This discussion, primarily concerned with leadership in education, attempts to delineate the characteristics of transformational leadership by citing current literature on the subject, while at the same time maintaining a position that to describe transformational leadership fully and completely, as in a traditional definition, would be as undesirable as it is impossible. The thesis states that transformational leadership theory is a response to a changing consumer base that is culturally defined as rapidly changing and self-actualizing. Such a consumer base is frustrated by traditional linear and hierarchical management structures that assume an imposed and stable principle of enduring order. It requires instead a participatory leadership that encourages shared responsibility in decision-making, including making those fundamental decisions that shape the nature and vision of work, such as goal-setting and assessment. These decisions will predictably change the ways in which people think about education and the definition of school itself.
Without regard to the activity under discussion, whether it is social, educational, military, religious, industrial, recreational, or any other area of human activity, the active universe has always been defined as having two types of participants--leaders and followers. The assumption that a few people have strong leadership potential, that others can be trained or educated into leadership capability, and that the vast majority of the world simply follows has remained virtually unchallenged throughout most of human history. It should also be noted that most of human history to date has been spent foraging for food, erecting shelter, and responding to tribal conflict. To these simple ends, from the dawn of history well into the 1960's, parents have taught children respect for authority as a basic survival skill. Podsakoff, et. al. (1990), stated:
In 1960, parents felt that the most important values to teach their children were to respect authority, to respect the church, to respect one's government and to avoid questioning authority. Today the children of the 1960's are trying to teach their children to accept responsibility for their own actions, to be willing and confident in accepting challenges, and to question authority when necessary.... (107)
The parents and children noted by Podsakoff who accept responsibility for their own actions, choose and accept their own challenges, and question authority are the new consumer base for leadership as well as the new talent pool from which leaders and leadership systems arise.
The change noted by Podsakoff is no small change of emphasis. It is in fact a fundamental challenge to human understanding of the individual, of the community, and of the relationship between self and community. We will need in the end a new definition of who we are, and of who is responsible to whom for what and why the responsibilities exist. This new understanding has served notice upon every declared authoritarian system in place in the Western world during the past thirty years, sparking at times confrontation and reactionary backlash. The understanding persists, finding deep roots throughout history, tradition, and legend, and finding voice everywhere to declare that each individual has not only a right and obligation to survive, but also a right and obligation to shape both the present and the future. The call for a new style of leadership grows from a consumer base that has in its ranks few people who will follow authority without question. The response--transformational leadership theory--grows from the same base. In this developing system, individuals find the opportunity to share responsibility in decision-making, including making those fundamental decisions that shape the nature and vision of cooperative activity, such as goal-setting (defining work) and assessment. Decision-making in this manner is certain to be slower, but it carries a sense of individual commitment and shared responsibility because it is consensus-based.
Comparing and contrasting two definitions by the same thorough researcher will demonstrate the complexity of the transformational leadership idea. Bernard M. Bass (1996) divides leadership styles into two categories, transactional and transformational. He describes transactional leadership as a system in which "the leader rewards or disciplines the follower depending on the adequacy of the follower's performance." (7) He further divides transactional leadership into three sub-categories:
Contingent Reward (CR). This constructive transaction has been found to be reasonably effective... in motivating others to achieve higher levels of development and performance. With this method, the leader assigns or gets agreement on what needs to be done and promises rewards or actually rewards others in exchange for satisfactorily carrying the assignment.Management-by-Exception (MBE). This corrective transaction tends to be more ineffective. But it may be required in certain situations. This corrective transaction may be active (MBE-A) or passive (MBE-P). In MBE-A , the leader arranges to actively monitor deviances from standards, mistakes, and errors in the follower's assignments and to take corrective action as necessary. MBE-P implies waiting passively for deviances, mistakes, and errors to occur and then taking corrective action.
