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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
Press.
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).
