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NATIONAL FORUM OF APPLIED EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL VOLUME 21, NUMBER 1, 2007--2008

PRINCIPALS’ LEADERSHIP AWARENESS AND SCHOOL CULTURE: A CASE STUDY Shirley Johnson Steve Busch Sam Houston State University ABSTRACT The climate and culture of a campus is impacted by the leadership behaviors of the campus principal. Often the principal is unaware of this impact because those behaviors are directly related to underlying motivations that affect faculty reactions. Two important leadership behaviors exhibited by principals, authority and structure, are explored through a case study of three elementary principals and their faculties to determine the impact on school climate. Findings explain how principals’ leadership behaviors can affect trust and positive relationships that are crucial to a healthy campus culture and climate.

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recent years, much has been written about the impact of culture and climate on the instructional delivery system at the campus level. Most administrators understand that the premise of the research findings are directly relevant to the quality of relationships; yet, many principals are still experiencing difficulty implementing strategies to improve campus culture and climate. Since relationships are tangled in one’s personal behavior, it becomes imperative to exam those behaviors and honestly explore how they impact the school. The difficulty in understanding the impact of personal behavior on the climate of a school is directly related to self-awareness (Johnson & Busch, 2006). We may read the words and comprehend the message regarding our personal behaviors, but we may be unaware that certain personal behaviors are problematic within our leadership 40

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style and may contribute to a negative impact on the culture and climate. Practicing principals or students in principal preparation programs make substantial deposits to their personal knowledge base through graduate studies or through professional development; yet, this training does little to influence their behavior in an actual administrative position. With the emphasis in improving climate and culture, we must find ways to enable principals to “see” their behavior, but more importantly, to understand the personal motivators that drive their behavior and describe the impact on school culture and climate. This is difficult work because it involves surfacing perceptions and beliefs that are shaped by numerous personal and environmental factors. Since the effect of principal leadership on student performance in a school is mediated by the condition of the school’s culture and climate, it is crucial that we understand more about the underlying motivators of the leader’s personal behaviors and explore how these behaviors significantly affect school culture and climate. When considering that the basis for the creation of any culture consists of the underlying social behaviors that shape beliefs over time, the notion of how school leaders impact the development of culture is of significant importance. Evans (1996) stated: Authentic leaders build their practice outward from their core commitments rather than inward from a management text. In addition to their craft knowledge, all administrators have basic philosophies of leading, of school functioning, and of human nature, philosophies that are deeply rooted in their personal history and professional experience. These philosophies guide their behavior, but they usually remain tacit. (p. 193) Combs, Miser and Whitaker, (1999) explained the impact of behaviors on leadership through the person-centered view in the following statement.

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The person-centered view of people contends that we do not respond directly to the forces exerted on us. Instead, we behave in terms of the meanings of perceptions that exist for us at the moment we act. More specifically, people behave according to how they see themselves, the situations they confront, and the purposes they seek to fulfill. (p. 10) Lewine and Regine (2000) stated it differently: “When the individual soul is connected to the organization, people become connected to something deeper – the desire to contribute to a larger purpose, to feel they are a part of a greater whole, a web of connection” (p. 27). Enabling principals to identify and understand those perceptions and beliefs is the beginning of assisting principals in developing personal self-awareness. This is also the basis of our research; to explore the impact of personal behaviors related to maintaining a healthy culture and climate. Theoretical Constructs Most available information from one research project or another is summarized into “how to” books that outline either step-bystep climate improvement strategies or general discussions of ways that administrators can positively impact the culture and climate. This information is marvelous and very helpful; missing, however, is the opportunity to examine the one variable that Bosker, Witziers, and Krueger (2003), Leithwood (1992) and Hallinger and Heck (1998) suggested must be understood if administrators are to make progress in further understanding how to improve the culture and climate of a school. That variable is the principals’ personal behaviors and their impact on a school’s culture and climate. Examining the principal’s relationship with the school climate is the center of our work and the results are beginning to open a window to the heart of principals’ personal behavior as it relates to campus leadership, building and maintaining the school’s climate, and improving student achievement.

