Studies reveal that the transformational leadership perspective has been frequently studied in the field of educational leadership and management policy, caused by the rapidly changing work environment in schools with administrators being expected to cope. This has been well captured by Fullan (2001), who says that the more sophisticated society becomes the more complex leadership has to be. Therefore, school leaders need to acquire abilities such as strong communicators, problem-solvers, team players and oriented, transformational leaders and change-makers (Balyer, 2012). Some studies have demonstrated positive relationships between transformational leadership and various school and teacher organisational conditions (Anderson, 2008), Transformational leadership is viewed as the ability to influence people to change towards one goal and willing to be led (Northouse, 2007). Some researchers (Bass & Avolio, 1997; Chew &
Chan, 2008; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2006) agree that it is the leader‟s ability to increase organisational member‟s commitment, capacity and engagement in meeting certain goals.
Transformational leadership is aligned to creativity and it inspires followers to do more
57 than they are expected. This leadership practice is positively associated with school‟s innovative climate (Day, Leithwood, Harris & Hopkins, 2008), and collective teacher efficacy in a variety of international contexts (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005). There are three basic functions of transformational leadership:
1. Leaders serve the needs of others, empower them and inspire followers to achieve great success.
2. Charismatically, leaders set goals, vision, confidence, instil pride and trust.
3. Through intellectual stimulation, followers of the same calibre are offered as leaders (Castanheira & Costa, 2011).
This type of leadership enables the school to become less bureaucratic and functions as its own transforming agent, becoming empowered as a collective unit instead of empowering selected individuals. The model receives leadership as a process of interaction between leaders and subordinates with a leader attempting to influence the behaviour of others to accomplish organisational goals (Yukl, 2005). Leaders foster strong community support for the change by creating a vision for the organisation and stimulate the followers within the school context. Leithwood and Jantzi (2000) identified seven dimensions of transformational leadership at schools which are building school vision and establishing goals, providing individualised support, modelling best practices and organisational values, setting high academic standard expectations, creating a productive school culture and fostering participation in decisions. In order to bring major changes in the organisation or school, transformational leaders exhibit the models depicted in Figure 3.2 (below), as coined by Balyer (2012).
58 Figure 3.2: The four Models of Transformational Leadership (Balyer, 2012)
The four models or characteristics of transformational leadership fall into four restricted and intellectual stimulations. At this juncture, it is important to look closely at each to ascertain their meaning. Idealised influence is defined as considering the needs of others first before one‟s own, avoiding the use of power for personal gain, demonstrating high moral standards and setting challenging goals for the followers (Balyer, 2012). In this case, leaders should act as role models that followers seek to emulate, winning the trust and respect of followers through their action. They typically place their followers‟ needs over their own, sacrifice their personal gains for them, and demonstrate a high standard of ethical conduct. Their use of power is aimed at influencing them to strive for the common goals of the organisation or school.
The second model is inspirational motivation, which refers to the motivation and inspiration of those around one through displaying enthusiasm and optimism, involving the followers in envisioning attractive future states, communicating high expectations, and demonstrating commitment to the goals (Balyer, 2012). The basic elements of transformational leadership are founded on the promotion of consistent vision, mission, and a set of values to the members. Their vision is so compelling that they know what they want from interaction. Transformational leaders guide followers by providing them with a
59 sense of meaning and challenge, and work enthusiastically and optimistically to foster the spirit of teamwork and commitment.
The third model is individualised consideration which refers to the leader‟s effort to make individuals behave as special people, and for the leader act as a coach or mentor to develop the follower‟s potential (Balyer, 2012). The leader treats the followers according to their talents and knowledge, empowering them to make their own decisions in the school and providing sufficient support to implement their decisions.
The fourth model is intellectual stimulation which refers to the leader‟s effort to inspire or stimulate the followers to be more creative and innovative in the workplace. The four models of transformational leadership enable school leaders to create additive effect in order to reach maximum performance beyond expectations (Northouse, 2007). They encourage new ideas from their followers without criticising them in public for any mistakes. The focus of the school leaders is based on the “what” rather than “why” or blaming the followers for any problem. Old practices set by the leaders which are found to be ineffective are discarded without hesitation.
