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SECTION 4 LEADERSHIP AND LEADING

Studying Section 4 should take you about 18 hours. In focusing on what leadership in education is and what makes it effective, Section 4 addresses aspects of key questions 1 and 2. After studying this section you should: have a better understanding of the different ways in which leadership is conceptualized and appreciate the importance of leadership as a quality that can and should be exercised at all levels in an organization; have reflected on the interpersonal skills required in exercising leadership and begun to assess your own leadership abilities, how you exercise leadership and how you could improve; be able to analyse and assess how leadership is practised in your own work setting.

All the readings for this section are in Reader 2, Part 1.

4.1

INTRODUCTION
The true leader is always led. (Guardian Weekly, 30 October 1976)

Leadership is seen as crucial to the conduct of successful interpersonal relations, which are at the core of effective management. This section examines definitions of leadership, locates leadership in the context of the work of an effective organization, and discusses some theories of leadership and their limitations. Gender issues in leadership are looked at, and some of the tensions between an enlarged view of leadership and accountability are explored. The importance of leadership in motivating people is emphasized. Finally, the section considers the nature of stress and conflict, and demonstrates something of the role of leadership in its alleviation.

4.2

LEADERSHIP AND EFFECTIVENESS

Leadership is a fashionable word today although, of course, it is capable of numerous, and often misleading, definitions. A broad preliminary definition is that leadership is basically about having the ability to influence and to be influenced by individuals, groups and teams in order to take them in a desired direction. Here the two-way nature of leadership is emphasized; that is, leadership requires the co-operation of followers, and the recognition that they have a valuable contribution to make. At the other extreme is the seductive and dangerous view of leadership as the exercise of charismatic powers and authority to control the activities of others, without any real regard for their own legitimate views and needs. As you will have discovered already, there is also considerable debate about how leadership differs from management. I take the view that effective leadership involves management and effective management involves leadership. However, it is useful to look on effective leadership as relating to inspiration, mission, transformation, direction, pathfinding, strategy and 'doing the right things', and effective management as relating to the designing and carrying out of plans, transactions, means, systems, getting things done, working effectively with people at the tactical level and 'doing things right'. No matter how leadership is defined, it is vital to educational effectiveness.

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While the link between leadership and educational effectiveness seems obvious, it is not always easy to understand precisely why they are linked so closely together. When examining the relationship between the two concepts it is useful to view leadership from three perspectives: leadership as attempted (a description of what actually happens when leadership is exerted), as successful (where the leader's intended outcomes are achieved) and as effective (when successful leadership results in the achievement of organizational goals) (Bass, These distinctions are often not made clear in practice and in the literature on leadership and school effectiveness. There is evidence of a link between effective leadership and an effective school, with the general conclusion that leadership at various levels in a school is vital for effectiveness. A report on failing schools lists the following factors in failure: conflict between staff, deficient leadership, a high staff turnover, ineffective classroom practices, a siege mentality, blaming deficiencies of the school on the pupils, and lack of basic competences to run the school effectively, with nothing providing 'more than a partial substitute for the leadership which a school requires' (OFSTED/DfEE, 1995). However, it is one thing to establish a relationship but another to demonstrate its specific influence, and yet another to demonstrate specific ways in which leadership of any or all kinds can lead to educational improvement. Leitner (1994) states that the role of the leader/principal must be placed in perspective: school effectiveness involves the interaction between leader behaviour, teachers, student achievement and the school environment.

4.3

LEADING IN THE ORGANIZATION

Activity 1
List some occasions on which you have attempted/exercised leadership in your place of work (in the educational sphere). For each of the occasions listed write down how you attempted to exert leadership (i.e. what you did), how successful you consider it to have been and its effectiveness for the achievement of the goals of your organization. You may find it useful to think about your involvement in leadership using the headings of your personal characteristics as a leader, the tasks you perform and the way you are involved in the leadership of teams and individuals. Keep your notes on this activity for your assignment work.