Laissez-Faire Leadership (LF). This is the avoidance or absence of leadership and is, by definition, most inactive, as well as most ineffective according to almost all research on the style. As opposed to transactional leadership, laissez-faire represents a nontransaction. (7)
Bass seeks to be thorough in his treatment of transformational leadership also, explaining that it has four components:
1. Charismatic leadership or idealized influence. Transformational leaders behave in ways that result in their being role models for their followers. The leaders are admired, respected, and trusted. Followers identify with the leaders and want to emulate them. Among the things the leader does to earn this credit is considering the needs of others over his or her own personal needs. The leader shares risks with followers and is consistent rather than arbitrary. He or she can be counted on to do the right thing, demonstrating high standards of ethical and moral conduct. He or she avoids using power for personal gain and only when needed.2. Inspirational motivation. Transformational leaders behave in ways that motivate and inspire those around them by providing meaning and challenge to their followers' work. Team spirit is aroused. Enthusiasm and optimism are displayed. The leader gets followers involved in envisioning attractive future states. The leader creates clearly communicated expectations that followers want to meet and also demonstrates commitment to goals and the shared vision.
3. Intellectual stimulation. Transformational leaders stimulate their followers' efforts to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions, reframing problems, and approaching old situations in new ways. Creativity is encouraged. There is no public criticism of individual members' mistakes. New ideas and creative problem solutions are solicited from followers, who are included in the process of addressing problems and finding solutions. Followers are encouraged to try new approaches, and their ideas are not criticized because they differ from the leaders' ideas.
4. Individualized consideration. Transformational leaders pay special attention to each individual's needs for achievement and growth by acting as coach or mentor. Followers and colleagues are developed to successively higher levels of potential. Individualized consideration is practiced as follows: New learning opportunities are created along with a supportive climate. Individual differences in terms of needs and desires are recognized. The leader's behavior demonstrates acceptance of individual differences (e.g., some employees receive more encouragement, some more autonomy, others firmer standards, and still others more task structure). A two-way exchange in communication is encouraged, and "management by walking around" work spaces is practiced. Interactions with followers are personalized. (e.g., the leader remembers previous conversations, is aware of individual concerns, and sees the individual as a whole person rather than as just an employee). The individually considerate leader listens effectively. The leader delegates tasks as a means of developing followers. Delegated tasks are monitored to see if the followers need additional direction or support and to assess progress; ideally, followers do not feel they are being checked on. (5-6)
In consideration of these two definitions, the first of transactional leadership and the second of transformational leadership, it is readily apparent that transformational leadership is difficult to define. The description is longer. Also, we must note, these four complex items by which Bass defines transformational leadership are components, while in the description of transactional leadership by the same researcher, a much shorter definition describes not components but three different types of transactional leadership. Bass resorts to definition by example on two occasions in the transformational leadership definition, but finds no such necessity in making the definition of transactional leadership.
Of particular importance in describing the complexity of this definition is the number of words in the definition that have subjectively varied and philosophically complex referents. A careful re-reading of the first item above with such words emphasized is significant:
1. Charismaticleadership or idealized influence. Transformationalleaders behave in ways that result in their being role modelsfor their followers. The leaders are admired, respected, and trusted. Followers identifywith the leaders and want to emulate them. Among the things the leader does to earnthis creditis considering the needs of others over his or her own personal needs. The leader shares riskswith followers and is consistentrather than arbitrary. He or she can be counted on to do the rightthing, demonstrating high standards of ethicaland moralconduct. He or she avoids using powerfor personal gainand only when needed. (5)
This problematical use of undefinable (subjective) terms continues throughout the definition of transformational leadership. A similar analysis of the definition Bass offers for transactional leadership produces no single word that would precipitate a philosophical discussion or a question regarding process of application. In assessing this aspect of the definition by Bass of transformational leadership, it is helpful to recall a discussion by Stephanie Pace Marshall (1996), writing in The School Administrator. Marshall deals extensively with difficult terms often found in discussions of transformational leadership, terms such as ethics, integrity, responsibility, accountability, and the educational contract. (8-14) Appending the considerations necessary to explicate each term increases the length of the definition of transformational leadership to a completely unusable form. It becomes not a definition, but instead a requirement to re-define and revise concepts upon which we base our lives.
