Effective School Management

PART I
MANAGING PEOPLE

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT

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THE MANAGER AS A LEADER
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The Manager as a Leader
Leadership is a process of influencing others to achieve a goal.
(Dickmann and Stanford Blair, 2002)
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
Before we can set about our managerial role and mission, we need some skill
in relating to other people. We need to understand the various behavioural
processes that may be at work, and use our knowledge to influence or ‘lead’
individuals or groups. In a meeting, as we shall see, decisions can be influenced
far more effectively by using the behavioural ‘process’ of the meeting than by
simply restating one’s arguments, however sound they are. How we use our
awareness of behavioural processes is a key aspect of managerial ethics. Do
we use it to ‘manipulate’ or to ‘facilitate’?
In order to help us to understand managerial behaviour and leadership, a
large number of models have been created. Because of the commercial
interest in management training, such models have proliferated to the point
of confusion, and authors have at times promoted their own models by
attacking those produced by others.
Our aim is to avoid adding to the lists, nor do we wish to spend time
carrying out a review of the differing approaches of the many theoreticians.
Instead we shall focus on some generally agreed principles and on a set of
well-established models which we have found to be useful to managers in
general and to school managers in particular.
Those of our readers who have attended courses on leadership and who
have read other management literature, including Goleman’s Emotional
Intelligence (1996), are almost certain to have some acquaintance with the
contents of this and the next chapter. Having cast an eye over the
subheadings, they may therefore wish to proceed directly to Chapter 4.
MANAGEMENT STYLE MODELS
The best known of the management style models are based on the premiss
that every manager has two main concerns. These concern

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EFFECTIVE SCHOOL MANAGEMENT
(1) to achieve results (i.e. he or she is ‘task’ oriented); and
(2) for relationships (i.e. he or she is ‘people’ oriented).
Earlier style models such as the Schmidt–Tannenbaum continuum
(Tannenbaum and Schmidt, 1958) suggested that these two concerns were in
conflict and that the more a person was concerned with results, the less he or
she would be concerned about relationships, and vice versa. The type of style
model shown in Figure 2.1 resulted.
However, it was not long before it was realized that a manager’s concerns
for results and relationships were not necessarily opposed to each other,  but
that it was possible to be concerned about both at the same time (how do I
best get results through people?) or, indeed, to be concerned about neither.
This is the concept recognized in a number of style models which put results
and relationships on two different axes of a graph and either name or number
the extreme positions, e.g. the Blake Grid (Blake and Mouton, 1994).
Figure 2.2 sets out such a model which gives both the Blake numbers and
verbal style descriptions. (NB The reader should note that the descriptions on
the model are used in a specific context as defined. Words such as ‘political’
are used later in the book in a more positive context.)
Some attributes of each of the five named style positions are as follows:
Assertive
• wants things done his or her way;
• ‘tells’ rather than ‘listens’;
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