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When discussing the principal’s impact on schools, Hallinger and Heck (1998) suggested that the principal’s influence has an indirect effect on learning and is mediated by their interactions with others, situational events, and the organizational and cultural factors of the school. Ogawa and Bossert (1995) reported that leaders function within organizational cultures and affect the ways in which members of the organization interpret events which then influences their behavior. Hall and George (1999) stated that the manner in which teachers perceive and interpret the actions of the school principal leads to the development of the culture of the school and the principal’s overall approach to leadership is related to the successful implementation of innovation by teachers. These researchers concluded that the impact that principals have on student achievement is directly related to the culture and climate rather than a direct result of the principal’s leadership. Given that the principal’s effect on student achievement is indirect, then understanding their personal behaviors and motivations becomes crucial in understanding that impact on campus climate. Case Study Research In a recent qualitative case study of three large, inner city elementary schools in the greater Houston, Texas area, we examined the perceptions of teachers regarding their principals’ behaviors as they managed the school. We were interested as to whether teachers’ perceptions of their principals’ behaviors matched those of the teachers. The principals’ leadership behavior was measured by the Leadership Profile and the teachers’ perceptions through a series of focus group questions targeting principals’ leadership behavior and their impact on student achievement and school climate. In addition, the principal was asked the same series of questions posed to teachers in the focus groups. Before proceeding with the findings, it is important to understand the basis structure of the Leadership Profile so as to better understand the findings.

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The Leadership Profile In our work with administrators for more than a decade, the principals who became questionable for tenure were those whose performance was shaped by the ethereal “difficult to describe” category rather than concrete examples of performance flaws or deficits. Seeking ways to illuminate those difficult to describe performance issues, it became important to find an assessment or instrument that would enable principals to understand the impact of their behavior and allow the supervisor to appropriately describe the problems. Creating these descriptions allowed both the principal and the supervisor to understand exactly what the behavioral issues were and then better plan for improvement. The Birkman Method@ (Birkman, 1995) was selected to better describe these behaviors; however, the language in the assessment was modified to match educational administrators. Out of that modification, The Leadership Profile (Johnson, 2003) emerged to more appropriately describe the usual behavior of each principal, their underlying motivations (needs), and the stress that results when the individual’s needs are not met. The Leadership Profile results provide four major clusters of leadership behaviors that describe (a) building relationships, (b) organizational behaviors, (c) decision-making, and (d) goal achievement. Each cluster is comprised of several components that provide the administrator with a glimpse of how they are most likely to impact their school and primarily its culture and climate. The Leadership Profile explains principals’ usual behavior or their socially acceptable behaviors that they have been taught, exposed to, or developed as a result of being associated with a specific working and/or social environment. In most cases, the usual behavior is the most comfortable set of behaviors exhibited: these behaviors demonstrate when an individual is most comfortable and at their best. The Profile also explains the level of needs the principal requires from

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other people to remain in their usual behavioral style. The usual behaviors are not unknown to the individual; it is the needs that most individuals are not aware of and can not generally articulate that drive their behavioral impact. Needs are the motivating force in behavior and when those needs are not met, an individual will exhibit stress related behavior. Often people are not aware of this process nor the impact such behavior can create. As a result, the individual may never recognize the unproductive effects. The results of the Leadership Profile are dependant upon the principal’s answers to several sets of questions that ask for perceptions of others and perceptions of self. The results of both sets of perceptions provide indications of our unique actions and reactions to the world around us. More importantly, these perceptions explain the basis for how and why we behave. The Leadership Profile measures these two different perspectives of the principal’s behaviors and offers a more incisive and complete assessment of behavior coupled with the principal’s natural strengths and limitations. Findings The results of the Leadership Profile (LP) provided comprehensive data regarding the principals’ behavior for the 11 components that comprise the categories of: (a) building relationships, (b) organizational behaviors, (c) decision-making, and (d) goal achievement. The results of the teacher focus groups were coded as to the relationship of each comment to the 11 LP components for each of the principals. When the results were analyzed, the teacher responses matched the results of the principal’s profile almost perfectly. However, the principals’ interview responses, in most cases, did not agree with the LP results or the teachers’ responses. Again, in almost every category, the principals’ interview response matched their usual behavior LP scores but did not match their need and stress scores.