Although the definitions by Bass show two different and opposed systems of leadership, these observations contrasting the two definitions by Bass say nothing about the substantive difference between transactional and transformational leadership. They merely demonstrate that transformational leadership is a much more complex and difficult idea than transactional leadership.
This difficulty in stating a precise definition is apparent in Murphy & Beck (1994), in the application of transformational ideas to the role of the school principal:
...they must resist the tendency to oversimplification. Transformative school leaders must be able to balance a variety of roles, to move among them as needed, and to live and work with the contradictions or ambiguities that acceptance of multiple roles may bring. Furthermore, they must be able to articulate the factors necessitating these many roles. They must understand the many facets of education and the multiple requirements and potentially contradictory challenges facing school leaders and be able to explain and defend their positions to critics who attempt to reduce teaching and learning to a set of formulas ...Principals must find their authority in their personal, interpersonal, and professional competencies, not in formal positions; they must cultivate collegiality, cooperation, and shared commitments among all with whom they work. In addition, they must be cognizant of the fact that changes between the school and its environment are imminent. (15)
In a qualitative study of a school restructuring that included the implementation of transformational leadership practice, Nona A. Prestine (1994) reiterates the idea that transformational ideas are not a prescription but a process that:
... may become little more than the latest "education fad" if we fail to recognize it as a way of thinking about change rather than as another overlay prescription to cure the ills of schools. It may well be that the most significant and durable evidence of systemic restructuring is evidenced in the changing associations and frames of reference for all participants, including the principal. (125)
and also recognizes the complexity of the issue by stating the weakness of her own organization of information. She has divided her comments into three areas, but recognizes that these separations are not inherent in the information:
...listing these reform efforts under the separate topic areas of organization and governance, curriculum, and pedagogy and assessment tends to fragment the actual change process and to obscure the interrelated and intertwined nature of the changes. (125)
In the traditional vision of education, these were discrete areas of reference. Under transformational leadership, there are no discrete areas. The organizational chart has no familiar lines and boxes to show what ideas came from where, and ownership of both contributions, ideas, and responsibility becomes shared rather than proprietary.
Prestine's study suggests that in the situation that was the subject of her study, the principal actually worked against definitions of the process because he regarded them as too precise and rigid. She quotes the principal's own words:
At both the organizational and the individual levels, clarity of understanding is necessary but without a rigid precision that would stifle the flexibility required. The responsibility for maintaining this delicate balance rests primarily with the principal: "I avoid formal visioning sessions. I firmly believe that that trivializes the pursuit. When you have formal visioning sessions, everyone makes their compromises publicly, and you come up with a trivial vision because it's compromised. So there's no commitment to it, because there's little there to be passionate about. There has to be a public celebration of the shared vision, but this cannot be precise and negotiated. You can impose a vision and we would all be exceptionally clear about it. But no one would have it, would own it. Vision must be owned, you must live it. In that way we can ignore the differences in detail so we can all agree on the shared understandings. (149)
This assessment clearly describes a need for defining in broad strokes, the making of a process that permits many individual variations of the vision to thrive under an umbrella of common understanding.
Stephanie Pace Marshall (1996), whom we cited earlier on the difficult terminology of transformational leadership theory, also provides a perspective on the new consumer base and the changed need for education in the 21st century:
The educational contract for 19th century schooling was designed to produce workers and citizens who would advance the economy by following the rules of machine-and factory-driven production, but the educational covenant for the 21st century mind must be grounded in an agenda that is decidedly different:€ It must overcome the Newtonian mindset that has prescribed our current constructs of teaching, learning, and schooling and led us to separate and segregate learners and learning.