In summary, the transformational leader articulates the vision in a clear and concise manner, explains how this vision is attained, takes action confidently and optimistically, and instils confidence in the followers. The leader leads by example and emphasises values with symbolic action, with the followers being empowered to achieve the vision (Stone, Russel & Patterson, 2003). In order to make school institutions better performing the practice of transformational leadership becomes more important. Schools are the dynamics of change for the society in which they operate, however, the question posed is how many of these characteristics are demonstrated by the SMTs during their daily practices. Thus, this study aims to discover the level of transformational leadership practices that the SMTs demonstrate on daily basis in the UCCZ mission schools. The findings may shed some light on the ways in which teaching and learning take place in them and further inform policymakers on designing curriculum programmes that are suitable in these schools, especially during turbulent periods such as this.
60 3.7 Limitations of Transformational Leadership
Organisational development consultants and libertarians have been questioning the morality of transformational leadership (Griffin, 2003), a key criticism having been that within it there is a potential for abuse of power. Leaders in this model motivate followers by appealing to strong emotions, regardless of the ultimate effects on the followers, and do not necessarily attend to positive moral values. Stone, Russel and Patterson (2003) observe that transformational leaders can provide inspiration for followers, who in return offer them trust and respect. The leaders might have egocentric tendencies, thriving on power and manipulation of their followers, whilst some followers may develop dependent characters and form strong and unfortunate bonds with their leaders. Sometimes, transformational leadership lacks the checks and balances that might help avoid dictatorship and oppression of the minority by the majority, perhaps being applied for less than desirable social ends in the absence of moral rectitude. Criticisms on grounds of so- called morality have been addressed by Griffin (2003), who argues that to be truly transformative, leadership must have moral foundations. If so, in order to bring change, Griffin (2003) believes genuine transformational leadership must foster values of justice, equality and human rights, as well as fairness, loyalty and honesty.
It is concluded that transformational leaders deploy deontological ethics while transactional leaders apply teleological ethics (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000). Deontological ethics give greatest consideration to upholding promises and maintaining universal values or principles, while teleological ethics are based on scrutiny of the consequences of actions. In brief, the two models of leadership stand on different moral foundations, and studies in ethics suggest that both approaches are the basis of ethical decision-making (Israel & Hay, 2006). Some other criticisms of transformational leadership have been summarised by Bass (1997), such that the model makes use of impression management and lends itself to amoral self-promotion by leaders. It encourages followers to go beyond their own self-interests for the good of the school and may emotionally engage followers in pursuit of evil ends. An institution or school culture socialises individuals into that culture, therefore, transformational leadership creates a situation whereby followers are manipulated in such a way that they lose rather than gain (Bass, 1997).
61 3.8 Reasons for Considering Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership has been viewed as resulting in high-level follower motivation, commitment and increased performance for well-above-average organisation, especially under conditions of crisis and uncertainty (Bryant, 2003). There are likely to be major changes in the level of follower commitment to the school‟s mission and strategies due to transformational leadership. Teachers are more likely to collaborate within the educational settings, and have positive attitudes to school improvement and new forms of instructional behaviour as a result of transformational leadership (ERIC, 2010). The level of effectiveness for transformational leadership is high, regardless of cultural values.
Transcendental leadership is an extension of transactional and transformational leadership as proposed by Sanders, Hopkins and Geroy (2003). The model suggests three levels of leadership accomplishments, namely, transactional, transformational and transcendental, which suggest that leaders develop along dimensions of spirituality, consciousness (mind), moral character (heart) and faith (soul). The authors argue for society and organisations to recognise the need for and embrace spirituality. Traditional leadership theories are said to concentrate on external manifestations of leadership but the model proposed by Sanders, Hopkins and Geroy (2003) indicates that it is best understood by adding consideration of the leader‟s internal components. While this theory is yet to be tested empirically, the intention is to bring spirituality out in the open and weave it coherently into new understanding of leadership.