Philosophy of Leadership
My philosophy of leadership is based on three functional characteristics. These include:
1. Sincerely serving the needs of others by empowering them and inspiring them to achieve success.
2. Setting a vision and instilling trust, confidence, and a sense of pride for the work we do.
3. Intellectually stimulating the individuals working toward meeting the goals of our shared vision.
In my experience, these characteristics of leadership cause education organizations to be less bureaucratic as they function more as their own transforming agent. That is, the school becomes empowered as a collective unit. As such, I believe in capacity building for the purpose of organizational change by sharpening my subordinates' skills and enhancing their knowledge.
Having worked with many school and district leaders in my role as a county-level administrator, I've noted that the most successful leaders are those that build school vision by establishing clear goals, providing intellectual stimulation and individualized support for their staff, modeling organizational values and best practices, setting high academic expectations, and fostering participation in decisions. Of course there's no substitute for enthusiasm and optimism so a healthy dose of these together with the aforementioned dimensions makes for leadership that is productive and inspirational.
I believe in sophistication, not complexity. As a site leader I have to cope with a rapidly changing environment in order for my leadership to be effective. Therefore, my philosophy of leadership entails being team-oriented, a strong communicator, a problem solver, and change agent. To put it simply, my leadership style is one wherein I get people to want to change, improve, and be led. It involves assessing motives, satisfying stakeholder needs, and valuing them. I achieve this by increasing my teams' commitment and engagement toward meeting our goals. Leadership is more an organizational construct than the task of a single individual. My role then is to leverage the best people for the work at hand so we may directly impact organizational performance.
Lastly, I believe that my leadership philosophy equips me with the best way to appropriately influence stakeholders' commitment to our shared vision and high performance expectation. By developing consensus focused on group goals and through supportive management as well as personal recognition, my leadership will have a positive impact on the climate of the school I work at.