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When principals received the LP feedback in conjunction with the results of their interview, they were amazed. Their mantra was, “I was totally unaware of what I was doing.” Even though all the responses were revealing, the principals’ behaviors from the Organizational Behaviors category (structure and authority) had the greatest influence on the perceptions of the teachers. The Organizational Behaviors cluster describes the principal’s behaviors regarding the LP components of structure and authority. Structure describes how the individual controls issues associated with detail, structure, follow-through, and routine. It also provides a glimpse of how persistent the principal is in the completion of activities or in follow-through. Authority describes how the principal manages authority, whether giving or receiving it. Both components combined illuminate a revealing pattern of principal’s behavior related to the organization and management of the school and eventually how that behavior affects the climate and trust base of the school. Educational research supports this same notion that the school leader’s attention to structure within the school is an important part of impacting student outcomes. Waters, Marzanno, and McNulty (2003) identified the leadership responsibility of order as directly related to student achievement in schools. Order describes the leadership responsibility of establishing standard operating procedures and routines within the school organization. Leithwood et al. (2004) highlighted redesigning the organization as one of the core leadership practices in schools that contribute to student achievement: Successful educational leaders develop their districts and schools as effective organizations that support and sustain the performance of administrators and teachers, as well as students. Specific practices typically associated with this set of basics include strengthening district and school cultures, modifying organizational structures and building collaborative processes (p. 7).

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Imposing structures on schools simply with the intent to “fix or repair” organizational deficiencies is believed to be detrimental to the improvement of student outcomes. Witziers, Bosker, and Kruger (2003) reported that it appears that when school leaders implement activities aimed at improving the school there is a negative effect on student achievement. The researchers caution that this finding should be interpreted carefully and that it could be the result of principals in schools with low student performance feeling compelled to take action to improve their schools. This would seem to suggest a “quick-fix” mentality that would impose structure without integrating them into the mission and culture of the school. In regard to the principal’s use of authority, Fullan (2001) described the leadership behaviors that successful principals exhibit in their schools in the following manner: Leaders in a culture of change realize that accessing tacit knowledge is crucial and that such access cannot be mandated. Effective leaders understand the value and role of knowledge creation, they make it a priority and set about establishing and rein forcing habits of knowledge exchange among organizational members…Control freaks need not apply: people need elbow room to uncover and sort out best ideas. Leaders must learn to trust the processes they set up, looking for promising patterns and looking to continually refine and identify procedures for maximizing valuable sharing. Knowledge activation is about enabling, not controlling (p. 87). When analyzing the results of our research, several concepts emerged that related the principals’ use of structure and authority to the faculties’ perception of trust toward the principal. Kochanek (2005) in her book, Building Trust for Better Schools: Research-Based Practices, discussed numerous models of trust building and related them to public schools. The important emphasis of all the models Kochanek discussed is that trust evolves over time through repeated

