Chapter 1 provides a theoretical case for transformational leadership. We will examine the history of trying to effect change in schools by looking at the scholarship and the methods and determine why they failed to achieve the desired change. We establish our model’s mechanics as we explore the advantages of taking a balanced approach to change by blending the principles of support and accountability. A leader’s ability to address the why, the who, and the how and then do makes up the core of the transformational leadership concept.
Chapter 2 addresses leaders’ need to communicate the rationale—the why. Communication involves more than the simple transfer of information. When leaders address the why with their followers, they connect to the rational side of human nature essential in the quest to improve performance and outcomes. It is the ability to create, articulate, and inspire other people to invest in an organizational vision larger than themselves that makes a leader transformational.
Chapter 3 addresses leaders’ need to build trust—the who. In this chapter, we examine the development of a leader’s ability to successfully create meaningful professional relationships. A leader must have the ability to connect with human nature’s emotional side in the quest to improve performance and outcomes. Sometimes, people are motivated by a change concept because it resonates intellectually with them, while others commit to a change because they believe in the person who leads the change. The ability to communicate without the ability to appeal to people emotionally and build trust leads to only partial transformation.
Chapter 4 addresses leaders’ need to build capacity—the how. A leader must know how to diagnose his or her followers’ professional and material needs in the quest to improve performance and outcomes. No matter how much a person recognizes the need to change and connects with his or her colleagues in a deep, emotional way, he or she can’t effectively participate in change without the skills to execute the practice and the resources to do so successfully. Leaders need to engage in capacity building to close the skill gaps that cause some people to disengage with the change process.
Chapter 5 addresses leaders’ need to get results—the do. After a leader makes significant investments in the needs of the organization’s members, a moment of truth occurs where preparation meets execution. A leader who does not have the courage to demand execution just turns a vision into a suggestion. A good leader must anticipate that even with the sincerest of support efforts, a small party of individuals will probably only respond to authority. At that moment, a transformational leader has to be willing to demand compliance.
Chapter 6 further discusses the components of the transformational leadership model by tying them all together with tips for implementation. We provide a call to action and challenge school leaders to move from talking about substantive change to creating a plan that leads people through this process.
Throughout the book, we provide scenarios constructed from the experiences of real school leaders along with tools for reflection so that you can practice thinking and acting like a transformational leader. Like any other skill, leadership has to be practiced, so we have described and highlighted some compelling dilemmas faced by real leaders. These exercises will allow you to sharpen your skills so you can avoid making mistakes in real time with real people.
Conclusion
Past school leadership models have lacked balance and the proper insight into human motivation, which has resulted in little change and little progress in raising overall student achievement and closing academic achievement gaps. The need for quality education is dire. By the year 2020, 65 percent of American jobs will require some form of postsecondary education (Carnevale, Smith, & Strohl, 2010). The evidence from reliable achievement data demonstrates that U.S. schools have not academically accelerated students who live in poverty and the United States’ black and Latino students to meet this job market’s demands. A 2014 U.S. Department of Education report finds the following regarding U.S. schools.
▶ Among high schools serving the highest percentage of African American and Latino students, one in three do not offer a single chemistry course, and one in four do not offer a course more advanced than algebra 1.
▶ In schools that offer gifted and talented programs, African American and Latino students represent 40 percent of students, but only 26 percent of those students enroll in such programs.
▶ African American students, Latino students, and students living below the national poverty line attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers than do middle-class white students.
▶ African American students are suspended and expelled from school at a rate more than three times as high as white students (16 percent versus 5 percent).
These data reinforce the fact that school leadership, at every level, needs to improve. Student academic success and skill development are matters of survival for many, especially in a world that is quickly moving away from the industrial model into a knowledge-based economy. The needs of society are changing faster than many schools’ ability to create positive momentum, especially for our most vulnerable populations. If effective leadership is judged by positive impact on performance, these data suggest that there is a huge need for positive influence and change in our school systems. Improving the skill and effectiveness of leadership is essential in the quest to provide every student with a quality and useful education. As we work with school leaders, we do not observe a lack of sincerity and desire to improve the effectiveness of their environments. What we observe are sincere, hardworking people who lack an understanding of how to properly cultivate an environment of change. We believe that the transformational leadership model, and the essential skills attached to this model, is the best solution to this problem.
Finding Balance for Systems Change
If there is one thing people can likely all agree on, it is that change is hard. Whether individually battling a personal vice, like smoking, or striving to change other long-held habits, people find it difficult to will themselves to abandon an unproductive behavior for a more productive behavior, even if they have overwhelming evidence for change. Schools face an even more daunting, complex challenge than individual change—systems change, a challenge that many school and system leaders have failed to meet.
Daniel H. Pink (2011) writes, “Too many organizations—not just companies, but governments and nonprofits as well—still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science” (p. 9). The challenge of change is tough enough with the right skills and research-based strategies, but when a system operates from its own conjecture, folklore, and gut instincts, it makes the task nearly impossible. Pink (2011) points out that gut instincts lead to one of two very ineffective assumptions.
1. People are motivated through force—the stick approach.
2. People are motivated through incentives—the carrot approach.
He notes that both assumptions are incorrect because people have much more complexity and nuance than their fears or material desires.
Educational leadership practices and educational policies reflect this lack of insight into the complexity of human nature. Richard DuFour (2015) eloquently dismantles these incorrect assumptions and ineffective policies