Matters

Our last assumption touches on a matter of the heart. It's important for school leaders to know why they want to lead. What do I hope to gain from holding this position, indeed, from succeeding in this position? Most individuals would readily answer, "To make a contribution to kids' learning." But honest reflection might yield other answers, too, some of which a leader might be reluctant to admit: to enjoy the prestige the principalship affords; to attain all the rewards that come from success, such as the approval of colleagues and possible advancement to a bigger school or the superintendency; and to earn more income than is available to a teacher.

Now, prestige, the esteem that accompanies success, and money (honestly earned) are not venal desires. But they are self-centered when compared to wanting simply that kids in your school learn. Everyone performs a job for a mixture of selfish and altruistic reasons. In some careers, say driving a cement truck or playing cornerback on a professional football team, the motivation can be entirely selfish and probably not affect the quality of the job done. A leader, however, must set a higher standard by demonstrating a commitment to serve the organization and its members before self.

Leadership theorists typically assume that leaders are motivated by their needs for varying amounts of affiliation, power, or achievement. We agree with Rabindra N. Kanungo and Manuel Mendonca, who argue that limiting the focus to these kinds of motivators ignores "the more profound motive of altruism, which is the critical ingredient of effective leadership."

The question is not whether leaders are motivated by the needs for affiliation, power, or achievement, but to what higher end? Does a leader seek warm relationships with followers out of a need for their approval, feeding on their affirmation of his importance, or is his goal to value them as partners in the enterprise so their ideas and skills can best be put to use in achieving the organization's mission? Does a leader seek power to aggrandize himself or does he regard it as an instrument to serve the needs of the institution and its members? In the quest for achievement, does a leader seek recognition and advancement primarily for herself, or does she find fulfillment in the group's accomplishment of its tasks?

These are fundamental questions that pierce to the core of a leader's character. How leaders-and more importantly, their followers-answer them ultimately governs the success or failure of their exercise of leadership. As Kanungo and Mendonca state, "Regardless of the need that operates as the motive, the leader's effectiveness will ultimately depend on whether the behavior manifested by that need is a reflection of and is guided by the overarching altruistic need." Altruism derives its power from the followers' perception that the leader is committed to their welfare. In reciprocal and paradoxical fashion, followers gladly bestow power on leaders who eschew it for themselves but use it to serve others.

Especially in education, where the product is knowledge, skills, and values instilled in young people, it matters a great deal whether the leader of a school or district seeks primarily to advance herself or to seek the highest good for those children in her care. Dale L. Brubaker collects the life stories of principals who attend his graduate education class at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Many of his students express dismay at the increasing politicization of their jobs, as Brubaker explains:

In the minds of many principals, good ol' boy superintendents as politicians have been replaced by smoother but equally political "sharks" whose self-interest is still more important than student learning and teachers' welfare. Such superintendents, principals argue, set the stage for like-minded principals to behave in similar fashion. These are the principals who always have the media in their schools, have glitzy bulletin boards without substance, and insist on public relations events for parents that often distract students from the learning that should take place in classrooms.

For such principals, test scores are more important than students receiving a solid education. These principals build a system of rewards for "the star teacher," thus passing down to the teachers self-serving norms of behavior.

The proposition that motive matters may be impossible to prove, because self-reports-the only way to establish motive-are of questionable validity. But if we assume a connection between a person's reason for doing something and the extent to which that "something" dominates the individual's thinking, we may be able to infer motive. Imagine, for example, two principals (Bob and Joan) who, during one day at their respective schools, each meets with a student who has been referred by a teacher for discipline.

During his meeting with the student, Bob reviews in his mind the steps spelled out in the school's discipline policy and remembers his promise at the last faculty meeting to enforce it more consistently than in the past. He must not be seen by the teachers, especially the two who complained at that meeting, as waffling in response to their referrals. Nor does he want to heed their suggestion that Bob invite the district's pupil-personnel coordinator to advise the school on its discipline procedures and thus risk the superintendent's finding out that his school has a problem. With these thoughts going through his mind, Bob informs the student that, this being his second referral this month, the school's discipline code requires a one-day suspension. He admonishes the student to improve his behavior and ushers him out the door.

Joan's school has also been struggling with enforcement of its discipline policy. As the student steps toward her desk for his third referral in six weeks, she recalls the school's mission and its motto, "Capture the potential in each child to excel." She searches for something positive about this student that she can say to encourage him and makes a mental note to follow up with him after his one-day suspension. She thinks he might benefit from a tutor and decides to assign one to him the day he returns to school. She plans to monitor his progress after two weeks.

Someone who was able to observe these two encounters between a principal and a misbehaving student might not notice any meaningful difference between them. Two principals and two students, meeting for an identical reason, follow a similar process that leads to the same result (suspension). The observer would have to get inside the heads of Bob and Joan to detect the difference in their thinking and motives and would still be left wondering whether even this difference mattered. Of course, it truly wouldn't matter unless Joan follows through with her intentions to find a tutor for her student and monitor his progress.

Is there any evidence that principals' thinking patterns influence their effectiveness as leaders? We find some support for this notion in the findings of a study reported by Samuel E. Krug. He and two colleagues examined the ways in which principals thought about-reflected on-their activities during five consecutive work days. Five times each day the principals responded to a pager that activated randomly. Each time the pager beeped, the principals recorded what they were doing, whether it was relevant to instructional leadership, and what they felt or thought about the activity. Then Krug and his associates, having used another instrument to evaluate each principal's instructional leadership, compared their thinking patterns with their performance as leaders.

