Leadership In Educational Institutions: Roles Of Leaders And Managers In ECE (Essay Sample)

Educational Leadership and Management
Name
Institution
'Understanding leadership in early childhood has been plagued by its confusion with the concept of management.' (Rodd, 2013, p. 19).
Leadership is having people to follow the leader while management is implies having people to work for the manager. Leadership environment created by the leaders in Early Childhood Education should be able to coordinate with other various stakeholders in the education sector that include the teachers, parents, education officers and the children. The leader should build respectful, nurturing, trusting and equitable relationships. It should collectively establish a culture of ethical inquiry as well as creating a community of learners. However, a leadership that meets this criterion has not been achieved in ECE because of the confusing on whether those who head the unit be leaders or managers. Little research has been done to define the leadership requirements of those heading ECE. Ideally, ECE heads should embrace leadership and complement with management.
Roles of leaders and managers in ECE
Leaders and managers play so many roles in ECE. These includes creating a good learning environment for learners, addressing child rights, training child care providers and parents, planning and development activities within the ECE.
Leaders and managers within the ECE setting require certain key skills and qualities so as to create a collaborative learning environment conducive for the early childhood education and development. These skills would enable the leaders as well as the managers to play their roles in a more harmonious way as they encourage equitable relationships with the other stakeholders in the sector (Heikka, Waniganayake & Hujala 2013). Mitgang (2012) notes that success in education and care settings largely exclusively depend on the effective leadership. In the absence of committed and skilled leaders who can help in shaping learning and teaching, development and sustenance of high-quality learning setups would not be realized. Committed and skilled leaders are those who possess the proper leadership dispositions as discussed below.
Key skills and dispositions of leaders and managers
A good leader should possess three domain of leadership skills. These are human, technical, and conceptual skills. Human skills are an amalgamation of interpersonal, social and leadership skills. Human skills enable a leader to build a team based on respect, appreciation, and motivation for the members (Ulrich, Smallwood & Sweetman 2013). A leader creates a good relationship with the members of the team through proper communication whereby the leader listens to the views of his or her subjects. Human skills are therefore dependent on the communication skills of a leader. Good communication skills entail devoting undivided attention to others while speaking. The ECE leaders ought to listen to the parents and the learners who are their clients as well as other stakeholders. Good communication skills also imply that a leader is able to succinctly describe what he or she wants to be done by the subjects. Can an ECE leader be able to explain well what he or she wants the learners or the parents to do? Lastly, communication skills will be required by the leader or manager so as to offer training to new members of the staff. For example, when training parents and care providers, the leader or the manager should be able to convey the messages clearly and succinctly (Adams, 2014).
Technical skills entail the ability of a leader to operate machines such as computers in the workplace. As a leader, one should be able to operate computers as they are the main equipment used today in the management of information. Likewise, conceptual skills entail encompassing the ability of the leader to exhibit ideas or concepts that are needed to accomplish tasks in a given field (Northouse, 2015).
On the other hand, good leadership qualities entail traits such as commitment, honest, confidence, creativity, integrity, empathy, assertiveness and ability to inspire. Commitment entails that a leader devotes all the efforts in the activities that will see smooth running of the ECE. Leaders lead by doing. The level of commitment acts as a source of inspiration to other members of the team. Commitment keeps the leader focused on the achievement of the goals. Honest is another quality that enables a leader to be accountable for his or her actions. Being honest helps a manager to do everything with the good intentions of bringing positive impact on the people he or she leads. An honest leader instils honest on the followers. In ECE the followers include the learners who emulate the characters of their leaders and therefore showing honest will be good in modelling the future generation (Pfeffer, 2015).
Besides, leaders need to be creative so as to solve problems amicably and in a way that minimizes conflicts among the members of the staff. Leaders or managers should be able to think outside the box all the time so as to come up with decisions that favor every member of the organization. A leader should also possess inspiring qualities. A manager should generate enthusiasm among the employees so that they are fuelled towards achieving the goals of the organization (Pfeffer, 2015).
A combination of the human skills and the dispositions of good leadership such as commitment, honest and creativity enables leaders in ECE setups to build a respectful, nurturing and trusting learning environment. It also encourages collaboration among the stakeholders of ECE and most importantly enabling the leaders to execute their roles smoothly and harmoniously as they build good relationships with the followers (Rodd, 2012).
Models of leadership
Leadership models are the guiding frameworks that define specific leadership behaviors to be adopted in different situations of leadership. They are often depicted in a graphical representation. There are so many models of leadership. In this paper, the following shall be discussed; managerial grid model and four framework approach.
Leadership/managerial grid model
Leadership grid model points on the manager's apprehension for assignment and worry for people to foretell the results of the leadership. The model is based on two key behaviors of leaders; concern for tasks and concern for people. With regard to concern for people, the model deliberates on relationship behaviors in leaders such as trust and respect for colleagues. On the other hand, concern for tasks entails task-related behaviors such as ensuring that the work is completed through proper organization and scheduling of tasks (Marshall, 2016).
A study conducted at Michigan University, Northouse (2015), the two behaviors were identified as production and workers’ orientation. Production orientation stresses on the technical skills required in the production processes such as machine operation while workers’ orientation entails that the leader approaches the followers with strong human relations founded on the human interpersonal skills such as good communication and respect. Research at Ohio University described the two behaviors as dissimilar and important meaning that a leader can be very high on the one while low on the other.
A study by Mouton and Blake (1985) scored the two behaviors of different leaders on a grid and established four grids that represent the level of strength of each behavior in a leader. These were authoritarian, country club, impoverished and team leader. Authoritarian leaders are weak on human skills but strong on tasks. Country clubs are weak on tasks but strong on human skills while impoverished leaders are weak on both human skills and tasks. Team leaders are strong on both tasks and human skills.
This model can help the ECE leaders to develop the human skills that help in creating good relationships with the workers in the education set up.
Four framework approach
Four framework approaches propose that leaders exhibit a single behavior out of the four frameworks; symbolic, political, human resource and structural. In the symbolic framework, the leader takes the organization to a stage where he or she uses to impress and capture attention from others by exhibiting high experience that can inspire others to follow. Under effective leadership conditions, the leader is a symbol of inspiration to the followers while under unfavorable leadership conditions, the leader is seen as a fool whose leadership is smoke (Northouse, 2015).
In the political framework, leaders are clear on their needs and what they can get. They review the allocation of power and develop links with stakeholders as they use persuasion to influence them while using coercion at times to influence the followers. Under effective leadership situations, political leaders encourage team building and coalition while under ineffective situations the leader becomes a hustler seen as manipulative (Northouse, 2015).
Human resource leaders believe in people and thus empower them, encourage participation and make decision-making a collaborative effort where every worker's input is taken into consideration. Given effective leadership conditions, the manager is seen as a catalyst, advocating and offers support and encouragement to the workers. When the leadership situation is ineffective, the leader exhibits as a pushover whose style of leadership is fraud (Northouse, 2015)..
Structural framework leaders concern themselves with the structural part of the organization and emphasize on strategy, implementation, experimentation, adaptation and environment. When the leadership is effective, the manager is seen as a social architect who leads through design and analysis while under ineffective situation; the leader is seen as petty (Northouse, 2015)..
This model suggests that leaders use one ...