Chapter 2 (Dr. Fenwick W. English) The Art of Educational Leadership

Balancing Performance and Accountability

Misty M. MorganWilliam Allan Kritsonis, PhD

Joseph Campbell’s Universal Life Leadership Journey

The Origins of Leadership

Personal Leadership Journey: Miyamoto Musashi

• Musashi believed that great warriors (leaders) needed to create a calm and stable platform called bujutsu. It is a form of mental self control that is necessary before control can be exerted over other people and situations. (“Preventive awareness”)Steps to attaining the proper mental attitude included:

Determine what is correct and true. Place science into daily practice. Know the arts. Honor the crafts. Realize that everything has positives and negatives. Search them out. Acquire the capacity to observe things accurately. Know that important things are not always obvious. Attend to the smallest detail. Avoid extraneous activities.

Point to Ponder: Do we see present-day implications for leadership and decisionmaking within Musashi’s guidelines?

Personal Leadership Journey: Miyamoto Musashi

• Musashi also placed great emphasis on the physical attributes needed to master the craft of leadership. Referred to as kenjutsu (Japanese for art of the sword), it involves knowledge, moves, and sleights of hand required in master swordplay.

• Both bujutsu (mental) and kenjutsu (physical) comprise an archetype of leadership with correlates rooted in our present-day leadership style.

Barber’s Presidential Leadership Model• Character – How a person faces him or herself• World View – How a leader perceives his or her environment• Style – The way a leader acts upon his or her world view• Power Situation – Political forces already in play when a person assumes a

leadership role• Climate of Expectations – The predominant needs thrust up to a leader by

the people- Reassurance: People need to feel that everything will be okay- Requirement of the people to feel as if the leader will engage in progress and action- Legitimacy : No “politics as usual” – the people need to feel as if the new leader will take the moral high ground

Barber’s Presidential Leadership Model, cont’d.

Leadership Types Characteristics

Active-Positive Motivated by results; supremely goal oriented

Active-Negative Strongly upwardly mobile, seeks power as a reward. Perfectionist; only goal is to gain power and retain it

Passive-Positive Low self esteem; only want to be admired and loved. Run from conflict and resort to protocol to make decisions

Passive-Negative Believe they should be leading because they think they should be. Only meaning in an otherwise useless life.

Point to Ponder: Can you think of educational leaders for whom you have worked or know who fit into one of Barber’s 4 leadership types?

The American Monomyth• Idyllic setting in small town America (Eden)…an ordinary existence until normalcy is

threatened by evil• A superhero must resolve the conflict (lawman, stranger, Superman)• Redemptive resolution – Townspeople are saved by vigilantes or a stranger who disappear

into the sunset when the danger has passed• “Americans have long held their form of government and their way of life to be under attack

by vicious despots and dictators” - Declaration of Independence - September 11, 2001

• “They (myths) are the real glue that holds peoples and nations together. For many, they are integral in sustaining personal and social psychic health. In the Western world, the myth supports the “system” or the “establishment”, and the establishment in turn sanctions the myth.”

Point to Ponder: What influence does the American Monomyth carry in educational leadership?

The Role of the Female in Leadership Archetypes

• Noted author Patricia Reilly (A God Who Looks Like Me) shined a painful light on the history of religion and the role of women.

• Early images of God as “the Father” and of the immoral first woman Eve, combined with male savior figures such as Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed helped lay the early groundwork for female, guilt, submission, and acceptance of men as the “natural” leaders of women. They became enormous psychic barriers for women and gave men a false sense of their “natural” leadership abilities.

• “Despite our understanding of gender stereotypes, the characteristics traditionally associated with women are at odds with the characteristics traditionally associated with leadership.”

• Leadership biases are even more prevalent against women of color, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered persons in educational administration

Concluding Thoughts

• The point that should be internalized from this chapter is how our past has shaped our present in terms of leadership. How we proceed in the future depends largely upon the act of coming to grips with yourself, who you are, where you are, and what is of value to you, and shaping yourself by acts of conscious will into what you want to become.