What it Takes to Change a School

Sylvia Mendez-Morse has written an interesting article in which she looks at a history of research on leadership and qualities found in effective leadership for change.  Titled “Leadership Characteristics that Facilitate School Change,” it is available on the web site of the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory http://www.sedl.org/change/leadership/welcome.html.  Ms. Mendez-Morse lists the most significant qualities of a leader as:

• Being visionary
• Believing that schools are for learning
• Valuing human resources
• Communicating and listening effectively
• Being proactive
• Taking risks

These qualities or characteristics allow leaders in educational settings to demonstrate successful leadership in two critical ways:  first, by initiating structure, which is fundamentally a concern for organizational tasks and creating the rubric for change, and second, consideration, which is the concern for individuals and the interpersonal relations between them.  “Leaders of educational change illustrate this with their vision and belief that the purpose of schools is students' learning.  Valuing human resources as well as communicating and listening are directly associated with the dimension of consideration.  Being a proactive leader and a risk taker demonstrate the dimension of initiating structure.”  Thus, a leader in an educational setting is capable of responding both to the hard business, organizational and task aspects of change, as well as responding to the softer human dimension of change.

Contributed by Joel Gordon

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