It might be quite novel for you to think of yourself as a leader if you are not a senior member of your organization. In thinking about leadership activities you might also it strange to emphasize the process of leading rather than the role of leader. A major purpose of this section is to view leadership as happening at a number of different levels throughout an organization, and to think about leadership as a process in which people to varying degrees make 'especially salient contributions' in leading (Hosking, 1988), which will vary according to context, situation and time. If leadership is important to organizational effectiveness the co-operation and contribution of many more members of an organization who are engaged in leading are needed than is often the case now. A wider approach to leading in educational organizations can be argued for on both practical and ideological grounds. Leadership is, frankly, too enormous a task for one individual - or two or three - to take on alone. As demands grow for improved quality and more and wider services, a new form of leadership is emerging. One view is that leaders are no longer managers of routines alone: that educational managers increasingly need to take the initiative. They must understand change as well as manage it. They must involve and motivate staff, create a positive climate, build a group vision, develop quality educational programmes, provide a positive instructional environment, encourage

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high performance, apply evaluation processes, analyse and interpret outcomes, be accountable for results and maximize resources. You might like to consider the weight of this view. This conceptualization (which falsely minimizes the need for some authority, control and formal procedures, however widely invested) points to leadership as an activity closely related to the quality of an organization (or community), 'quality' being the positive characteristic of the whole.

Reading 1 In Chapter 1 by Ogawa and Bossert in Reader 2 the view is expressed that leadership should not be confined to people in certain higher-level roles (the 'technical-rational' view). Instead Ogawa and Bossert advocate an 'institutional' view, which sees leadership as more widely distributed, flowing through the network of roles making up an organization, and gaining its strength from the personal resources of the people within the organization. You should recall here the distinction between the terms 'organization' and 'institution' noted in Section 3.1. Ogawa and Bossert use the term 'institution' in a specialized sense rather than as interchangeable with 'organization'. (Because of the distinction made between these terms we have tried in the Study Guide to avoid using 'institution' and 'organization' interchangeably, but you will find many authors who do.) As you read, make notes on: the roots from which the concept of leadership as a quality of organizations derives; how the four dimensions of leadership - function, role, the individual and culture - relate to the technical-rational perspective on organizations; how you would characterize an institutional perspective on organizations, how it views the four dimensions of leadership and the view of leadership this generates; the relationship between the institutional perspective on leadership and Hales's (Reader 3, Chapter 3) analysis of power.

Ogawa and Bossert's view is that the technical-rational perspective relates and confines leadership to the prime task of achieving hierarchically derived goals through formal structures, and is therefore about leadership within the status quo. By contrast, the institutional perspective views leadership as meeting the needs of the society being served, and is therefore about being within a changing society and culture and collectively responding to this within the institution. An organization must respond appropriately in order to survive. If leadership affects the quality of an organization's response and hence its survival, then its importance cannot be overemphasized. Leadership needs to be ubiquitous, with all aspiring actors involved in the process of shaping the nature of the organization. Thus in this view leadership is a cultural phenomenon. It must not be seen as 'embedded' in a particular role(s) but in the relationships that exist between participants within the organization. In their relationships leaders can draw on sources of knowledge and expertise other than their own. The assumption in this view of leadership is that individuals draw on their own attributes and may all have the potential to lead.

Activity 2 Conduct an analysis of an educational organization that is well known to you and reflect on the extent to which it conducts its day-to-day affairs, policy formulations, and so on, on the basis of one of the above perspectives. How can leadership be characterized within that organization?

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This section has brought to the fore a view of leadership that has been slow to take shape in practice and to be discussed in the literature of educational management. Some of the readings that follow take a more conventional view of leadership in educational organizations. As you study these you might like to use what you have thought about thus far as a critique of them.

4.4

LEADERSHIP AS PRAXIS

The theory of leadership is something of a minefield. The caution that Bennis sounded in 1959 is generally true today. Of all the hazy and confounding areas of social psychology, leadership theory undoubtedly contends for top nomination ... Always, it seems the concept of leadership eludes us ... So we have invented an endless proliferation of terms to deal with it: leadership, power, status, authority, rank, prestige, influence, control, manipulation, domination, and so forth, and still the concept is not sufficiently defined. (Bennis, 1959, pp. 259-60)

Reading 2 Read Chapter 2 by Beare et al. in Reader 2. As you do so, make notes on: (a) which distinct theories of leadership the authors refer to; and (b) the ten factors that can shape leadership in schools.