€ It must be built upon a foundation of connection, coherence, shared and mutually created meaning, dynamic relationships, and human experience itself. (8)
She refers to the ideas under which the former contract developed as "linear and reductionist thinking" that must change in order to respond to current need. (8)
Given these definitions and considerations, we can remain somewhat confused about precisely what transformational leadership is, particularly in relationship to the public school in the United States. It would seem from the definitions that there is a new freedom in the classroom, an opportunity for individual teachers to incorporate personal visions of educational excellence into a supportive superstructure, all in the best interest of the student, the culture, and the coming age.
Yet in the classroom, this freedom does not appear. Schools are more burdened now than ever before with standardization of assessments (linear and reductionist as they may be), and politically generated tasking. Only rarely does any public school in the United States define the educational task, develop processes, apply theory, or perform assessments based upon consensus of teachers, parents, students, and administration. Goals 2000: Educate America Act, (Public Law 103-227, 1994), sets goals by law. These goals are not a consensus of what teachers and schools intend and plan to do. The school that looks to transformational leadership still operates within a social understanding of school in which goals are set externally, funding is tied to the acceptance of these goals as valid, and job security rests upon the objective attainment of these goals. As is painfully apparent, the goals are not a shared understanding drawn in broad strokes, able to shelter and nourish many individual variations of the vision. The goals are concrete and specific, number-based, and according to some educators, run counter to the best interests of everyone concerned. One such dissenter is Robert H. Seidman (1996, July), who states that the requirements unfairly link the educational structure to the socioeconomic structure in such as way as to counter the effects it seeks to advance.
Seidman's arguments are persuasive in addressing the proposed (prescribed) change in graduation rate. The law states, "By the year 2000, the high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent...and the gap in high school graduation rates between American students from minority backgrounds and their non-minority counterparts will be eliminated." (Public Law 103-227, 1994). Seidman argues that the goals being set are not in our best interest:
The theory of the logic and behavior of the educational system illustrates how powerful systemic forces converge to stabilize the high school attainment rate at about 75% where it has been since 1965 and where no traditional national education policy will be able to advance it very much. Even if education policy could succeed in increasing the rate to 90%, or beyond, undesirable consequences of potentially great magnitude, especially for the targeted minority groups, would result....One undesirable consequence is economic disaster for those who cannot or choose not to complete high school. They will be shut out of important non-educational social benefits (e.g., good job opportunities) unless alternative routes are opened for them. Another consequence is the potential reduction of these very same social benefits for those who do complete high school. A third consequence manifests itself as an unintended, but cruel hoax perpetrated upon the very minorities the Act seeks to help. By virtue of their being the last identifiable group to attain the high school diploma in proportion to their numbers in the age cohort, the high school diploma will not have the same power to secure social goods as it did with previous groups....
As the size of the educational system increases, the power of the normative principle also increases. Employers now utilize high school attainment as a selection criterion and social goods, such as status and jobs, begin to be preferentially distributed to high school graduates....However, when the attainment rate reaches 100%, the mere possession of the high school diploma can have no socioeconomic meaning whatsoever. That is, no social goods can be distributed on the basis of high school attainment because everyone has the diploma. It is at this point (and at 0%), that the power of the normative principle is completely destroyed although its power may be weakened well before this point is reached. (1-2)
These goals may appear to be outside the context of the discussion of transformational leadership until it is recognized that a transformational leader, as well as the contingent faculty and students operating under a transformational leadership principle, all exist and operate within the context of this law along with the multitude of others that are rigidly prescriptive of school function. Goals 2000, enacted as a program that would be voluntary on the part of states because the federal government cannot force legislation in the areas these goals address, is attached to significant federal funding. The Commonwealth of Virginia is the only state to reject the initiative. In doing so, Virginia has lost $8.4 million for the first two years of the program and currently stands to lose another $14.9 million over the next two years. This information, reported in a local Virginia newspaper includes the reasons stated by Governor George Allen for the refusal:
Allen's administration has maintained that there are unacceptable "strings" on the funds that would give the federal government too much say over Virginia's public education policies. The State Board of Education has followed Allen's wishes and voted not to apply for the funds. ( BHC4A, November 25, 1996)
In this short article, it is clearly apparent that, although the Commonwealth has resisted federal inroads into goal-setting, Virginia teachers do not have significant control of goals. They remain subject to the State Board of Education, which remains subject to the wishes of the Governor. The local school boards that operate under the State Board of Education then have another linear and structured level of authority over the local schools. Only under this heavy bureaucratic structure is any transformational change of goal-setting and shared vision taking place. The school is the focal point of many extermal political and economic forces, many of them contradictory, and each assured of its own right to set goals and priorities for schools, to establish ways of monitoring and measuring the success of schools, and to call school teachers and administrators to account if specific goals are not met.
