AIOU Assignment BEd 1.5 Year 8618 School Leadership Assignment 1

AIOU Assignment BEd 1.5 Year 8618 School Leadership Assignment 1

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• BEd 1.5 Year

Q. 1 What do you understand by the term Management and Leadership? Discuss the need and scope of leadership in detail. Explain different levels of leadership in detail.
Answer:

Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill encompassing the ability of an individual or organization to “lead” or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints, contrasting Eastern and Western approaches to leadership, and also (within the West) United States versus European approaches. U.S. academic environments define leadership as “a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”. Studies of leadership have produced theories involving traits, situational interaction, function, behavior, power, vision and values, charisma, and intelligence, among others.

The words “leader” and “manager” are among the most commonly used words in business and are often used interchangeably. But have you ever wondered what the terms actually mean?

What Do Managers Do?

A manager is the member of an organization with the responsibility of carrying out the four important functions of management: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. But are all managers’ leaders? Most managers also tend to be leaders, but only IF they also adequately carry out the leadership responsibilities of management, which include communication, motivation, providing inspiration and guidance, and encouraging employees to rise to a higher level of productivity. Unfortunately, not all managers are leaders. Some managers have poor leadership qualities, and employees follow orders from their managers because they are obligated to do so—not necessarily because they are influenced or inspired by the leader.

Managerial duties are usually a formal part of a job description; subordinates follow as a result of the professional title or designation. A manager’s chief focus is to meet organizational goals and objectives; they typically do not take much else into consideration. Managers are held responsible for their actions, as well as for the actions of their subordinates. With the title comes the authority and the privilege to promote, hire, fire, discipline, or reward employees based on their performance and behavior.

What Do Leaders Do?

The primary difference between management and leadership is that leaders don’t necessarily hold or occupy a management position. Simply put, a leader doesn’t have to be an authority figure in the organization; a leader can be anyone.

Unlike managers, leaders are followed because of their personality, behavior, and beliefs. A leader personally invests in tasks and projects and demonstrates a high level of passion for work. Leaders take a great deal of interest in the success of their followers, enabling them to reach their goals to satisfaction—these are not necessarily organizational goals.

There isn’t always tangible or formal power that a leader possesses over his followers. Temporary power is awarded to a leader and can be conditional based on the ability of the leader to continually inspire and motivate their followers.

Subordinates of a manager are required to obey orders while following is optional when it comes to leadership. Leadership works on inspiration and trust among employees; those who do wish to follow their leader may stop at any time. Generally, leaders are people who challenge the status quo. Leadership is change-savvy, visionary, agile, creative, and adaptive.

What are The Traits A Manager Possesses?

Below are four important traits of a manager.

1. The ability to execute a Vision: Managers build a strategic vision and break it down into a roadmap for their team to follow.
2. The ability to Direct: Managers are responsible for day-to-day efforts while reviewing necessary resources and anticipating needs to make changes along the way.
3. Process Management: Managers have the authority to establish work rules, processes, standards, and operating procedures.
4. People Focused: Managers are known to look after and cater to the needs of the people they are responsible for: listening to them, involving them in certain key decisions, and accommodating reasonable requests for change to contribute to increased productivity.

What Are The Traits A Leader Possesses?

Below are five important traits of a leader.

1. Vision: A leader knows where they stand, where they want to go and tend to involve the team in charting a future path and direction.
2. Honesty and Integrity: Leaders have people who believe them and walk by their side down the path the leader sets.
3. Inspiration: Leaders are usually inspirational—and help their team understand their own roles in a bigger context.
4. Communication Skills: Leaders always keep their team informed about what’s happening, both present and the future—along with any obstacles that stand in their way.
5. Ability to Challenge: Leaders are those that challenge the status quo. They have their own style of doing things and problem-solving and are usually the ones who think outside the box.

The Three Important Differences

Being a manager and a leader at the same time is a viable concept. But remember, just because someone is a phenomenal leader it does not necessarily guarantee that the person will be an exceptional manager as well, and vice versa. So, what are the standout differences between the two roles?

1 A leader invents or innovates while a manager organizes.

The leader of the team comes up with the new ideas and kickstarts the organization’s shift or transition to a forward-thinking phase. A leader always has his or her eyes set on the horizon, developing new techniques and strategies for the organization. A leader has immense knowledge of all the current trends, advancements, and skillsets—and has clarity of purpose and vision. By contrast, a manager is someone who generally only maintains what is already established. A manager needs to watch the bottom line while controlling employees and workflow in the organization and preventing any kind of chaos.

In his book, The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management: Lasting Lessons from the Best Leadership Minds of Our Time, Alan Murray cites that a manager is someone who “establishes appropriate targets and yardsticks, and analyzes, appraises and interprets performance.” Managers understand the people they work with and know which person is the best fit for a specific task.