In reading this chapter you may have been struck by the way theories of leadership and leading have developed, from detailed descriptions and prescriptions of a large number of qualities that go to create an effective leader, to much more general leadership guidelines. The focus is more on successful leading as expressed in words such as 'mission' and 'vision', which incorporate both traits (wrapped up in less deterministic terms than hitherto) and behaviours, but amount to something more than the sum of their parts. The 'buzzwords' today, which seem to take on that holistic character, are 'vision' (this appears ten times in the above reading, and 'transformation' (in contrast to 'transaction'). However, this type of leadership should not be viewed as a messianic call or charismatic fervour but as an approach that calls for realism in its idealism; it demands some very practical implementation to find its full expression, as Beare et al. recognize. Transactional leadership has been characterized as focusing on basic needs and wants and extrinsic rewards as a source of motivation and basis for management. The leader approaches followers with a transaction in mind and aims to get compliance (effort, productivity, loyalty) in exchange for expected rewards (economic, political, psychological). The needs of followers are recognized and roles and tasks are assigned to achieve desired outcomes. This may be efficient and productive but is limited compared with the work of transformational leaders, who attempt to raise participants' needs to higher levels of motivation and maturity, while striving to fulfil human potential. This new dimension of transformational leadership, with its focus on the motivation of others in a visionary way, has a long pedigree. Caldwell and Spinks (1992) use the term 'artistry' for this type of leadership. Its properties are a sense of direction, the capability of engaging thoughts and feelings (this is one way in which leadership differs from management), the understanding of purpose between leader and led and originality, or the capacity of the leader to capture the group/team's imagination. This is a mission with a vision. A college, for example, may have perfectly worthy goals without its leaders having the insight to make them challenging goals or the vision to see them to completion. In the

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former case they manage; in the latter case we can see a transformation. Beare et characteristics of effective leadership have many of the above values and actions associated with transformational leadership. A number of critical comments can be made about transformational leadership. There is a danger that this type of leadership may be offered as a universal panacea, as if there were no problems or tensions associated with it. There is a tension, and even a contradiction, between being a transformational leader and allowing space for other leaders in an organization to do some leading. The Beare et al. article espouses participation but does not recognize fully the abilities . of others to take on real leadership roles. If the superiority of transformational over transactional leadership for its educational effectiveness is attested then proof of this is needed. The evidence we have is the collation of experience of how transformational leadership in practice and the general feeling that it seems desirable. Silins (1994) has produced evidence that casts doubt on assuming that transformational and transactional leadership are independent variables and argues that 'transactional leadership behaviour may provide the indispensible bureaucratic linkages between transformational leadership and school outcomes'. In spite of these criticisms transformational leadership has much to commend it, provided it can encourage the transformational leadership of others.

Reading 3 You should now read Chapter 3 by Southworth in Reader 2. The discussion on headteachers and effective schools has relevance to practice outside the primary sphere, and you will need to cover the ground in order to complete the next activity. First read the section on 'Headteachers and effective schools', because it reinforces some of the points made earlier in this section of the Study Guide. Then read through from the beginning, noting especially the gaps that exist in our knowledge of leadership in primary schools and the six 'issues arising from the literature'. Activity 3 (a) If you are working in the primary sector, identify those areas in which Southworth's review of the research reflects what is happening in your experience. What data would you need in order to have a full portrait of leadership and leading in your school? (You might be able to fill in some of the gaps as you study the course.) (b) If you work in another sector of education, look at the six 'issues' raised by Southworth and consider their relevance to your own organization. identity' is in education, what prescriptions (c) No matter what your for change in leadership would you wish to make where you work?