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interactions. Trust building in schools must begin with the reduction of vulnerabilities in order to increase the number of positive exchanges that builds trust. Since the principal in a school holds the formal power, it is incumbent that he/she to bring the faculty and others together to increase those positive interpersonal exchanges that build trust. These models and theories are extremely powerful; however, an important aspect has been discounted that carefully factors into the processes Kochanek suggested for building trust. Principals intuitively know that they must develop a foundation of trust relationships if they are to be effective. In most cases, the principals speak from their frame of reference and are not considering how their personal perceptions shape their relationships and reactions. Often the expectation is that faculty fulfills their needs while faculty needs are often not considered. Faculty needs are often ignored not because the principal is selfish or does not like certain faculty, but is due to a total lack of awareness regarding their own individual needs and how those needs impact or intersect with the needs of others on the campus. Since the building of trust is so crucial to creating a positive climate, the principal must become aware of his/her needs and find productive ways to create a level of trust that will enable the campus to achieve higher levels of performance. Conclusions While examining the principals’ use of structure and authority, it became clear how a principal can create immense distress among faculty by simply responding to their own need behaviors. For example, a principal in our research demonstrated a high usual structure behavior which is defined as possessing the ability to create systems and procedures that enable the campus to run very smoothly. In the focus groups, this principal’s behaviors matched the teachers’ responses as they described her as being very organized and establishing efficient procedures. They said, “The building runs very

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smoothly most of the time, but there are ‘times.’” In most cases this principal was very consistent with her use of structure because she not only had a high usual score, but also a high need score, meaning that she personally needed for the building and her personal life to be highly structure and predictable. The hesitation in the teachers’ remarks of, “…but there are ‘times’” reflected this principal’s very low stress score for structure. Her behavior for usual and need was very predictable for the teachers; however, when stressed, she would invariably change a building procedure, a program detail, etc. with very little suggestion or prompt. These changes usually would occur with a mere suggestion by one or two teachers in the hallway. As a result of her stress behavior related to structure, the faculty witnessed a contradiction to her usual behavior which frequently raised levels of concern among the faculty. These seemingly reactionary changes did not produce positive interactions that build trust among faculty. Consequently, the faculty quickly acknowledged her, as recorded in the focus groups, as being inconsistent in her behavior and not trustworthy at times even though they had previously lauded her organization and management. In the principal’s interview, she did not perceive the impact of her behavior on trust building and could not understand why teachers often did not respond to her quick ability to design and implement new programming and be open to the ideas that teachers shared with her in the hallway. She was completely unaware of how the teachers perceived her behavior and of the impact that her behavior had on the building climate. The same story was evident with another principal in the study when teachers spoke of her stress behavior during the focus groups. Without exception, teachers in every focus group spoke of the principal as being a micromanager and constantly “telling us what to do.” This particular principal registered a low usual authority score but a high score for authority need. The low usual authority score indicated that the principal suggested to the teachers as to how she wanted things done and expected teachers to get them done with little

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formal direction. In the principal’s view, she expected the teachers to know what to do because “they after all were professionals.” Her high authority need score, which essentially meant that she needed for things to be done just as she had assigned and in just the manner that she expected, was in stark contrast to her usual suggestive manner. As a result of this contradiction, the faculty described the principal as being a “control freak,” “failing to be specific,” and “micromanaging everything that they did.” To complicate this situation, this particular principal’s stress score was high for the authority component, so when the principal began to feel the pressure of the superintendent’s expectations, etc., she began to micromanage the teachers’ classrooms with rather dictatorial behaviors. The climate in the building was tense and unsettled; described by the teachers and observed by the researchers. When the principal was asked in her interview about the feelings of the faculty, she quickly described her usual behavior (suggestive and respectful) and could not acknowledge the controlling behavior that caused the faculty to be uncomfortable. Unfortunately, as the performance requirements increased by the state, so did her controlling behaviors causing the faculty to diminish their trust in the principal and reduce performance. Even though she could quickly articulate the need for developing trustful relationships, it was impossible for her to discuss her behaviors that were prohibitive to the development of a positive climate. Recommendations Once again, we can articulate the strategies and cite the literature that encourages climate change and building trust, but unless the principal is aware of personal behavioral patterns, the probability of creating the necessary environmental criteria that supports trust and positive relationships is seriously diminished. Changing the climate in a building that has been rather dysfunctional for years is almost an insurmountable task. DuFour and Eaker (1998) offered great strategies to begin this work among a faculty, but there is preliminary work that the principal must do before exploring the values and beliefs with the

