Principal Leadership Styles in Indonesia

Principal Leadership Styles in Indonesia

Nur Annisa Mei Rizki (06012681519039)

            Leadership cannot be separated with human life. In a small scale,even a man is a leader for himself. In social life, a leader is needed in every aspect, from a family, a company, a regency, province and a country . A leader has a responsibility to serve their followers and ask the followers to reach their goals together. The term leadership put forward by experts, leadership is a person's ability and readiness to influence, guide, direct, and or move others to get them to work in order to achieve a common goal. Leadership is the ability to influence other people so willing to commit an act voluntarily to achieve certain goals. A good leader is able to lead himself before being able to lead others. Leadership is a close relationship between a person and a group of people because of their common interest.

            Nawawi (1993)  stated that leadership is a process of directing, guiding, influencing or controlling mind, feelings or actions and behavior of others. Of the several views of leadership above, it can be the common thread that leadership is a social influence in this case intentional behavior is run by a person against another person for structuring activities and relationships within a group / organization or educational institution. In educational institution, included school, principal plays an important role to achieve school’s goals. A principal can be called as the motor to improve the quality of a school. The principal is a responsible leader in the educational unit level, as well as the reciprocation of the school led. So its presence is required to have a variety of abilities, both with regard to management and leadership issues. It is intended that a principal may develop and promote the school in an effective, efficient, independent, productive and accountable. That condition requires academics to carry out various tasks according to their role and function.

            To run the managerial duties, as well as responding to the demands of today's changing, the principal must have strong leadership that is able to carry out various programs that have been agreed upon as well as their vision and mission. It is given that the principal does not only have a responsibility to the teachers, staff and students, but also must establish a relationship with the community at large. Implementation of these responsibilities, requires principals to have the ability and leadership skills to be prepared since the nomination of the principal.

            Preparing for school principals is intended that the principal will have proficient skills education leaders in developing the institution as well. Therefore, principals need to be equipped with the insights about effective leadership, as will be explained in this paper, namely, the importance of school leadership, indicators of effective school leadership, the type of school leadership and school leadership ethics.

Principal Leadership Style

            There is no perfect person in the worls, principal is too. The best principal style  in a school can be the different with other school. In this essay, the writer focus to explain three main principal leadership style that are commonly used by most of the principal in Indonesia.

1. Transformational Leadership style

Transformational leadership was firstly found by Burns (1978) , he is the first researcher who formulated this leadership style. He stated that transformational leadership style focus to motivate the follower or employee to reach the goal together. As stated by him, “Such leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality” (p.20). There are some researchers who stated that transformational leadership style is effective to be applied in the school organization. Leithwood et.al (1999) stated that transformational leadership is the best way to restructuring school. Verona and Young (2001) also said that transformational leadership style is effective and suitable for organizational and social context such as school. These researches have done the research about the relationship between transformational leadership style and the result of the students’exam, The result shows that the principal need to increase the degree of the transfomational leadership style in order to increase students’score in exam.

Leithwood (1994) confirms that many school leaders possess the characteristics of a transformational leader. Scope (2006) conducted a study that examined the leadership styles of middle school principals at successful schools and school culture. The researcher determined that there were 77 schools in the state of Indiana that were considered to be successful, which was based on meeting or exceeding the state average score on the Indiana state standardized test. Thirty-six principals participated in the study, and the results suggested that a significant relationship existed between the variables. Also, the findings indicated that effective leadership is related to the transformational leadership style and school culture.

2. Transactional Leadership Style

Transactional leadership style is different with the transformational leadership style. If Transformational leadership focus on motivate the followers,  transactioal focus on reward and punishment for the follower in order to reach the organizational goal. Burns (1978) stated that transactional leadership use an agreement to the follower as the motivation to work. It focus on the contractual task that mostly followed by the follower who wants to get higher level in organization.

According to Barling, Slater, and Kelloway (2000), transactional leaders are able to motivate their followers by choosing rewards and incentives that will be the most desirable to them. s Bass (1999) states, “Whereas transformational leaders uplift the morale, motivation, and morals of their followers, transactional leaders cater to their followers’ immediate self-interests. The transformational leader emphasized what you can do for your country – the transactional leader, what your country can do for you” (p. 9)

If a principal uses transactional leadership style, it means that he/she will give reward or punishment to the all of academics in a school, such as teacher, staff, students, even a security. It’s commonly used if transformational leadership style is not effective anymore. The follower sometime need a “shock therapy” if they don’t do their job or break the rules. A teacher who always late when come to school is need to be punished as the concequency and a teacher who always come on time, do their job well and has achievement need to be awarded to motivate him/herand also motivate the other students. Students are also needed to be punished when they do wrong and they must be awarded when the have an achievement even if it is a simple thing.

3. Laissez-faire Leadership Style

Bass (1985) stated that Laissez faire Leadership is one of the weak leadership style. The laissez faire leader tends to ignore and avoid an intervention when it is needed. The leader with this style is commonly not responsible with their job, they tends to not inspire and motivate the follower to reach their goal. Bass (1998) describes President Ronald  Reagan as an example of a laissez-faire leader. As opposed to closely monitoring his  employees, he gave them the freedom to make their own decisions. As a result, there  were a multitude of scandals that were revealed during and after his term in office. This  could possibly have been avoided if he had utilized a different leadership style.

However, even most of researcher said that this leadership style is weak and ineeffective, there are some researchers that believe this leadership style can be beneficial in some cases. Barnett, Marsh, and Craven (2005) stated that Laissez faire leadership style  can be important to be applied in some situation.

Even laizzes faire leadership style can be effectife, but as the principal in a school,it is better for the principal to avoid this leadership style to decrease some mistakes in doing their job. Motivation from the principal will be so important to build the spirit of the followers.

Conclusion

Based on the three principal leadership styles that the writer explained before, it can be concluded that there is no perfect  leadership style that is appropriate for the principal. In every school, there will be different situation and it needs different style to lead it. Indonesian goverment should facilitate teachers to have training before they are chosen to be a principal. It is very important to guide the principal to have knowledge and vision in doing their job and responsibility.

           

Refference

Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations.New York: Free

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Bass, B. M. (1998). Transformational leadership: Industry, military, and educational

            impact. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership.NY: Harper & Row

Leithwood, K. A. (1992). The move toward transformational leadership. Educational

            Leadership, 49(5), 8-12.

Martin, Shawn T erese, "Relationship Between the Leadership Styles of Principals and      School Culture" (2009). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. Paper 269

Nawawi, Hadari. (1993). Kepemimpinan Menurut Islam. Yogyakarta: Gajah Mada University      Press   

Scope, P. S. (2006). Relationship between leadership styles of middle school principals

            and school culture  (Doctoral Dissertation, Purdue University, 2006).