A review of the literature on secondary school leadership would have revealed a picture substantially like that within the primary sector though with significant differences and additions. A common thread is that leadership by secondary heads matters (Holmes, 1993); the quality of headship helps to determine the quality of teaching and ultimately the level of pupil achievement. However, Ribbins (1995) has identified three grounds on which this claim may be challenged. First, there are some studies that show little or no correlation between the quality of headship and the level of student achievement (Scheerens, 1992). With regard to the claims of transformational leadership he cites Gronn (1995), who says that 'proponents frequently make transformational leadership a cause of, or trigger for, enhanced organizational performance' when 'the claims made ... simply collapse because the data simply cannot sustain them'. Second, he suggests that, from an international perspective, where education systems vary, heads may lack the ability to determine the quality of schooling, constrained as they are by the specific economic, social and cultural contexts in which they operate. Third, there is a developing critical but contestable view that

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with changing styles of decision making and management there is a case for 'leaderless schools' and for 'bossless' self-management teams (Davies, 1995). This is an extreme view of collegiality. However, it is debatable that education teams and organizations can be effective but leaderless. So while there are grounds for questioning the maxim that 'headship matters' one should not abandon the notion of the centrality of leadership, but provide training opportunities to achieve success in leading.

4.5

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

There are two main issues to consider here. One is the issue of equity surrounding discrimination against women taking on leadership roles; the other concerns the attributes and behaviours that women bring to leadership. The issue of equity is not confined to gender alone but involves discrimination against members of racial and ethnic groups, older people and people with disabilities. Little is written in general about discrimination against or equity for groups of people in taking on leadership roles. The number of references to racial discrimination in leadership, for example, are few (see Although we understand something about the process whereby gender affects leadership style, we know little of the effect of ethnicity and how that is given expression in various contexts. The whole matter has a very low profile in research and in leadership practice. Women are underrepresented in management. This seems to happen at all levels in education. Even though school teaching is one of the traditional female professions, women are poorly represented in senior positions as a percentage of women employed in each sector. Women also seem to spend longer in achieving promotion to senior management posts than do men (Evetts, 1986 and 1989; and Earley, 1987). For women belonging to minority ethnic groups barriers are compounded by racial Commentators have used various models to explain why so few women are to be found in school management. These explanations are elaborated upon in the reading that follows.

Reading 4 Please read Chapter 5 by Hall in Reader 2. You will see that she has divided the chapter into the two themes outlined above, 'Women teachers' careers' and 'Women's approaches to As you read, make notes on: (a) barriers to the promotion of women to management posts (the debate is largely related to senior management) and (b) evidence that gender factors are of real importance in effective leadership.

Court (1994) holds the view, based on an interesting research study, that a more holistic approach to gender issues in management is required. The good qualities falsely deemed masculine, such as courage, strength and skill, and those wrongly deemed feminine, such as tenderness and the ability to have and express feelings, should be universally valued irrespective of the gender of the leader or the level of that leadership. Information and power should be shared through mutually supportive team decision making and problem solving. This highly participative model would help to develop 'positive, stimulating and caring learning environments for children through working with teachers and parents as colleagues and equals'. This is a view already advocated in this section generally for leadership and leading. However, because a head/principal is held accountable he or she cannot delegate all authority, power and influence to others.

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Reading 5 You should now read Chapter 4 by Grace in Reader 2. He calls for critical reflectiveness on the nature of leadership. You may wish to reflect on what is written at two levels, from the position of your own ethical and moral thinking and from considerations of practicality.

This section has argued for leadership to be exerted at a number of levels, and that it should not be dependent on holding a particular or formal position in an organization. In practice, power and influence are not necessarily confined to people in posts that bestow formal authority. At this point you will find it helpful to go back to Section 3, to remind yourself of what Bennett (after Hales) wrote about authority, power and influence. There power is seen as a latent resource and its use on another person as influence. No one in an organization is without some degree of power, however small, although clearly some have more power than others. The four types of power resource - physical, economic, knowledge and normative - are available to leaders in varying degrees, because of either their personal qualities (ascribed or achieved) or their position within the organization. The way this power is made manifest in influence is - as you have seen - various. The extent of influence depends on whether those being led respond positively - that is, whether they perceive the power and influence to be legitimate. If the perception is that they are non-legitimate, then at best there will be alienative compliance. If the power is perceived to be legitimate, then (as Hales has conceptualized) there may be instrumental compliance and cognitive and moral commitment. These conceptualizations of power, influence and compliance/commitment are useful in analysing leadership and leading as potential being expressed at a number of levels within an organization. However, in practice there is nearly always one major formal leader in a school, college or university, who is required to account for his or her actions to a body that is 'external' to it. In a school, and in other educational organizations, the head or principal is responsible to the governing body, which in one sense could be a critical friend but in another is a body from whom authority is delegated to the head, and to whom the head is answerable. The dilemma for a leader, or anyone with delegated authority to exert leadership in an organization, is how much freedom to allow other people and how much control to retain. The leader, after all, is the person ultimately held accountable for the success or failure of a goal or task. 'Participation' has become a buzzword in educational management circles. However, there is evidence that participation is not always wanted, desirable or effective. For example, Hoy and Tartar (1993) devised criteria for assessing when participation by organizational members is effective. They found it to be so when members have both an interest and expertise in the issue. If they have neither then they will perceive participation as a pointless exercise. Staff with expertise but no interest are likely to resent spending time on matters of no concern to them. A particularly difficult situation arises when staff have an interest but no expertise. If staff are consulted but their views are then ignored by organizational leaders, the 'contrived collegiality' they perceive is also likely to breed resentment. Effective leadership thus requires appropriate judgements about how, when and whom to involve in organizational decision making. In the remainder of this section we will consider three important aspects of people working in an organization: motivation, stress and conflict, and conflict resolution. Much of the discussion will centre on the role of the leader in managing these matters for others. However, leaders themselves experience demotivation, stress and conflict, and need to call on their own resources and sometimes those of others to handle them.

