Educational Leadership Models from a Global Perspective

Educational Leadership models from a global perspective

Case Study

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        Leaders are not born; they are made; so goes the cliché. In essence, leadership is a process. Leadership in itself is the process of creating unified vision amongst followers with the view of attaining certain set goals by developing strategies and metrics to measure the attainment of such goals (Naylor, 1999). However, leadership is not a rudimentary process; it must be an interactive activity that motivates and encourages followers into reacting positively to their assigned activity and cultivate ethical characteristics that beget future leadership. Therefore, the key to growing effective academic institutions depends on great educational leadership. However, no leadership is the same; through research and experience, various educational leadership models exist across the globe. Certainly, each of the leadership theories has its own strengths and weakness and therefore application would vary depending on the cultural setting. For instance, education leadership models in the USA wouldn’t exactly fit in the United Arab Emirates for the simple reason that these communities differ in culture. Ultimately, culture shapes leadership even though the effect of globalization has tried to standardize educational leadership across the world.

            Outstanding and visionary leaders have calculated plans for their institutions. They have a vision, shared throughout the institution which ultimately shapes the programs taught and how students learn. Certainly, they shape policy priorities, plans, institutional procedures and routines pervading the day to day running of the institution (Beare et al., 1997). Therefore, by virtue of heading academic institutions that teach scientific or calculated metrics, educational leaders have the ability to predict future needs both for the teaching staff, non-teaching staff and students alike. Certainly, these abilities help to stabilize learning institutions through their different lifecycles. It is important that academic institutions weather every challenge thrown their way since most of the time, academics are looked upon to provide solutions. To this end, educational leadership calls for strong skills and personal abilities. Certainly, the learning communities assimilate such qualities and shape the grain for future leaders.

            However, no leadership process is flawless, without obstacles, and challenges. Ultimately, these must be contained in order to achieve success. Offensively, this is done through a creative enterprise of developing initiatives and innovation (Hargreaves, 2004). Defensively, effective educational leadership calls for disaster mitigating and management policies to address unpredictable or deliberate issues. Therefore, leadership calls for a concoction of strong interpersonal communication skills, planning, intuitiveness, visionary attributes and so on. Actually, a leader should be able to perform the following functions effectively;

•    Create an atmosphere of trust

In order to achieve trust, educational leaders must command integrity and competencies relevant to their positions. Such competencies must be seen to achieve congruency between the leadership’s vision and subsequent actions. Furthermore, such leaders should reward innovation and exemplary performances, tolerate and help correct genuine failures and reward even dissenting voices whilst giving them a chance to express their ideas. Actually, leaders of academic institutions should cultivate a free atmosphere to promote creativeness.

•    Develop and sustain a compelling vision

Leaders must cultivate the art of diplomacy. Creating a vision is one thing but sustaining a vision is a totally different proposition that requires mastery in diplomacy to get more people sharing in the vision and its attributes voluntarily. The ultimate achievement to this end would be to get the whole institution owning the vision as their own. Certainly, such leadership assists people who identify tasks and goals. Furthermore, they empower and inspire people within the institution to perform to the maximum of their abilities.

•    Create a decentralized leadership system

Success lies in the power of effective delegation of duties. As such, an effective and competent network of professional takes time to build but once in place; it is the single most important tool for success. Subsequently, a leader must cultivate a non-bureaucratic decentralized hierarchy model to effectively distribute responsibility and empower people to perform optimally.

•    Create meaning and success

Leaders must be able to cultivate a free environment where people are constantly reminded of the need to succeed. For instance, instead of condemning failures, leaders must be able to embrace errors and learn from such experiences. Certainly, such act sets the culture from which subsequent leaderships learn from. Thereby, a set institutional culture influences the collective mission towards the achievement of the collective goal and vision.

As a whole, the constancy of purpose and vision lie at the center of concern for the education leadership planning and management. Actually, the overall goal is to get graduates who are capable of creating solutions to global societal issues. In order to achieve this, educational leadership theories are modeled around long-term management strategies and educational policies pegged on institutional competencies. Actually, the main objective is to continuously improve educational programs and also administrative activities. This is achieved through instrumentation process and attaching strong competencies but also allowing for room for innovation from implementers. As such, the system should seek to move away from orthodoxies and adapt transformative agendas promoted through reform policies and temperate approach.

            Having understood the overall principles of leadership, it is prudent to understand how these relate to educational leadership. Specifically, education leadership is a profession of academicians carrying out administrative roles by influencing and guiding tutors within a particular context to improve learning and supportive processes in educational centers. These leaders serve as directors, department chairs, academic deans, school heads, and provost or institution presidents. Rudimentarily, educational leadership theories have their origin from the United States where such frameworks drew their structures widely from commerce and industry management principles. Such educational leadership models are finding their way to the United Arab Emirates.