uses his or her power to set the constraints within which he or she encourages followers to help decide the organization’s course or direction. Follower-focused leadership produces some benefits.
▶ A sense of appreciation and respect
▶ Multiple perspectives
▶ Fostered collaboration
▶ Shared sense of ownership
▶ Reflective practice
Follower-focused leadership will also generate some disadvantages.
▶ Slow progress
▶ Philosophical conflicts
▶ Constant change
▶ Disorganized systems
▶ Lack of focus
Bass (1981) concludes that leaders must balance emphasis on the task and emphasis on the human relationships. A one-sided approach would meet some needs, while simultaneously creating problems because of unmet needs. The goal of leadership is to build the organization’s human capital—to transform the relationship between leader and followers so that unity of purpose and mutually shared goals energize and motivate participants. Transformational leadership is based on the conviction that the people in the organization constitute resources rich in ideas, knowledge, creativity, and energy, and leaders can fully tap into their power only by creating organizational environments that are motivating, inclusive, organized, and focused on outcomes.
We argue that developing the human being (relationship) provides the context for the important job of demanding performance (task). In fact, we believe that leaders cannot ethically demand performance without first preparing people for the task that they expect them to perform. To attain the level of balance that Bass (1981) advocates, leaders must strike a profound balance between support and accountability.
Support and Accountability Balance
To simplify the concept of support and accountability balance, we describe support as an investment and accountability as a return on investment. In the world of finance, an investor would understand that it is very illogical to expect a return on investment if he or she made no initial investment. He or she would see gathering the capital to invest in a business, stock, or venture as a very simple and logical prerequisite to entering the world of financial investment. We will prove that it should not shock leaders that they do not reap a dividend when they make no real investment in their employees and simply demand performance.
The first job of a transformational leader is to examine how much investment he or she needs to make in order to receive a substantial return. We believe that school employees require three essential human investments or supports in order to improve practices and outcomes: (1) communication, (2) trust, and (3) capacity building. These supports align with the skills a transformational leader must possess that we outline in chapters 2–4 of this book.
Conversely, we believe that a leader who simply analyzes needs and makes investments without any expectation of improvement has only wasted time and resources and will not witness substantive improvement. An investor who works hard to gather and invest capital but does not expect a high rate of return on investment has wasted substantial time and energy. School leaders who create positive relationships, solicit input, communicate priorities, and provide training for improvement but do not articulate higher performance expectations and do not monitor improvement have wasted substantial time and energy. The second job of a transformational leader, then, is to demand accountability. This aligns with the fourth skill we outline in chapter 5 (page 83)—that leaders must get results.
In order to get results, transformational leaders must also understand the dynamics of motivation and resistance to change. Leaders may find this hard to accept, but most resistance to change is a rational response to ineffective leadership.
Motivation and Resistance to Change
Leaders often respond to resistance as they would to a negative behavior—they address the behavior without assessing the cause. Most resistance to change manifests a need that a leader has not met, or a critical investment that a leader has neglected. Before a leader can criticize a follower for not embracing a vision or a directive, he or she has to first assess whether he or she has made all the necessary investments to warrant a return on investment. Leaders have to make three non-negotiable investments to create the right conditions for intrinsic motivation for change: (1) cognitive investment, (2) emotional investment, and (3) functional investment. When those three investments fail to stimulate change, a leader can conclude that the resistant behavior has resulted from more personal reasons or an exercise in power. At that point, a leader can fairly conclude that the individual, who has all the tools and opportunities for change, has drawn a line in the sand and challenged the leader’s authority. The only conclusion to such a standoff is coercion; the leader has a right to collect the return on his or her investment (the fourth and final condition for intrinsic motivation for change). In the following sections, we describe the three non-negotiable investments and the fourth condition.
Cognitive Investment
When parents reach their wits’ end when scolding a teenager who made a poor choice because of peer pressure, they might ask, “If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” This common question calls for pragmatism. Parents want their children to use good judgment, gather facts, and come to a rational conclusion. To understand why something is important and reach a logical and beneficial conclusion requires examining evidence, weighing options, and engaging in a dialogue, both internally and externally. We believe that leaders often deny educators these opportunities to logically understand the why of change, and this frustrates them, leading to pessimism and withdrawal from change.
Emotional Investment
Not all experience is good experience. As we will note in chapter 2 (page 23), school leadership has an astronomical turnover rate. When a leader surveys the environment and assesses its readiness for change, he or she has to consider the experiences that educators had with leaders who came before. Ignoring this reality is not wise. Past experiences leave an emotional imprint on a person. This imprint impacts anyone who seeks to enter into a relationship with that person. Would a person be wise to become engaged to a fiancé who has had five divorces in ten years, ignoring how past experiences have shaped the current reality? We believe that most people would say, “No!” Likewise, would a new superintendent be wise to ignore the fact that he or she is a district’s third superintendent in five years? Shouldn’t he or she consider the effect those previous experiences had on school district employees? Leaders must consider emotions when trying to create intrinsic commitment to change in a staff. When leaders ignore people’s emotions and experiences, that alone can stimulate a pessimistic view of change.
Functional Investment
Leaders cannot fairly require someone to complete a task that they have not properly prepared him or her to complete. In our work, we witness many instances where school or district officials introduce significant changes to professional practice and expect that one half-day workshop will sufficiently provide all the skills necessary to perform the newly introduced task. Considering that teachers receive at least four years of university-level practice to simply enter the classroom door, it is unrealistic