"One of the most important conclusions of this study," Krug writes, "was that, while all the principals engaged in very similar kinds of activities, they did not all think about them in the same ways. Principals who are more effective perceive and use these activities as opportunities for exercising instructional leadership." Moreover, the principals' leadership scores showed a consistent relationship with student learning. "As leadership scores rose, student achievement scores rose; as leadership scores fell, student achievement scores fell."

The following statement by Krug, which inspired our stories of Joan and Bob, underscores the link between thought and action: "One principal saw a disciplinary meeting with a student as an opportunity to communicate the school's mission, monitor learning progress, and promote the instructional climate. A second principal saw the situation simply as an exercise in the management of discipline." What is it that explains why these principals thought as they did? Did they think and act differently because their motives differed, one burning with passion to see every child succeed, the other consumed with adult issues of school politics? Or, did they actually share the same passion to see their students excel, but one principal was simply quicker than the other to realize that any encounter with a student can serve an instructional purpose? We cannot definitively answer these kinds of questions from Krug and colleagues' data or, for that matter, from any research study. The answers will come only as these leaders search their own hearts to discern the pulse of their beliefs and commitments.

Leadership springs from an internal set of convictions, action following thought in the manner declared by this proverb: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." A principal whose thoughts center around bolstering his or her reputation will behave differently than a principal who passionately wants kids to learn and succeed. Outstanding school leaders start with a conviction about what schooling ought to be. This conviction gives birth to a vision, a mental image that guides these effective leaders in their daily routine activities and interactions with teachers, students, and communities.

We offer this book as food for the mind, nourishment for growth of the leader's conviction, passion, vision, and effectiveness.

How This Book Was Written

The purpose of this book is not to present new views or the authors' views of leadership. The authors of these chapters have attempted instead to summarize and explain a large body of literature with which educational leaders want and need to be familiar. Although readers are encouraged to refer to the original sources cited in the bibliographies, a perusal of them makes it apparent that no busy administrator or student has time to read all these books and articles. Nevertheless, the sources are important and contain many ideas useful to administrators. To make these important works easily accessible, we have tried to present the best ideas briefly and succinctly. This technique of distilling the most useful and important ideas is called "information analysis."

The authors of this book are more than mere "translators" of information and ideas, however. As well as analyzing information, they also attempt to synthesize information, to show how theories and ideas are connected, to resolve conflicting views.

Perhaps the most important kind of information synthesis in this book is the integration of theory and practice. Many books have been written on leadership theories and almost as many concern the "how to" of leadership practice. Practitioners complain that the theoretical writing is not useful in their everyday work, and researchers and theoreticians look askance at "practical" works whose ideas and suggestions are not empirically validated. Practitioners perceive that researchers and theoreticians are too isolated from the real problems of schools, that theories validated in laboratory settings may disintegrate in actual classrooms. Researchers and theoreticians argue that recommendations that are validated by only the experience of one administrator or one school are much too subjective to be useful to others.

Few books try to integrate these two conflicting views. This book tries to present the most useful aspects of theory along with the most thoughtful recommendations for action. A synthesis of the two, especially in areas where findings agree, can avoid many of the problems inherent in each single approach.

As well as presenting theories gleaned from educational literature and suggesting practices that might be derived from these theories, the book also contains ideas from practitioners within the field. These ideas are taken not only from written works, but, in many chapters, from interviews with administrators who are struggling with actual problems in schools.

Overview

This volume looks at leadership from four perspectives: the person, the values, the structure, and the skills. Chapters focusing on the person who holds a leadership position provide something of a theoretical background. These chapters answer the questions, Who is today's educational leader? What makes an effective leader different from a less effective leader? Which leadership styles and strategies seem to work best in which circumstances? How are school leaders trained, and what are the best methods for hiring them and inducting them into their positions?

The three chapters in Part 2, new in this edition, deal with the foundation of ethics, vision, and values that give moral purpose and substance to the practice of school leadership. What are the leader's ethical responsibilities? Why is vision vital to the leader and how is it grasped? How can the leader help to create an effective work culture in his or her school?

The part of the volume focusing on the structure takes a look at the systems or support structures that underlie school leadership. It examines the balance of authority between the central office and the school site, the use of work teams in school improvement, and the context for making wise decisions. These chapters concern structures and management systems that can make good educational leadership possible-or impossible.

The chapters on leadership skills highlight the abilities needed by administrators to be effective leaders in education today. Foremost among those abilities is knowing how to lead the school's instructional program and manage the instructional staff. This part of the volume also looks at such knotty problems as how to communicate in today's more open, power-sharing organization, how to build coalitions of community groups for the support of schools, how to lead meetings more efficiently and effectively, and how to manage time, stress, and conflict.

This book is called a handbook because it is designed to be used as a reference when particular problems and concerns arise as well as to be read straight through. Those concerned about communication or decision-making or the advantages of different leadership strategies can turn directly to the appropriate chapters for the information they are seeking without reading the previous chapters. It is a book to be sampled, to be digested slowly, and to be turned to again and again as leaders grow in their leadership skills and effectiveness.

We hope that those charged with leading the nation's schools and those who aspire to this role will find the handbook useful as a source of encouragement and practical counsel.