As the principal of this new school, I have a great deal of work to do in terms of improving teacher motivation/efficacy and increasing academic outcomes. I have two years to hone my staff into a well-oiled machine that will serve our students well, as well as formulate a staff that will meet the challenges I set for them. Over this two year period, I plan on meeting all of the goals set out for me at the beginning of this job, and turn this school into a quality institution for learning. With the help of concepts such as transformational leadership, situational approaches, contingency theory, the differing types of organizational power, and a highly specialized skills approach, I can accomplish these goals and improve this school.
Over the two years, I plan to develop a consistent system of leadership that will improve outcomes for teachers and students alike. My goal for the first year is to accomplish the goals that have been set out for me: Start out strong, motivate my staff, be a team leader, increase proficiency scores, keep my staff in line, and create a vision statement. By starting and achieving progress in this first year, it is possible to use the second year to evaluate this progress and improve these outcomes further.
First things first, I believe it is necessary to develop a vision statement; this will guide the rest of our work moving forward, so it is crucial that we all get on the same page right away. I plan on consulting the teachers heavily in these matters, spending a great deal of time in my first two weeks talking with them one-on-one and in group meetings to determine the goals and ambitions we have collectively as a group. At the end of the two-week period, I will finalize a vision statement based on their feedback, which will be the barometer by which we gauge our behavior, work and outcomes to see if they are good enough. With this vision statement in place, we can then move forward.
The next thing I must do is thoroughly evaluate the staff in order to determine who still deserves to be there; of the 41 staff members, I have a distinct mix of personalities who are motivated by different things (if they are motivated at all) – there are a few great teachers who require little to no help from me, but there are also some teachers who need me to step in and motivate them, or let them go. One group of teachers has the ability and talent to be good teachers, but I can tell that they are a bit burned out, and bitter about the way their hard work has been received and rewarded. Others do not seem to have their minds on teaching – some have the capability to be good teachers, but are simply unmotivated due to their lack of passion for teaching. These are the teachers who are just here to supplement the income of a spouse, and I will need to really work to motivate them to perform.
The final group of teachers are the ones I may be unable to help – the ones who are completely unqualified, and who got into their positions due to the lax leadership of the previous leader. Having gotten to know them, it is clear that no amount of motivation will be able to help them become better teachers; even if they suddenly develop that passion, they need more education or a personality adjustment in order to address the specific requirements teaching involves. To that end, it is best for the school to let these individuals go in the first few weeks of my tenure, and move forward with the staff that I have/any new staff that I plan to bring on to overcome these shortfalls.
Using a skills approach will be extremely beneficial to me in this first year, as I will focus on the knowledge and abilities I require to be a strong leader. For the purview of these goals, the primary skills needed will be chiefly human and conceptual; as a principal, I need to be able to work well with people, be sociable and develop relationships with my staff, as well as explore big concepts and ideas. Some of these concepts will include improving teacher motivation, heightening student academic outcomes, working within our admittedly limited budget, improving education skill sets and the like.
In my work, I must also use organizational power, as my job as principal is to influence others to become better teachers; luckily my authority as principal grants me the legitimate power to exert this influence over my teachers. I must build my coercive powers as well; many of these teachers are not motivated to teach to keep their jobs, or have lost their passion for it, leaving me to instill that sense of passion and motivation in them once more. Having experience and knowledge of the teaching profession will allow me to advise struggling teachers in what they are missing in their own practice (exerting expert powers). Using all of these attributes and more will ideally allow me to eventually use referent power, as my teachers will admire me for my advice, willingness to work with them and the effectiveness of early results of our interventions.
Another important part of developing that referent power is to exert a sense of transformational leadership, which is the primary system by which I plan to lead as principal of this school. Unlike transactional leadership, in which I would look at my teachers and staff as a means of getting what I want (good grades for our students, motivated and passionate teachers), I want to become an integral part of their personal and career development as educators (Northouse, p. 186). Transformational leaders take an active interest in the wants and needs of their followers, building personal relationships and mentoring them in order to help them become better workers and parts of the organization. This affords a more collaborative, community-based approach to organizational behavior, as the leader is there to facilitate the development of his or her workers, thus permitting them to become better at their jobs (which, naturally, benefits the leader as well).
In the context of this scenario, a transformational approach will come in quite handy for the teachers who are still struggling with motivation or passion. For those teachers who are merely supplementing their spouse’s income, more work will be needed to convince them that they are real teachers with real value to provide to the school. In the case of those burned-out teachers, the issue may well be simpler; I just have to take an active interest in fuelling their motivation, rewarding them for their efforts and giving them a more active role in structuring and working with their classrooms.
A lot of the efficacy of this transformational leadership approach will deal greatly with my own sense of charisma, which I will have to exert at all times when working with my teachers. The chief problem with this school is that people are unmotivated to do better; this behavior becomes toxic and spreads to the other teachers. By remaining optimistic, positive, and aspirational in our ability to improve, I hope to use charisma to presumably become a better role model for these educators than their previous principal. Showing my teachers that I have high expectations for them, and the rewards are favorable when those expectations are met, I can motivate them to do better in their work.
In order to increase proficiency scores, I feel it is best to focus on the teachers’ needs and performance as a problem to be solved together, rather than enact punitive measures against teachers who do not sufficiently perform at first. To that end, I will hold off on taking drastic measures against underperforming teachers until after this first year is over; it is hoped that, over time, the combination of a clear vision statement and transformational/skills approaches to leadership will allow me to have a positive, motivating effect on these teachers. The goal is to inspire them to improve on their own, developing their own skills and abilities while I advise them appropriately. There is an element of servant leadership to this component as well, in which I position myself as a resource to my teachers, offering myself for advice and administrative help as needed. The hope is to inspire them to improve as teachers by giving them autonomy over their own approaches, this freedom making them more motivated.
Though my overhauls of the school will be substantial in this first year, it is in the second year that I will evaluate and continue to make adjustments to these new strategies. Changes and tweaks to these strategies will be ongoing, but I feel the second year is a good place to evaluate what works and what does not work with what we changed in the first year. I plan to keep lines of communication open for my teachers and staff, so they can communicate to me what has been working and what has not; this will be what I use to make these adjustments in the second year.
With the help of these concepts, and my continual refinement of my skills as a transformational leader, I plan to turn this school from a problematic institution with an unmotivated staff into an efficient, high-quality center of learning for our students. Not only will our teachers be more motivated and passionate to teach students, students will respond in kind with better test scores and academic outcomes. The use of the second year as a ‘polishing’ and reevaluating period with which to make further changes will allow us to find the perfect formula that keeps our motivation and efficiency high. By the end of these two years, we should be able to settle upon a system that works incredibly well, and this school will run better than ever.
References
Northouse, P.G. (2012). Leadership: theory and practice. 6th ed. SAGE Publications.