2 A manager relies on control whereas a leader inspires trust

A leader is a person who pushes employees to do their best and knows how to set an appropriate pace and tempo for the rest of the group. Managers, on the other hand, are required by their job description to establish control over employees which, in turn, help them develop their own assets to bring out their best. Thus, managers have to understand their subordinates well to do their job effectively.

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Q. 2 Discuss the future of Educational leadership in global perspective in detail.
Answer:

Only one leadership style actually derived from education; Instructional leadership. It was organic in that researchers wanted to find out how certain urban (often low-economic, high minority) schools were having success. They went in and “identified” the traits of the leaders, and coined it “instructional leadership” (it should be noted that much of the research isolated the transformational traits exhibited by the leaders). This was in the mid 1960s. Prior to this, extensive research had not been done on actual educational leadership. The instructional leadership model dominated for at least 15 yrs after. Then came the massive shift to transformational.

Transformational, transactional, servant, shared and all other leadership styles derived from research conducted in the corporate worlds. The various successes demonstrated by the extensive research made each style a target for possible implementation into the educational field. However, after a 30 yr period of attempting to finance research, training and implementation a shift BACK to instructional leadership was championed, along with multiple variations and hybrids.

Today, the “trend” is shared/instructional leadership.

Bottom line is, educational leadership, like education itself, is contextual. What works perfectly in one school, may not in another. However, research suggests that when a educational leader possess transformational and instructional leadership skills (really they are damn near synonymous; Transformational is “what the leader does” and Instructional is “how they do it) school environments improve, teachers feel empowered and student success is increased.

Sadly, there continues to be debate about which leadership style is best (even with almost 6 decades of research available). So because of this debate educational leadership programs flip-flop with preparatory curriculums, districts shift with the latest “fad” and schools suffer. But hopefully more people such as yourself will continue to inquire, probe, interpret data and shed further light on the topic.

It is no news that leadership as a word can be very and as a matter of fact extremely diffucult to define. Therefore rather than giving it a direct and most likely unfouded definition, it would be much better to gain an understanding of what exactly it entails by deriving a conclusion after putting into consideration several profound definitions.

Wikipedia decribes“Leadership as the process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”.

It goes futher to give the description of Alan Keith, who thinks “leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen”.

A third and even simpler definition descrides leadership as influencing a group of people to achieve a common goal.

From these three definitions of leadership, it is therefore fair to conclude or sum up that Leadership firstlyis a word that cannot be meaningful in isolation and it’s difficult to explain the meaning without followership. Thus in summarazing the need for social influence, support and achieving a common goal, Leadership for this particular paper work can therefore be described as the “process” with which a Leader(an Individual or team) sets out to achieve the common goal of a set of people by the use of social influence.

In an attempt to gain a clearer image of what truly leadership encompasses, one can take to mind very simple and common life examples of how very little things act as leaders. The door to a house for example is the one legitimate way through which the beauties and qualities of a house’s interior can be explored. In the same light, a leader is the way through which the hidden qualities and beauties of a given set of people determined to achieve a common goal can be explored. This house might be a one bedroom apartment, probably a 7 bedroom mansion or even a 15 bedroom palace, whichever or whatever it is, it’s outrightly undebateble that without a way(the door) inside, no one can get to see what treasures this house holds. This is the very same reason why doors exist right from the paper plan of the house. Yet again, so also does a leader serve as the entrance and the medium that guides his followers to achieve their common goal.

With the use of such a simple and direct illustration of Leadership as being the “WAY”, one can easily misconcept leadership to very simple, direct and straight to the point. But in real case scenario, it can prove to be slightly more complicated than the door that opens the way to beautiful treasures. When for example one takes a look at a Primary educational institutions, a primary school to be precise, one can experience and gain an even better understanding of how the process of leadership actually unfolds. The principal or the school director is seen as a leader of this particular institution. Coupled with this overall leader are the sub leaders, which comprise of the Vice Principal or Deputy Director, the Head of departments, the Class Teachers the Subject Teachers and even the Class heads, Class monitors or Class prefects as the case may be, all of which are leaders in their own jurisdiction.While being leaders, in so many different ways, these authorities also happen to be learning. As message and intructions are passed on from the director to his Vice, a lesson or two is also taken on how to ensure efficiency is paramount. Ultimately, we can derive that the efforts and level of organisation of all this leaders plays a very important role in seeing to it that learning as a process takes place, this learning can be either direct or indirect.

In an organisation such as a primary school, there is a serious and despirate need for efficiency in all endeavours and changes need to occur for progress to me made. Changes such as the development of the teaching skills available, the receptiveness of the students, but even more importantly the medium and system of communication that exists between both the teachers and the learner.

For example, a class of ten student would have an entirely different style of communication compared to a class of 45 students if any form of efficiency and productivity must be resultant from these students. A leader in such a scenario must thus be capable enough to Direct both teacher and student into a state of mind that encourages easy and productive communication.

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