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4.6

MOTIVATION

Motivation has been defined as a person's will to do something; motivation is the 'why' of behaviour (Hersey and Blanchard, 1993). Of course, not all the members of an organization are motivated by the same mix of goals, and motivation may change over time. Effective leadership seems to be of pivotal importance in having the sensitivity to recognize needs and in trying to meet them, within organizational constraints. We start at the individual level.

Activity 4 On a scale of A (not at all) to F (very or always) rate your current response to the following statements in relation to the post you hold: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 The quality of my working conditions is important to me. My job gives me the opportunity to make decisions and carry them out. My job gives me the opportunity to have good relationships with all my colleagues. The policy of the organization and its management supports my work. My current post gives me the security Status is important to me. am often told how well perform in my job. There are promotion prospects in my organization. could achieve more with more freedom of action. A better salary would help me to work more effectively. 12 My post gives me the chance to learn new things. 13 14 often feel that have achieved something worthwhile. am often able to put my ideas into practice. need. The duties specific to my job are interesting.

15 My job is never boring.

How many statements did you give an F rating to? Or an A rating? The suggestion is that the more statements to which you have given an F rating, the more motivated you are. This may be a simplistic categorization; many more subtleties and variables are involved. However, I hope the exercise has stimulated some initial thoughts about your own motivation, whether as a leader or a follower.

Reading 6 You should now read Chapter 6 by Riches in Reader 2, which is a summary of the main aspects of motivation in education, including various theories that help to explain it. Make some notes on the differences between process and content theories and on how they might apply to your own educational situation, noting their implications for your own leadership and/or that of others. Activity 5 the light of your response to Activity 4 and the theories developed in Reading 6, you and why. carry out an audit of the factors that appear to motivate and Then examine your own organization (or part of it) and identify its strengths and weaknesses in motivating its staff. What might be done by its leader(s) to improve motivation and to develop a high-performance cycle within the establishment?

I think a number of generalizations can be made about the implications for leaders from what we have learned so far:

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If leaders really want to improve performance and work attitudes they must be involved actively in managing motivational processes and accept responsibility for improving attitudes. Such things do not happen by chance. Appreciation of work performance (or people as individuals) has to be recognized in a positive way, by making a conscious effort, for example, to express thanks and give recognition to other people - even if this is only by saying 'Good morning' to them. 'Physician heal thyself: to improve motivational performance leaders need to go through a process of self-examination. Do they know their own strengths and limitations? Do they have a clear idea of their own wants, desires and expectations from their work? Are their perceptions of themselves the same as those of others? A recognition of the individual motivational differences of followers is vital. Leaders need to be aware of and sensitive to variations in staff needs, abilities and traits in order to recognize differences in preferences for motivation. This awareness allows a leader to utilize to the full the diversity of talents among their staff. As difficult as it is in education, leaders should look for ways of rewarding performance, even if the rewards are small or non-financial. Leaders should look for ways of offering staff tasks of greater challenge and diversity to meet personal satisfactions of need and to make clear what is expected of them. The quality of the overall work environment in terms of the climate of the group and its dynamics is vital. Effective team work is an important factor in motivation. To increase motivational levels - and consequently performance - it is important to involve staff as fully as they wish in the processes aimed at organizational effectiveness in a co-operative way.

