Chapter 18 --  The Jossey-Bass Reader on Educational Leadership
Leadership as Stewardship  "Who's Serving Who?"

The leadership that counts, in the end, is the kind that touches people differently.

Implicit in traditional concepts of leadership is the idea that schools cannot be improved from within.

The responsibilities of stewardship simply require that obligations and commitments be met, regardless of obstacles.

Leadership takes many forms.

Command and instructional leadership have their place.

If command and instructional leadership are practiced as dominant strategies, they can breed dependency in teacher4s and cast them in roles as subordinates.

Subordinates do what they are supposed to, but little else.

Servant Leadership

The great leader is a servant first.

Servant leadership is the means by which leaders can get the necessary legitimacy to lead.

Being successful in providing purpose requires the trust of others; for trust to be forthcoming, the led must have confidence in the leaders competence and values.

The school as learning community provides an ideal setting for joining the practice of the "leader of leaders" to servant leadership.

Command and instructional leadership, "leader of leaders" leadership, and servant leadership can be viewed developmentally, as if each were built on the others.

One way in which the servant leader serves others is by becoming an advocate on their behalf.

Practices that show how servant leadership works and how the burden of leadership can be shared with other members of the school community:

• Purposing-  the continuous stream of actins by an organization's formal leadership which has the effect of inducing clarity, consensus and commitment regarding the organization's basic purposes.
• Empowerment-  everyone is free to do what makes sense, as long as people's decisions embody the values shared by the school community.  Empowerment cannot be practiced successfully apart from enablement (efforts by the school to provide support and remove obstacles).
• Leadership by Outrage-  It is the leader's responsibility to be outraged when empowerment is abused and when purposes are ignored.

Power Over and Power To

In most cases, the lack of interest is not inherent but learned; many teachers have become jaded as a result of bad experiences with involvement.

Power can be understood in two ways:

• Power Over-  Emphasizes controlling what people do, when they do it, and how they do it.
• Power To-  Views power as a source of energy for achieving shared goals and purposes

When empowerment is successfully practiced, administrators exchange power OVER for power TO.

Power Over is rule-bound while Power To is goal-bound.

The Female Style

In general, social science models of human behavior have focused on rather narrow and male-specific criteria regarding the relationships of ability, ambition, personality, achievement, and worldly success.

Men and women generally have different goals.  When it comes to psychological fulfillment men tend to emphasize individual relationships and achievement.  Women tend to emphasize successful relationships and affiliation.

The female world of schooling:

• Relationships with others are central to all actions of women administrators.
• Teaching and learning are the major foci of women administrators.
• Building community is an essential part of a woman administrator's style.

Servant Leadership and Moral Authority

The link between servant leadership and moral authority is a tight one.  Moral authority relies on persuasion; servant leadership is practiced by serving others.

Stewardship

The "leader of leaders" and servant leadership styles bring stewardship responsibilities to the heart of the administrator's role.

The concept of stewardship furnishes an attractive image of leadership, for it embraces all the members of the school as community and all those who are served by the community.

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Jossey-Bass Publishers.  The Jossey-Bass Reader on Education Leadership.