Transformational Leadership

Transformational Leadership
ERIC Identifier: ED347636
Publication Date: 1992-08-00
Author: Liontos, Lynn Balster
Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management Eugene OR.

Views of school leadership are changing largely because of current restructuring initiatives and the demands of the 90s. Advocates for school reform also usually advocate altering power relationships.

The problem, explain Douglas Mitchell and Sharon Tucker (1992), is that we have tended to think of leadership as the capacity to take charge and get things done. This view keeps us from focusing on the importance of teamwork and comprehensive school improvement. Perhaps it is time, they say, to stop thinking of leadership as aggressive action and more as a way of thinking--about ourselves, our jobs, and the nature of the educational process. Thus, "instructional leadership" is "out" and "transformational leadership" is "in."

HOW HAS THE TERM "TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP" EVOLVED AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

The idea of transformational leadership was first developed by James McGregor Burns in 1978 and later extended by Bernard Bass as well as others. Neither Burns nor Bass studied schools but rather based their work on political leaders, Army officers, or business executives.

For example, there has been a shift in businesses away from Type A to Type Z organizations. Type Z organizations reduce differences in status between workers and managers, emphasize participative decision-making, and are based on a form of "consensual" or "facilitative" power that is manifested through other people instead of over other people (Kenneth Leithwood 1992).

Although there have been few studies of such leadership in schools and the definition of transformational leadership is still vague, evidence shows that there are similarities in transformational leadership whether it is in a school setting or a business environment (Nancy Hoover and others 1991, Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantzi 1990,... [continues]

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