Am I Casually Cruel in the Name of Being Honest? Or am I believer and all I do is Try, Try, Try?: Exploring Leadership Styles and Figuring Which One I am.

First off, I am so excited to get to this topic of conversation for many reasons. I’ve witnessed great examples of leadership, and poor quality leadership examples as an educator. I will never forget when I was a paraprofessional in another school district and the principal at the time was very unapproachable. Teachers would complain about her and she always seemed stressed. She seemed very authoritative, and never willing to side with teachers unless you were the favorite. Fast forward to where I am today, and I have witnessed different leadership styles from three different administrators. 

During my first year in Odem, the principal seemed like a collaborative, transformational, and adaptive leadership style. She seemed very reasonable and would hear teachers out as well. I  describe her as someone who was able to focus on organizational change and the focus of the campus. In my second year, we received a new principal, and I noticed her leadership style was servant and strategic. I noticed she was very much someone who wanted to know how she could help us or if there was anything we needed, I could tell she cared and wanted us to have what we needed to be successful. Another leadership quality she possessed was wanting our campus to work towards a mission and vision. Once we fixed our mission and vision, she had strategies and goals as a campus principal. Thinking about this now, I see she was transformational since she wanted us to focus on our long-term goals as a campus. With my current principal, I noticed she and I are very similar in our leadership styles. She is collaborative and a servant like me. I needed advice on the 5303 case study scenario assigned to my small group, and the advice she gave was what I was thinking about. She has always been someone who comes in to check on teachers during our planning days to check in on us and see if we need anything for the content or the grade level team. As a collaborative leader, she who wants to share the efforts and decision-making for our campus. 

What I’ve learned from these administrators is everyone has a different leadership style, but leads the organization toward results. As a graduate student in the ADL program, this is the first time I’ve ever had to think of leadership styles and the examples from above. I know it is partly due to us being leaders either right now or very shortly. I’ve also learned how to lead and how not to lead. I don’t want to be like the very first principal I described–I want to be like the last three principals I’ve had if not a combination of them. I think they are excellent examples of how to lead a campus and strive towards a goal/objective of an organization or campus. While I feel like I might identify with both collaborative and servant leadership, I think I might have some transformational style too, but both collaborative and servant are more of what I identify with. 

I know leading can be difficult, especially when the goal to strive for change and wanting to impact your colleagues is the priority, however, it will be difficult to please everyone. As a collaborative leader, I see myself sending out a survey to gain some insight from the people I lead. The topic of utilizing new technology in the classroom is a barrier for teachers with attitudes or perceptions they have about the piece of technology or program. Thus, the communication with them on what I can do to help them will be both collaborative and servant-like to better serve them. 

At the end of the day, I know my job will be difficult and I will experience the barriers that come with it, but I hope to lead effectively because I am aware of the leadership skills I possess. 

References

Reyell, B. (2025, January 16). Transformational leadership: How to inspire innovation in the workplace. Northeastern University Graduate Programs. https://graduate.northeastern.edu/knowledge-hub/transformational-leadership/