Leadership is essential to the success of every organization. Organizations “seek those with leadership ability because they believe they bring special assets to their organizations, and ultimately, improve the bottom line.” (Northouse, 2012, p. 1) Arguably, there is no place where leadership is more important than in educational institutions. Principals have been and will continue to be the primary leaders in K-12 schools well into the 21st century. Their thoughts, behaviors, actions, and decisions effect school culture, staff and student achievement, and overall school accomplishment. They practice a variety of leadership styles, including transformational, transactional, democratic, autocratic, laissez-faire, and situational leadership. …show more content…
It assumes that most leaders cannot be described in monolithic terms of transformational, transactional, democratic, autocratic, and/or laissez-faire. Rather, leaders employ a hybrid of various styles based upon their contextual situation.” (Vann, Coleman, & Simpson, 2014, p. 30) Leadership style perception instruments (to be added here) It should be noted that the aforementioned assessment methods and tools are nowhere near complete. Further research on leadership assessment methods and tools, as well as already developed leadership assessment instruments is required.
Principals as School …show more content…
School climate is the ethos or spirit of the school. It is the collective mood or morale of the group. School climate is flexible, easy to change, and is based on perceptions. School culture, on the other hand, is the personality or the attitude of the school. It provides a limited way of thinking. School culture takes many years to evolve, and is based on values and beliefs, and determines if improvement is possible. (Gruenert, 2008) Another way of looking at it is that “school climate is the observable form of school culture.” (Gülen and Güleany, 2014, p.94) While both concepts are important and most school leaders address school climate before addressing school culture, school culture impacts a school much more than the climate. Therefore, the remainder of this section will focus on school