Louis & Murphy (1994) commenting upon the work environment of the school principal in the public school conclude that their researchers have shown how the school operates in:
...an external world that is becoming less predictable, less orderly, and more cluttered for principals. They help us see the turbulence outside of schools that lies behind these changes. And they document rather thoroughly the complex environment that results. Concomitantly, they add to our understanding of complexity by revealing how these external factors create a much more complicated managerial context within the school as well....Lacking a clearly defined conception of meaningful educational reform, firmly tethered to existing views of schooling, and absent support necessary to help them undertake significant change, some of the principals in these studies seemed handicapped in their quest for alternative views of education and new roles for themselves to facilitate fundamental reform. (266, 271)
Some of the principals, on the other hand, have come to a position of comfort with the chaotic environment within and without:
...These leaders see complexity--and the lack of routine and order it entails--as normal. They feel less need to put everything in the correct box. (271)
If the social forces driving the push to transformational leadership that we noted earlier are indeed substantive changes in the consumer base, it is predictable that these forces will not decline. It is the close associations of self and community that power this complex vision of a leadership process that brings each educator, teacher, parent, or administrator, and potentially each student, into the creative process and permits a breadth of vision and opportunity that is appropriate to the information age. How transformational leadership will respond to challenges such as those presented in Goals 2000 may be shaped as much by the application of transformational ideas to government, economics, business, and industry as by the internal process of schools. The consumer base of the 21st century will be a different consumer base, both within and outside of schools. Transformational leadership, because it takes into account the individual and the complex forces at work in the society, has the flexibility and growth potential to take education beyond the walls of the school into the community. As the school moves into the larger context of the community, the face of Goals 2000 could change, and the problems government seeks to address by bringing pressure upon the school as an entity loose some of their force. The school may not, after all be an entity. It may be a process, a component, a center, an influence, or a force; but in the public and in the private mind, under transformational leadership, it has the potential to cease to be an entity to blame and regulate and to become a force for true educational reform.
Some indications that the educational landscape is changing are already apparent, confirming a turning away from the public school as the singular standard-bearer of education. One indicator is the sharp rise in the number of students who never experience public school or private school, but rather are educated at home. J. Dan Marshall and James P. Valle (1996, August) traced the history of the development of the public school as a drawing together of family, church, and community efforts at education into one educational site in order to validate a perspective upon the current trend away from the public school toward a more diverse base, moving back to the family, the church, and the community. (1-2) They suggest that:
Those who care about examining and acting upon the quality of their local schools seek information from numerous sources, including their own experiences, outside consultants, beliefs and opinions collected from local, state, and national polls, and "the literature" of academia. But they seldom tap the one segment of their community which may provide the most unique perspective: parents who have opted out of the local public school system....those families who have taken it upon themselves to provide education at home...may have something important to offer those working to change public education. (1)
Marshall and Valle point out that the number of students in home schooling has increased in the past ten years from about 15,000 to 350,000, and most states now provide resources for parents with children in home schooling. The agency of the home is supported on a broad scale even by those parents whose children attend public school. In a recent survey of parents with children in public school in Russell County, Virginia, responses indicated an agreement that parental responsibility extends to student performance in school. Asked where they place the blame when children do poorly in school, 55.6 percent stated that they are more likely to blame the child's home life. Those who are unsure about who should bear the blame numbered 24.3 per cent, while about 13.5 per cent blamed the child, 4.2 per cent blamed the school, and only 2.3 per cent blamed the teachers. (MacKay & West et .al., 1996, raw data.) Added to this change in perspective away from school responsibility to individual agency and responsibility, we have the strong advocacy for voucher systems supporting school choice, and the recent compliance of some school systems with release time initiatives for religion classes taught at churches. While these developments may seem unrelated, each represents an erosion of the idea of the public school as the singular educational site. Recent attacks upon the tenure system as outdated and unresponsive to current needs may be seen in this way also, as an erosion of the autonomy and authority of "school."
