EL Week 2 Reflection - Transformational Leadership

The definition of transformational leadership somewhat depends on who is articulating it. I prefer the Covey definition from the Transformational Leadership Report. He says, "The goal of transformational leadership is to “transform” people and organizations in a literal sense – to change them in mind and heart; enlarge vision, insight, and understanding; clarify purposes; make behavior congruent with beliefs, principles, or values; and bring about changes that are permanent, self-perpetuating, and momentum building."

Transformational leadership is a system that intends to take into account more than just behavior. It seems that many leaders focus exclusively on externally quantifiable factors (e.g. test scores, attendance, participation) as indicators of the health of an organization. This is often seen in today’s public education system. Recently, South Carolina opted out of the federal No Child Left Behind regulations and was granted a waiver by the federal government. However, the South Carolina Board of Education issued a letter grade to each school in the state that supposedly revealed the health of the school. The tragedy is that the letter grade was determined by a weighted algorithm that put significant importance on standardized test scores. So much so, that many schools report that their grades appeared to be based almost solely on those scores. The focus on test scores is a prime example of what not to do according to transformational leadership.

For an organization to be truly transformational, the focus must be on the larger goal and the inspiration of people towards that goal. Students must learn how to succeed for the purpose of learning and fulfilling their own version of the organization’s goal. For example, thanks to a recent PBIS initiative our students constantly hear us talking to them about doing their “personal best”. If a student does in fact score well on a state standardized test we trust they will know it is because the student truly did exert his or her personal best effort. This can impact the way a leader leads, as he or she must first articulate the goal with administrative staff. Once there is buy-in, the process must flow towards focusing on inspiring faculty and staff. This trickle-down method allows for the vision to be caught by all stakeholders, including (and especially) students.

If the goal is caught by all stakeholders, there is a natural flow to how to incorporate technology. The use of technology becomes a natural extension of the goal. As in my example from my school, the use of technology becomes a way for students to exert their personal best effort. A report/essay/project improves significantly when it is properly researched, created, and tweaked using modern technological tools.