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faculty. To complicate this process, all of the motivating needs of the principal will affect his or her expression of educationally held values and beliefs. Even though supportive of consensus generated values, an individual’s motivations will impact what the principal actually does, defining the walk versus the talk. The Leadership Profile generates generous feedback regarding 11 different components that assess leadership behavior. From each of these components the principal is able to match perception to action. In most cases, it is the principal’s needs that they are not able to easily identify and determine impact on people and processes. With the two components, structure and authority, discussed in this article, we did not expect that these components would surface the level of response from the faculty as they did. We expected that the teachers would respond to the components that describe the principal’s behavior regarding developing and maintaining relationships. Even though relationship building was important to the teachers and sometimes mentioned in the focus groups, it was the principals’ behaviors regarding structure and authority that took center stage. The principals’ behaviors for these two components generated the following concerns for the teachers: • • • • •

Consistency and predictability in response to systems and procedure management Trust of teacher professionalism in instructional delivery and discipline Clarity of instructions and expectations Reactionary management and oversight Prior knowledge of programmatic or system changes

To be sure, these are only a few of the concerns that emerged from these two components, but the impact of the behaviors of just these examples bring to the fore front how terribly important it is to understand personal motives and behaviors. A principal can avow that he/she values teacher discretion, but frequent appearances in the

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classroom to correct the teacher or offer suggestions in front of the students or provide repeated unwarranted interference will destroy relationships as well as trust in the principal intention. Self-awareness is crucial to success as an administrator. Finding the appropriate methods to enable aspiring principals to discover those important findings is difficult, yet with the work generated from the Leadership Profile, our next generation of research will focus on the relationship of climate with the behaviors of principals in schools.

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REFERENCES Birkman, R. (2001). Reliability and validity. Houston, Texas. Birkman International, Inc. Birkman, R. (1995). True colors. Houston, Texas: Birkman International, Inc. Combs, A., Miser, A., & Whitaker, K. (1999). On becoming a school leader: A person-centered challenge. Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development: Evans, R. (1996). The human side of school change: Reform, resistance, and the real-life problems of innovation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (1998). Professional learning communities at work. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service. Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hall, G., & George, A. (1999). The impact of principal change facilitator style on school and classroom culture. In Freiburg, J.H. (Ed.). School climate: Measuring, improving, and sustaining healthy learning environments (pp. 165-185). Philadelphia, PA. Hallinger, P., & Heck, R. H. (1998). Exploring the principal’s contribution to school effectiveness: 1980-1995. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 9(2), 157-191. Johnson, S., & Busch, S. (2006). Understanding leadership behaviors of principals. In F. Dembowski & L. K. Lemasters (Eds.), Unbridled spirit: Best practices in educational administration. The 2006 Yearbook of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (pp. 321-329). Lancaster, PA: DEStech Publications. Johnson, S. (2003). The leadership profile. Houston, Texas: Birkman International, Inc. Kochanek, J. (2005). Building trust for better schools: Researchbased practices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

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Lewin, R., & Regine, R. (2006). The soul at work. New York: Simon & Schuster. Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D., Watson, N., & Fullan, M. (2004). Strategic leadership on a large scale: The case of England’s national literacy and numeracy strategies. Journal of School Management and Leadership, 24, 1, 57-79. Leithwood, K. (1992). Leadership as an organizational quality. Educational Leadership, 49(5), 8-12. Ogawa, R. & Bossert, S. (1995). Leadership as an organizational quality. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31, 224-243. Waters, T., Marzano, R., & McNulty, B. (2003). Balanced leadership: What 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement. Working Paper. McRel. Witziers B. Bosker, R. &, Kruger, M., (2003). Educational leadership and student achievement: The elusive search for an association. Educational Administration Quarterly, 39(3), 398-423.