This change in the way we understand education will not come without pain or cost, both public and intimately personal. Murphy (1994) quotes Bredeson (1991) whose perception of the change has a poignant and personal note:
Relinquishing of one social role script for another results in a variety of affective and cognitive responses by individuals and can be likened to the normal loss process in which one needs first to recognize the dysfunctionalities of a current role, to let go of those role elements which impede change to new roles to meet new realities, and finally to negotiate new and more satisfying roles to replace old ones. (Murphy, 44)
Much of what was traditional and valued about schools is changing in response to new demands. This change constitutes a loss, which in the vision of Bredeson must be recognized and mourned before a strong new structure can emerge. In the future, the nature of the new structure may provide a way of defining what we did with schools and with leadership models and theory in this period of reform. Currently, the vision remains chaotic and to some degree necessarily undefined. We do not perceive the nature of the new structure clearly, and lacking a clear image of the new structure that is our goal, we cannot clearly define how we are working toward it. We do, however, know that the world has changed substantively, and individuals are no longer content to be the pawns of power in any context, social, educational, political, or economic. While there are no marches in the streets or threats of civil unrest, there is a quiet undercurrent of individual awareness of agency and responsibility. Where these basic changes in the way we think about ourselves will bring us a generation from now is a dim fixture that holds both hope and terror, and recalls the definition of transformational leadership offered by Bass, who states, "The leader shares risks with followers..." (5)
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Louis, K. S., & Murphy, J. (1994). The evolving role of the principal: some concluding thoughts. In J. Murphy and K. S. Louis (Eds.), Reshaping the principalship: insights from transformational reform efforts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, Inc.
Mackay, L., & West, R., et .al. (1996). [Russell County community survey of parental attitudes toward education] Unpublished raw data.
Marshal, J. D., & Valle, J.P., (1996, August) Public school reform: potential lessons from the truly departed. Education Policy Analysis Archives (A peer-reviewed electronic journal), 4,12 Available World Wide Web: http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/epaa
Marshall, S. P. (1996, October) The vision, meaning, and language of educational transformation. The School Administrator, 52, 8-15.
Murphy, J., & Beck, L.G. (1994). Restructuring the principalship: challenges and possibilities. In J. Murphy and K. S. Louis (Eds.), Reshaping the principalship: insights from transformational reform efforts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, Inc.
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on followers' trust in leader, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Leadership Quartherly, 1, 107-142.
Prestine, N. A. (1994). Ninety degrees from everywhere: new understandings of the Principal's role in a restructuring essential school. In J. Murphy and K. S. Louis (Eds.), Reshaping the principalship: insights from transformational reform efforts. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, Inc.
Public Law 103-227 (1994), "Goals 2000: Educate America Act". 103rd Congress.
Seidman, R. H. (1996, July) National Education 'Goals 2000': Some Disastrous Unintended Consequences. Education Policy Analysis Archives (A peer-reviewed electronic journal), 4,11 Available World Wide Web: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v4n11/
Virginia set to lose $14.9 million from Goals 2000. (1996, November 25). Bristol Herald Courier/Virginia-Tennessean. p 4A.