4 5

(Based on Steers and Porter, 1991) Successful motivation clearly calls for developments along a number of fronts, related in specific ways to the individual concerned. Motivation should be a prime consideration in managing people, with leaders accurately diagnosing what constitutes the motivation of a given individual and the factors that contribute to team and group morale; positive, supportive management strategies should be used to ensure that motivational levels and good morale are maintained and improved. Too often diagnosis is neglected, demotivation resulting in stress is not spotted and poor performance quickly takes over. This is a particularly difficult aspect of managing people because there is a fine line between good stress (known as eustress) and bad stress (distress). Every person is motivated, but not always in the right direction.

4.7

STRESS AND LEADERSHIP

The outcomes of stress in the education world are well documented. While the reasons for this are less well defined there is evidence that conflicts between the teaching and management roles take a heavy toll. Headteachers are expected to manage school budgets and curricular developments as well as the concerns and stresses of teachers. The classroom teacher or lecturer is frequently the recipient of these pressures, no matter what leaders do to mitigate them. Stress is not inevitable in these situations, but it is likely, and it is vital to be able to identify stress in oneself and in others at an early stage in order to manage it successfully. The reading that follows gives a clear overview of the nature of stress among staff in education and suggests strategies for recognizing stress in oneself and how it can be managed personally and organizationally.

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Reading 7 Now read Chapter 7 by Crawford in Reader 2. As you read, consider how far the characteristics of stress as outlined match your own personal experience of stress (if you have any!) and the experience of colleagues, and note especially how we might increase our awareness of stress and its management. Activity 6 Consider the following questions: How do you seek to reduce the level of stress you experience in your own organization? What managerial practices in an educational establishment known to you seem to influence the nature of teacher and managerial stress experienced? What do you think is the part played by leadership in your own organization in reducing stress?

Your responses to all these questions will, of course, be personal as they are largely specific to the context within which you are working. Although, at first sight, the links between leadership and stress may seem somewhat remote, my thesis is that defective leadership is responsible for much unresolved stress in educational organizations. A prime leadership activity is therefore to identify the sources of stress that lead to demotivation, and in extremis to burnout, and to develop skills to resolve the situation. Crawford has identified ways in which leaders can manage things so that stress can be minimized. This can be done at various levels. It can be done: structurally, by looking at the way the establishment is organized, from its patterns of communication to its arrangements for assigning roles to its staff, and the way working groups are organized - preferably into cohesive teams; culturally, by examining the extent to which shared ways of thinking, acting and feeling in the organization are positive, celebratory even, rather than negative - again teams (as we shall consider in the next section) have a crucial role to play here; personally, by leaders being available to listen to staff and adopting a counselling role to see whether a person's stress can be reduced, and to encourage staff 'to think about their work in new ways', maybe 'to commit themselves to new standards and new goals' (Johnson, 1986).

Cooper and Kelly (1993), after surveying stress among headteachers - who often feel isolated because they do not function in a culture of sharing - came to the wide-ranging conclusion that 'there should be major structural approaches to occupational stress management which encompass the employment and selection process, professional and managerial support and recovery programmes, and job design changes; secondly consideration needs to be given to the public education system, and the demands put upon it' - something of a forlorn hope! - 'so that the service specification takes into account the human factor' (Cooper and Kelly, 1993, p. 142). Leadership is crucial in creating a culture in which the happinesses, stresses and disappointments of belonging to a human organization are shared. In such a culture interpersonal conflicts can best be resolved through negotiation.

4.8

LEADERSHIP AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

One cause of stress is unresolved conflict in the workplace: different viewpoints may not be tolerated or even recognized. From the outset it is important to state that conflict, like stress, is not necessarily negative. Conflict is 'behavior by a person or group that is purposely designed to inhibit the attainment of goals by

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another person or group' (Gray and Starke, 1986). It should not be confused with competition, which takes place when individuals or groups have incompatible goals but do not appear to interfere with each other when they try to attain those goals. There are different types of conflict within an organization: within a person's inner states; inter-individual, between two individuals; individual-group, when a person may be going against group norms; and inter-group. Some positive outcomes of conflict might be: an increase in energy levels of groups or individuals; an increase in group cohesion; the exposure of hitherto hidden problems; increased motivation to clarify objectives.

