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Applying Leadership Theories

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Applying Leadership Theories Essay
Danielle Brewer
EDA 575: Educational Leadership in a Changing World
Professor Betty Nardelli
December 16, 2015

There are several leadership theories, which can be observed throughout the educational setting. The level of input in the various leadership theories ranges from shared responsibility to the leader or another individual taking majority of the control. The school I have chosen for this assignment as well as the duration of this course is West Park Elementary in Ravenna City Schools. Frank Sciarabba is the principal of West Park currently. The time spent observing Mr. Sciarabba has allowed me to observe a few different leadership styles, which vary according to the situation at hand. The main leadership style observed by Mr. Sciarabba was the participative style. This style of leadership is when the people affected by the decision have the most feasible amount of input but the leader of the building makes the final decision. Lam, Huang, Chan (2015) define participative leadership style as shared influence and joint decisions being made between the leader and the followers. Mr, Sciarabba is always asking for input from staff members and when creating committees and teams of teachers he asks for teachers to volunteer to join a committee. He is open to suggestions and feels that the staff members have many ideas that should be shared but he ultimately makes the final decision after receiving input from the staff. This leadership style is occasionally a struggle because the staff members do not always participate. Lam, Huang, Chan (2015) state that there is often a high level of reluctance with the participative leadership style because it requires employee participation as well as the leader releasing some of the control over the decisions being made. Ford and Fottler (1995) state that releasing control is often

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