When under attack, groups tend to act to protect their values; the effectiveness of an organization can increase in a conflict situation because groups may be forced to adapt to a changing environment. In situations of complacency it may sometimes be desirable to stimulate conflict. Possible negative outcomes of conflict include a decline in communication between the conflicting parties, the development of aggression and hostility, and pressure to conform to group demands. The causes of conflict are many, such as limited resources, the unequal distribution of those resources, differing functions between groups - for example, between the academic and pastoral functions in schools - communication problems, differences of values, perceptions, attitudes and time horizons, and ambiguities over accountabilities.

Activity 7 1 2 3 Write down some specific examples of conflict in your own organization. List the causes of conflict in these examples. What are the negative and positive effects of conflict in your examples?

Reading 8 You should now read Chapter 8 by Walton in Reader 2. Although it is written in a general management and mainly commercial context, the precepts are transferable to an educational setting. As you read, concentrate on how conflict can be managed by what the author calls 'dialogue' and other approaches to managing conflict. Activity 8 Select one of the examples of conflict you identified in Activity 7 and analyse the precise strategies you might use as a manager to handle it, using either the suggestions made by Walton or your own ideas.

A central focus in conflict management is negotiation - that is, the process whereby people confer to try to resolve differing views about a situation and the actions required. The beginning of resolution is a clear understanding of the viewpoints of the various parties. Once the nature of the disagreement is understood, then action can be taken through direct discussion and dialogue that can result in agreement or compromise. Of course, the conflict may not be resolved, and then mediation will be necessary. A variety of conflict-resolution techniques may be used. Forcing two individuals or groups to agree may lead to a quick, superficial resolution, but the aftermath may well be negative. Smoothing down conflict by the use of tact may help, but unless the resolution is based on a coherent rationale it will not usually be acceptable, in the end, to at least one party. Majority rule by a simple vote is seldom effective because it means that one group loses and another wins. Compromise is the most widely used technique, in which each party gets something of what it wants. Successful compromise through negotiation does not come about simply as a result of the

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exercise of easily learned mechanistic techniques, but through the knowledge and practice of sophisticated skills and the building up of trust between parties over an extended period. Negotiation, both within and between groups, calls for the establishment of mutual understanding and a willingness to value different viewpoints. Additionally, networks need to be built up between the participants to ease communication between them. You will, no doubt, have identified in this analysis the importance of positive and creative leadership in all types of negotiation.

4.9

CONCLUSION

This section has covered a wide range of concepts related to leadership and you may already have formed a view of what is desirable in leadership in principle and is practical in a given context. Whether one is planning, organizing, ordinating, evaluating and so on, in establishing mission, goals, strategies, policies, plans or programmes in an organization, at any level, leading should be the core activity. It enables human beings - the only resource for getting things done - to grow in effectiveness. This involves an awareness on the part of the leader of self, task and situation, in order to create an organizational culture in which leading can flourish and grow, to develop skills in these areas, to establish clear goals and to foster attitudes and actions that are motivational. Effective leading requires and creates a culture of co-operation and collaboration in which various self-motivated teams can develop, and it is to teams that we now turn. To reflect on how you can further develop your own leadership skills you should attempt the last activity for this section.

Activity 9 Having now completed Section 4 you should be able to reflect on how you can improve your understanding of your leadership role in your own organizational setting. The activities you have carried out in this section should help you to do this. What kind of leadership role do you have and how do you wish to conceptualize it? (That is, what are you trying to achieve? Why? How?) What types of leadership are practised in your organization? How does this support or constrain the types of leadership you would like to practise? (Look back at your responses to Activities 2 and 3.) What skilled behaviours do you think you need for your leadership role? Which do you think you are already reasonably good at? What is your evidence? (Look back at your response to Activity 5.) Which skilled behaviours is it important to you to improve? How could you improve them?